Elon Musk

Heh, that's funny.

Elon Musk just seems like such a dope. He's like the human version of those months of hype when they were teasing the Segway, which turned out to be nothing more than an updated version of a Rascal scooter.

"look at you!" is what Howard Stern always leads with

the correct responce is "hiee"

a well-timed series of air horn blasts always gets the room going

the Segway, which turned out to be nothing more than an updated version of a Rascal scooter.

Rascal scooters have 3-5 wheels and are huge. Kamen's self-balancing device still looks p much like witchcraft.

Yeah but the only people I see using them are tourists and traffic cops, which is a pretty lame use of witchcraft.

the technology is impressive they look like a total dorkmobile tho

and are basically useless

still makes me laugh that the owner of segway died driving his own product off a cliff

the Weekend at Bernie's reboot will have a "Bernie on a segway" scene

i was just at the fete des lumieres in lyon and instead of information booths they had people stand totally still on segways with big signs that said INFORMATION attached to their heads.

Lyon? You mean The Future!

I remember the build up to the Segway (aka, It, iirc). Then it's revealed as something that will revolutionize travel from the guy who made a wheelchair that can climb stairs, which is super awesome. And then the Segway comes out, and it's about as awesome as those monkey shoes that show the shape of your toes.

Elon Musk, 99% of what I heard about him is that he wants to build all these hypothetical super-fast hyperloop tunnels or some bullshit. Tunnels to baseball stadiums, to space, to Chicago, to stranded Thai boy scouts. But all he's done is made luxury electric cars, which are like so fucking what? As soon as other car companies start mass-producing much more affordable and equally reliable and efficient electric cars, even more than they are now, in a couple of years, Teslas will be about as radical as Bentleys or some other luxury brand.

As soon as other car companies start mass-producing much more affordable and equally reliable and efficient electric cars, even more than they are now, in a couple of years, Teslas will be about as radical as Bentleys or some other luxury brand.

this is otm, they are gonna be outpaced by conventional auto companies *very* quickly

its already happened tbh, tesla still has a glow for some ppl which is funny since theyre pretty shitty cars, making cars is very hard

Yeah and the incumbent automakers also know how to acquire startups just the same as any other enterprise

prob tesla will just end up acquired by one of the big boys after losing 90% of its value and then disappear totally after some corporate restructuring down the line

Yup

I can see a few of Tesla's ideas being legit gamechangers but trying to buck 100 years of auto manufacturing practices in the name of "disruption" is so incredibly stupid that only a galaxy brain like Elon Musk could've come up with it

plus they definitely seem to be committing some sort of obvious accounting fraud. their "profitable" Q3 made no sense whatsoever.

yeah theres no way they havent done a ton of illegal shit in a number of areas

Elon Musk, 99% of what I heard about him is that he wants to build all these hypothetical super-fast hyperloop tunnels or some bullshit. Tunnels to baseball stadiums, to space, to Chicago, to stranded Thai boy scouts. But all he's done is made luxury electric cars, which are like so fucking what? As soon as other car companies start mass-producing much more affordable and equally reliable and efficient electric cars, even more than they are now, in a couple of years, Teslas will be about as radical as Bentleys or some other luxury brand.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, December 11, 2018 10:46 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this sometimes good thread will forever be sunk by self-owning posts such as this one

afaict all the EV nerds who are not musk fans by the jaguar now?

like he doesn't even have the luxury market

also looking forward to alleged public "rides" on the hawthorne test boring co thing next week.

Trying to figure out how I self owned. Is it because what I reduced his accomplishments to (spurring others to make electric cars?) can be construed a big deal? Like he's some electric car martyr who paved (har) the way for others?

Anyway, let me know when I can take a Tesla train cross country in an hour or whatever and, if any of us are alive then, I'll concede his genius.

I did hear someone talking on NPR this morning about how limited discussion of self-driving vehicles has been (to sort of change the subject). The most novel idea he offered was a self-driving ambulance with a host of automated diagnostic tools that you could call to your house in an emergency. Stuff like that. But nothing about tunnels, so I assume it was not Musk talking.

you have taken a very "skeptical asshole" posture toward something and then you offered "99% of what (you) heard about" it in a paragraph that was part joking sure but also, I have to assume, a good summary of what you actually know about it.

all he's done is made luxury electric cars, which are like so fucking what?

SpaceX seems like an interesting company with several very impressive engineering feats to its credit. tbh, I doubt that Elon Musk has had much, if any, direct input on how these were achieved. At most he sets lofty objectives and his employees do the real work.

they mostly buy scrapped Russian rockets iirc

I'll take Virgin Galactic over SpaceX tbh if only because Branson seems like slightly less of an asshole

lol no

um

guys they can both just be assholes ok its not an unpopularity contest

so true

I bring up Branson in part to demonstrate that Musk didn't have any uniquely genius ideas, he had p much the same ideas other billionaires had

also VIRGIN GALACTIC just sounds cooler than SpaceX come on

(cues up XTC's "Another Satellite")

maybe if your a galactic virgin lol faced

heh

damn

coincidentally ive been antagonized by horrible nerds on twitter for the last couple days cause i said going to space is dumb and childish

Hah

It is tho

Musk yet to do anything as evil as suing the nhs iirc

attempting to undermine public transpo projects in the pursuit of selling lousy cars is pretty bad

That it is

full disclosure: I didn't know about the NHS thing

wait is Musk Sir Miles Axlerod or The Underminer. pick a movie.

wtf r u talking about

attempting to undermine public transpo projects in the pursuit of selling lousy cars is pretty bad

― lag∞n, Wednesday, 12 December 2018 10:06 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But in the best traditions of the auto Indy which is about the only thing he hasn’t learnt from carmakers.

I guess my point, as such, was that the only thing he's really *achieved* has been his line of fancy cars. Everything else has been sort of a pipe dream work in progress that seems more talk than payoff, as of yet. That is to say, I understand that Space x is a thing, but I don't understand what that thing is. To privatize space travel?

mostly

(I'm in favor of space travel+research fwiw)

lol you guys are such haters.