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The Cult of Elon Musk Shines With Steve Jobs' Aura
HughPickens.com writes Alan Boyle writes that over the years, Elon Musk's showmanship, straight-ahead smarts and far-out ideas have earned him a following that spans the geek spectrum — to the point that some observers see glimmers of the aura that once surrounded Apple's Steve Jobs. "To me, it feels like he's the most obvious inheritor of Steve Jobs' mantle," says Ashlee Vance, who's writing a biography of Musk that at one time had the working title The Iron Man. "Obviously, Steve Jobs' products changed the world ... [But] if Elon's right about all these things that he's after, his products should ultimately be more meaningful than what Jobs came up with. He's the guy doing the most concrete stuff about global warming." So what is Musk's vision? What motivates Musk at the deepest level? "It's his Mars thing," says Vance. Inspired in part by the novels of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, Musk has come around to the view that humanity's long-term future depends on extending its reach beyond Earth, starting with colonies on Mars. Other notables like physicist Stephen Hawking have laid out similar scenarios — but Musk is actually doing something to turn those interplanetary dreams into a reality. Vance thinks that Musk is on the verge of breaking out from geek guru status to a level of mass-market recognition that's truly on a par with the late Steve Jobs. Additions to the Tesla automotive line, plus the multibillion-dollar promise of Tesla's battery-producing "gigafactory" in Nevada, could push Musk over the edge. "Tesla, as a brand, really does seem to have captured the public's imagination. ... All of a sudden he's got a hip product that looks great, and it's creating jobs. The next level feels like it's got to be that third-generation, blockbuster mainstream product. The story is not done."
Top Gear reviews his car, it breaks, they tow it back, find it blew a fuse, do some more tests, it flattens its battery. He does misdirections and deceptions, e.g. complaining that it didn't need to be towed back, which was false, (how could they know the fault could be fixed on the track when the cause of the fault wasn't known).
NYT reviews it, gives a basically correct article, his response was to seize on minor detail and portray the reviewer as a liar.
He fails to deliver his rockets on time, costing NASA tens of millions, and he does a verbal attack on NASA.
Face it, he's a little shit who covers his mistakes and his products weaknesses with astroturf and false PR.
call us when you are 0.1% as successful as him.. until then, wallow in your pit of jealousy
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I’m going to assume you’re not trolling here. I’m really starting to believe articles about Musk are just clickbait.
People who think Musk is the next Jobs haven’t taken the time to research and compare the accomplishments of both men.
Jobs changed the music industry with the iPod and the iTunes Store; the movie industry with Pixar; the software industry with GUI on the Mac, and later, the App Store; the smartphone industry with the iPhone; and the tablet industry with the iPad. Those are just the examples I can come up with off the top of my head. Nobody was clamoring for computer-driven animation, or Microsoft tablets, or the Treo, or the Diamond Rio or Archos. Jobs' version brought those products to the mainstream. Previous attempts by other companies were commercial failures.
But probably Jobs’ greatest creation was Apple itself. With the largest market capitalization in the world, and more cash on hand than anyone, Apple is bound by nothing.
And what has Musk done? Well, he makes one of the most expensive cars money can buy (hardly an amazing feat), adding “autopilot” features that already exist in cars from other manufacturers. Even with astronomical price tags, Tesla sells only a fraction of the number of cars as Toyota does, and Tesla has lost money nearly every year of its existence (not hard to do). Musk has formed SpaceX to take cargo and people to space (has he really done a better job than NASA could?). He wants to go to Mars, but hasn’t figured out a way to overcome the landing problems, or to address perchlorate poisoning, or the dozens of other problems, some of which likely won't be solved in our lifetimes, if ever. He envisioned Hyperloop, which is so expensive and dangerous (not to mention running in earthquake country) that it’s impractical and will never be built.
And where is Musk’s electric car for the masses? He keeps claiming it’s coming, yet none of the models he’s discussed are ever likely to cost $30,000.
Jobs was a dreamer. Musk is a dreamer. But Jobs was a dreamer who created real products, and changed real industries. Musk dreams like a child: “I want a jetpack!” or “I want to go to another planet!” without having first figured out how to accomplish the feat. Jobs was an industrialist; Musk is a dilettante.
Jobs knew something Musk doesn’t: coming up with the idea is the smallest part of the solution. Anyone can come up with a great idea, it’s the realization of that idea as a bestselling product or service which separates the average joe from the successful industrialist.
Oh, and that Musk video on global warming? He didn’t propose a solution, he just regurgitated Dick Cheney's “One Percent Doctrine” and applied it to global climate change.
If Musk REALLY wants to change the world, how about coming up with a jet fuel additive that will bind with CO2 or CH4 to create a heavy enough compound which will gradually fall back to the surface? I’d like to see an actual idea AND solution from him that would decrease the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.