Oh god, he is such a complete bull shitter that it's embarrassing.
A while back, I was like "This Elon Musk guy is really an example of what we need more of in the world".
It makes me cringe.
This was the days of solar rooftiles, Boring company, going to mars soon, the hyperloop, battery technologies, self driving vehicles.
All of it was complete horseshit.
The worst thing of all is that, I can hold my hands up and be laughed at but since then there are armies of Elon fans that don't recognise it.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
EDIT: Even on hackernews, there are people with this fetish. "It isn't his fault, the public is to blame for thinking that fully automated self driving cars, meant fully automated self driving cars". Ugh.
Elon Musk has start up ideas, and most start up ideas fail. Yes, he overhypes the ideas, but this is common in the start up world.
The difference is he has been involved with three large successes - ebay, telsa, and spacex. This success/failure ratio is leagues better than just about anyone else. And he did this in three very different industries.
So his self driving car effort will likely fail, or at best be very late.
But we do need more people willing to take chances like this who can also execute as this is rare.
Taking chances on a startup is one thing. Knowingly lying in the position of CEO of a publicly traded company and selling something that will never exist is fraud. Fake it til you make it isn’t legal in public securities nor should it be.
As much as he might stretch the truth, the most beautiful Elon trait is he dreams and is not afraid to share this dream world in the world no matter how foolish, foolhardy, or stupid it is. The rest of the FAANG CEOs provide a vague statement about how some vague description of AI will change the world and how their compy will lead the charge, which gives investors confidence but says nothing. For all his bullshiterry, Elon will provide an explicit goal versus a vague concept, which means a lot.
The line between "sharing his dream world" and "committing securities fraud" is evidently in the eye of the beholder. I admit that I'm surprised he doesn't get sued more for his blatant lies.
I think the issue is that he has had enough successes that people are assuming his current ideas will also, necessarily, be successes. And his self-confidence conveys that.
The thing people need to realize is that people can start hitting misses at any time.
Elon Musk is perhaps a con man (in the fully expounded sense of the term "confidence man"), but particularly one who believes his own bull.
I'm not sure he's a bullshitter exactly. He's wildly overoptimistic and is immune to reality to a large degree. The thing is, those can be really good traits for advancing the state of the art and developing new things.
If he wasn't like that, he might not have done some of the worthwhile things he's done. I definitely wouldn't take anything he says at face value, but I think there's value in him being like that.
I'm might have a better BS detector, or just older. But my thought was all Musk really does is prove how bad the management at automotive companies are.
My point is any of the auto companies could have done what Tesla did and done a better job. Except their managers in large totally suck. How bad to they suck? Musk is actually mentally ill.
Consider Toyota. 25 years ago their upper management was capable of fostering the development of hybrids. Now they seem to be unable to change direction.
VW is doing a better job. Probably because Germany threw some of the previous management in prison.
A while back, I was like "This Elon Musk guy is really an example of what we need more of in the world".
It makes me cringe.
This was the days of solar rooftiles, Boring company, going to mars soon, the hyperloop, battery technologies, self driving vehicles.
All of it was complete horseshit.
The worst thing of all is that, I can hold my hands up and be laughed at but since then there are armies of Elon fans that don't recognise it.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
EDIT: Even on hackernews, there are people with this fetish. "It isn't his fault, the public is to blame for thinking that fully automated self driving cars, meant fully automated self driving cars". Ugh.