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Elon Musk Changes 'Boring Company' Vision To Reward Cyclists and Pedestrians (techcrunch.com)
"Remember Elon Musk's plan to dig a massive web of traffic-beating tunnels underneath Los Angeles...?" asks CNN. "Now, that plan appears to be getting a huge makeover." An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch:
While it will still focus on digging tunnels to provide a network of underground tubes suitable for use by high-speed Hyperloop pods, the plan now is to use that Hyperloop to transport pedestrians and cyclists first, and then only later to work on moving cars around underground to bypass traffic. Musk shared the update via Twitter, noting that the idea would be to load customers onto cars roughly the size that a single parking space takes up currently, [thousands of which] would be dotted around an urban environment close to any destinations where someone might travel. The single-car station model would be designed to replace the current subway-style model, Musk said, where only a few small stations are very spread out... This is a big departure from the original vision, and it seems like one that might have evolved after Musk and his collaborators on the project spoke to urban planners and transit authorities.
"If someone can't afford a car, they should go first," Musk posted on Twitter, sharing a new conceptual video where an elevator lowers one of these pedestrian- and cyclist-focussed shuttle pods underground.
TechCrunch says this new vision "would be appealing both to urban officials looking to decrease congestion on downtown roads and discourage personal vehicle use, and to anyone hoping to increase access to affordable transit options."
"If someone can't afford a car, they should go first," Musk posted on Twitter, sharing a new conceptual video where an elevator lowers one of these pedestrian- and cyclist-focussed shuttle pods underground.
TechCrunch says this new vision "would be appealing both to urban officials looking to decrease congestion on downtown roads and discourage personal vehicle use, and to anyone hoping to increase access to affordable transit options."
"If someone can't afford a car, they should go first" - I love the insinuation that the only people who don't have a car are those that can't afford one. I quite often forget that Musk is an American but every now and then, he makes it super obvious.
Capacity tends to get used; see the computer industry: 25 years ago 640k of memory seemed enough -- nowadays 16 gig seems to barely get things done.
No. Capacity only gets used when it is the limiting factor. We started using more RAM because RAM was limiting us from doing more. When every damn car on the road is already on the road then the limiting factor becomes something else and capacity won't increase any further. Kind of like how we're all perfectly happy with 5 year old CPUs now.
As the title says, but I'll get to that. First a bit of devils advocate:
Launching the roadster into space
Marketing, nothing more. The only people who think this is a distraction from the fact that the Falcon Heavy wasn't loaded at full capacity have never done a project before. You never flick the switch to 100% and hit the GO button on your first startup. It doesn't matter if you're designing a spaceship, a nuclear power plant or building a new kind of smartwatch.
Gwynne Shotwell
Yes there's a problem with how the Universities are cranking out graduates. That doesn't make what Musk is doing a distraction. If anything this is THE SINGLE BEST WAY to turn around the industry. Why would women chose STEM if there are no role models for success? He can't fix the skewing due to the underlying issues in society, so he's attempting to portray the power of women. This is more common sense than anything most other companies have come up with.
Prioritizing people and bicycles over cars in his Boring Co tunnels
You do realise this entire concept is in early stages of front end loading right? At this point there's still all sorts of ideas floating around. Finding a different way that may suit the original goal of the project (making money through a new form of mass transit) doesn't mean the original way didn't work, wasn't profitable, or wasn't technically feasible. This isn't a government project where you start at the conclusion and work backwards, it's a private company which generally means that projects look for the best possible outcome, even if that outcome isn't moving cars around.
Electric Semi
Well there's two things here, Firstly the Model 3 production shortfall was far worse several months before the semi was announced and had pretty much already been done to death in the media, and secondly these products don't just appear out of nowhere. This semi is clearly something that had a lot of engineering already completed. Why would you delay the announcement of your cool new shiny just because of some teething problems on a completely different product line?
Now back to Musk not having a clue
The thing that separates Musk and his companies from others is that he is comfortable with not having a clue. He is basically shaking up everything he touches in ways that people consistently say won't work. The end result may not be that each of his companies has blasted into profitability, but rather the result has had an incredible effect on the industry and society as a whole. He doesn't know what he's doing because no one has done the things he's doing. That ultimately means that some things aren't going to pan out.
Whenever you see someone like Musk failing at something or get criticised for not knowing what he's doing it's worth remembering these two statistics:
1. 95% of start-ups fail to get off the ground.
2. 90% of businesses even using established and traditional methods in normal industries fail in the first 2 years.
And these two say nothing of the number of companies that manage to change the course of entire industries.