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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

(www.ycombinator.com)
1106 points sama | 5 comments | 15 Sep 16 18:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.929s | source
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kstenerud ◴[15 Sep 16 19:30 UTC] No.12509079[source]▶
It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd.

"Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!"

"Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!"

"Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?"

And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have thought that the technologists were above such petty envy. We're here to improve humanity's lot, aren't we?

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1. Noos ◴[16 Sep 16 05:10 UTC] No.12511976[source]▶
To be fair though, Tesla cars are an expensive luxury brand and have no real revolutionary potential at the moment. The revolution is to make affordable electric cars and the infrastructure to build them, and there are serious doubts about how much Tesla can scale to that. It's similar to electric bicycles, in that there are some masterfully engineered, high tech ones out there...at the cost of a decent used motorcycle, and trying to scale it ends up being clunky, heavy, and still more expensive than the bike you put it on.

When he actually improves humanity's lot instead of producing boutique goods for rich people, then maybe we'll see more praise.

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2. jakub_h ◴[16 Sep 16 08:13 UTC] No.12512591[source]▶
> Tesla cars are an expensive luxury brand and have no real revolutionary potential at the moment. The revolution is to make affordable electric cars and the infrastructure to build them

So...their plan being to bootstrap the large-scale manufacturing of affordable vehicles with a smaller number of more expensive sales, you're saying that Tesla simultaneously is and isn't revolutionary at the same time?

3. mcv ◴[16 Sep 16 11:09 UTC] No.12513175[source]▶
But Tesla's goal is exactly that: to make electric cars affordable and create the necessary infrastructure for them. And he does that by starting with the market segment where it's easiest to get started: high margin sports cars and luxury cars, and working his way down from there.

It'll be a while before his electric cars can really compete with cheap cars, but I'm sure he'll get there. He's making good progress.

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4. Noos ◴[16 Sep 16 18:17 UTC] No.12516061[source]▶
I don't think he will. You can't work your way down from that, you have to design the product with the end market in mind. My bet is that electric cars simply are impossible to make at a $20k price point approaching anywhere near Tesla quality, in the same way you won't be able to make a decent electric bike for $300.

Probably the same way Ferrari is, no point to make wide acceptance of that brand.

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5. mcv ◴[17 Sep 16 22:39 UTC] No.12522888{3}[source]▶
Why wouldn't he be able to work down from that? It seems to be working quite well. The Model 3 costs $35k, which, while by no means cheap, is a lot more affordable than the Roadster and the S.

There's a lot of R&D going into this, and it's just easier to bootstrap a car company out of nothing while building expensive, high-margin luxury cars than when building competitive mass market cars. The mass market will come, but before it gets to that, costs have to go down more, and infrastructure for electric cars has to become ubiquitous.