> then why was Tesla the only successful electric car manufacturer for literally years
Because every other car manufacturer had no incentives to invest in that space when their ICE technology was working well for them. Musk made the bet that he could go big and make lots of money with that missed opportunity, and he arguably did.
Other electric car companies weren't competing because it takes absurd amounts of money or people willing to give you that money, which Musk has.
> Do you disagree that the roadster made electric cars cool, and changed public perception on electric vehicles
I don't live in the US and honestly, while I saw some tesla cars rolling around here, their popularity correlated very strong with the rise of other brands. It's almost like consumers aren't opposed to the idea of electric vehicles, it's just that until that point all options where shit and tesla finally put some pressure on that market, so the other companies reacted.
> Musk created the first commercially successful private launch company. Do you agree or disagree?
He did, and I argue that it's just like the first point, it was inevitable and Musk made the right call to invest his money in commercial launch operations because there where tons of money to be made.
This wasn't about if he started those companies, it's about the why. And the why is: There's tons of money to be made.
> This wasn't about if he started those companies, it's about the why. And the why is: There's tons of money to be made.
Yes, the question is indeed why: so why did he just so happen to invest in the only ventures where humanity is facing existential risk, when there are so many other ventures that could also have yielded great returns with less risk? Are you suggesting it's merely coincidence? Or is it simply more plausible that Musk recognized the problems that needed solving and found a way to make lots of money from them?
I disagree that those ventures, besides tesla, are things where humanity faces existential risks. We don't need commercial space travel to counteract asteroids. If there is an asteroid that will become a problem for humanity, the whole world will scramble to address it. Those things don't appear out of thin air.
I have yet to see someone successfully explain how neuralink will protect anyone from "AI".
Electric cars may have some success shifting our oil based man-transports to electric, but the world fails to use the advantages that brings and just burns more coal.
Hyperloop doesn't address any urgent problem, it's a moonshot with potential to earn absurd amounts from public contracts.
Twitter is actively harmful for humanity.
So, besides tesla, for which there was probably the best monetary incentive, none of those companies achieve any higher function you advertise then to have.
> I disagree that those ventures, besides tesla, are things where humanity faces existential risks. We don't need commercial space travel to counteract asteroids. If there is an asteroid that will become a problem for humanity, the whole world will scramble to address it. Those things don't appear out of thin air.
Firstly, you seriously underestimate the asteroid risk. They literally do appear out of the void and we do not have the resources to track them all, and existing efforts are seriously underfunded. Having a commercial entity that regularly performs multiple launches per year is invaluable as it means we can react more swiftly in case of a late detection, or have multiple attempts at deflecting it. NASA previously had very few launches by comparison, and the fact that their launch systems were not reusable without significant refits makes it ridiculous to claim that we would be just as safe without SpaceX.
Secondly, asteroid risk is only one risk to planet Earth. Another is nuclear war, or climate change, or an even more deadly pandemic, or any number of other things. Making humanity interplanetary requires reliable and frequent launch capability.
> I have yet to see someone successfully explain how neuralink will protect anyone from "AI".
If you agree that artificial general intelligence is an existential risk to humanity, then why is it a risk, exactly? presumably because it has computational abilities that we cannot match with biology. Does it not then follow that augmenting biology with those same abilities would somewhat mitigate those risks? Whether that pans out remains to be seen, but AI performance is accelerating so this is going to become a serious problem within 20 years.
> Hyperloop doesn't address any urgent problem, it's a moonshot with potential to earn absurd amounts from public contracts.
The boring company is not one of his ventures to combat existential risk, and so is not something Musk cares about too much. Why do you think he called it the boring company? Because its products are boring by comparison.
> Twitter is actively harmful for humanity.
He literally just bought it, and he has explicitly stated that he thinks Twitter is important for a functioning democracy. How about you give him a chance to actually prove it out.
Because every other car manufacturer had no incentives to invest in that space when their ICE technology was working well for them. Musk made the bet that he could go big and make lots of money with that missed opportunity, and he arguably did.
Other electric car companies weren't competing because it takes absurd amounts of money or people willing to give you that money, which Musk has.
> Do you disagree that the roadster made electric cars cool, and changed public perception on electric vehicles
I don't live in the US and honestly, while I saw some tesla cars rolling around here, their popularity correlated very strong with the rise of other brands. It's almost like consumers aren't opposed to the idea of electric vehicles, it's just that until that point all options where shit and tesla finally put some pressure on that market, so the other companies reacted.
> Musk created the first commercially successful private launch company. Do you agree or disagree?
He did, and I argue that it's just like the first point, it was inevitable and Musk made the right call to invest his money in commercial launch operations because there where tons of money to be made.
This wasn't about if he started those companies, it's about the why. And the why is: There's tons of money to be made.