Someone has to point out that the emperor has no clothes here. Musk is pulling a fast one, and laughing his way to the bank. He doesn't give a shit about safety. The dude makes $100,000 sports cars with 0-60 speeds that would make Mario Andretti blush. They're toys for rich people. Why would you ever build a performance car that is also self driving? There is only one answer: marketing. This is just another way to make his company look like the future, when in reality his goal is to exploit the fact that the rich are getting richer to make himself richer still. I don't buy it for a second. I think teslas are great for what they are, but there's no point in making a self driving car anything other than a low performance point-to-point machine, given that the entire purpose of a performance vehicle is to enjoy driving as an experience. My guess is he's betting that he can add $10k to the price out of sparking a keeping up with the joneses types phenomenon.
Fair point about this role out of self-driving Tesla sports cars, but why is he attempting to build next-gen cars that are more affordable, and giving his patents away for free? I think he has shown that he does care about people and the planet, not just profit...
Don't get me wrong. I respect Musk, and I think he's a man of vision. But he's also a man who's in the luxury car business, and he's not there out of altruism. Luxury car makers are all keenly aware of global trends in wealth distribution and they're all keenly bent on exploiting it to their own benefit. We can't put him on a pedestal in a way we wouldn't for, say, Audi or Cadillac or Volvo. These are all good companies that make good cars, but they all, including Musk, still worship at the alter of the market. I like Teslas as much as the next guy; I'm just sick of everyone continually fighting in line to hold Elon Musk's nutsack for him. He's a businessman, not a saint. His motives need to be evaluated on business grounds like everyone else.
I can agree with most of that. But I think people conceive of Musk in a saint-like way because he is pushing boundaries that many people in the 60s and 70s thought we would have conquered by now (e.g. Mars, electric vehicles, etc). Of course, Musk alone can't change the way global capitalism functions, he is playing within a pre-defined structure. However, even if I am thought of as naive, I will take Musk at his word when he stated that his motive is to attempt to push the car industry in the direction of clean energy faster than it otherwise would have...
Unfortunately, I think the only thing that will really push the global industry to a cleaner model is a high gas/diesel price. We saw in the first half of '08, when oil topped $144/barrel, that people actually started driving less. It took gas to be averaged above $4/gln in the US to have that effect. Sadly, the government has taken the tack that the best way to achieve better fuel economy is to regulate the average mpg of an automaker's fleet, in what might be one of the dumbest pieces of regulation that currently exists in the industry. If you've ever wondered why Ford stopped making the Ranger, or GM stopped making the S10/Sonoma, which were cheap, reliable pickups that sold like mad, while getting better mileage than the full size trucks, look no further than that rule. The companies no longer can introduce a low mileage car without a high mileage car. It's a perverse incentive that the Obama administration has forced on them, because all the companies are doing is trying to engineer their way to such and such mpg average. Consumers need to drive the change (no pun intended). Again, I like Teslas a lot, but I don't think that they're the endgame in fuel efficiency. The electric car model has too many holes to take more than a set slice of market share. What we need as a society is for the government to stop subsidizing gasoline, and start taxing it to reflect the true price, with all its ugly warts and externalities. I think about $5/gln would be a nice start. Or better yet, a progressive tax where the price of gas was anti-correlated with the efficiency and age of your car. Obviously this is a pipe dream.
How about $6.80 per gallon? Half of that price goes directly to the government. In recent years there's been tax reform to incentivize people to buy small cars: taxes on a small car (less than a tonne) are now around 300-400 euro a year and around 1400 for a big SUV. You pay more the heavier your car is, and the less efficient your fuel type is. You've probably heard of the EU 'green labels', where a green A label is super efficient and a red G label is a Humvee. Here's what a financial crisis and those tax reforms have accomplished:
Thanks for the info! It looks like it's accomplished a lot. However, I would still argue that he labels should, if they already don't, include the age of the vehicle. We always ignore that old cars, even gas guzzlers, are better for the environment than new, dual efficient cars, because their emissions from manufacturing, which are by far the highest concentration of emissions associated with the car, are already amortized over many years.
But isn't this just the problem? I mean, that someone sitting in their home with a good idea and good intent can easily think up of a policy for government action that would take us in a positive direction, and yet it is just a pipe dream because corporations control everything and there is no possible way for us to actually design a system that works for people and the planet? Why are we so defeatist? Why is it easier for us to imagine politics as a permanent nightmare than to imagine real structural change?Obviously this is a pipe dream.
Experience, I guess. I had a debate with my cousin back in '08. I took the side that Obama was going to be a leader of a new direction for the US. He took the side that I was setting myself up for failure, because the President isn't really driving the bus to being with. It looks like I lost that bet. There haven't been many thing in life that I've been more disappointed by than Obama. I thought he was the new FDR. I was wrong. We definitely aren't getting a new FDR in 2016 either, it seems. Real reform has to come from the bottom up, and that's why I was so hopeful of Obama. I thought he was a man who knew when to be a populist and when to make hard choices that might disaffect a lot of people in the short term. Mostly, he's just toed the party line, and sided with money at almost every turn. Unless wages start to rise really damn quick, I think it won't be too many more election cycles before someone who has some real stones will emerge. People can tolerate a lot when they're making more money than last year, but the longer that ceases to be true, the more likely it is that people are going to start to get restless.Why is it easier for us to imagine politics as a permanent nightmare than to imagine real structural change?
My history and contemporary read on American politics is pretty much identical. Unless Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or some other real economic progressive emerges, I don't see structural changes happening in 2016. But at the same time, I don't care how much money the Koch Brothers have, I literally don't understand how ANY republican can win again. The GOP is like whack-a-mole on the national stage. So does that just leave us with Clinton? I don't know - but at a time when technological possibility appears to be actually capable of approaching science fiction levels our sociopolitical possibility appears to be shrinking out of existence.
Republicans have been winning by default. Their supposed majority mandate they now enjoy in Congress came from the votes of something like 16% of registered voters. I looks like a problem of education and apathy. Republicans have a lot of very motivated single issue voters. I vote Democratic despite my better judgement, because I really don't like Republicans. That's it. I don't see any vision, any new ideas coming from the Democrats; they just happen to be a better version of the status quo than the GOP. I'm not sold on Warren, because I just don't know what her other qualifications are (obviously the president has a lot of other things to contend with besides financial reform). Still, I'd probably vote for her were she to run. Anyway, I think the "morality" wing of the GOP is in its death throes. They can only exploit it for so long as people start to wake up to the 21st century way of thinking. As of now, my ideal candidate would be someone who has a three pronged platform that includes tax reform, ending the war on terror, and environmental protection/restoration. To me, those are the three 21st century problems that need 21st century solutions. I think we're still a decade or so off from meeting this challenge.
I may be overly hopeful and underestimating the resilience of contemporary structural stupidity but I think we're going to see a break sooner than this.I think we're still a decade or so off from meeting this challenge.
Is it possible that he's found a far-less-shitty than usual way to make his riches? Maybe he's not a saint, but he's a much better breed of billionaire than a pair of brothers that come to mind
Tesla is developing the Model 3 for 2017, which they hope to sell at $35k before incentives. While that might be a bit too ambitious, it does reveal their strategy of starting in the high-end market and working their way down. Having said that, Tesla already hinted at this earlier. It was only a matter of time before the first highway automation became a feature. It's the simplest and easiest to implement form of automation besides cruise control.
Yes. Pretty much every luxury brand is going back to have this capability very soon. My point, which has apparently been missed by most of commenters here, is that Musk gets media treatment that is not always congruous with what is warranted. Remember the hype over the hyper loop? I was merely pointing out that his technology isn't revolutionary; it's basically standard in that segment at the moment. We should treat him as a player in the market instead of drooling every time he makes an announcement that amounts to not that much. Personality cults are dangerous.
If it eventually gets to where I can take bong hits and get to mount cameras and have telescoping viewing towers and open air cages and ways of connecting AUTO vehicles into rolling Gundam caravans ... ... then I am down with never driving again. Fuck traffic.