I would say Elon Musk is the greatest entrepreneur of the past century - even more so than Steve Jobs. He simultaneously created three separate companies, all in extremely complex industries, and combined all of them into one overall strategy.
The precision manufacturing they learned with Space X is incorporated into the Tesla S. Their aim is to make the Model S the most reliable and problem-free vehicle due to this precision.
Now they are incorporating SolarCity technology into the entire system. This is absolutely brilliant!
While I agree that his moves (he) are brilliant, we still have to see widespread impact of his companies apart from PR waves. What I like most about his companies is they share a common vision that, at least to us outsiders, gives a notion of futurism combined with altruism and hardcore business. Rare event.
Ehh no. Paypal obviously had and still has a huge impact on global ecommerce. SpaceX launched a rocket into space and landed a contract with Nasa. And Tesla set up a factory line producing fully electric cars for (rich) consumers. Elon Musk is without a doubt one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever.
Ehh no 2. I wasn't talking about Paypal, but current companies. And you can hardly attribute Paypal to Elon Musk alone, if anyone individualized it would be Peter Thiel.
Anyways, SpaceX is a huge endeavour as is Tesla motors and green energy project on the side. Most remarkable thing is a close loop those companies feed on each others achievements. That is without dispute. However, there is absolutely no widespread impact from all of this yet apart from PR waves. What it could be, and hopefully will be, is that either those group of companies have a widespread reach or (even more hopefully) those PR waves will incite similar movements across those industries it touches.
As for one of the greatest entrepreneur ever - competition is strong and large. While successful and visionary, his efforts are yet to come to full fruition where he might be among the greats. So far, it's all great business and great prospect. It could land among greatest entrepreneurs ever when/if those companies approach widespread impact of the likes of Ford, Dow, Siemens, Bell, etc...
I'd actually argue it'd be better if SpaceX could gobble up more taxpayer money; they are far more likely to use it for research/development/innovation than either costPlus space contractors or other parts of government that would be allocated the cash saved by cheaper SpaceX launches.
Interestingly I was expecting him to have much better presentation/communication skills though. I guess being an successful entrepreneur has nothing to do with that.
I noticed that... he does lack some communication skills but .. in the end, the important thing is what you say and what you do, not how you say it. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there with very good presentation skills and use a lot of buzzwords and get everybody excited but in the end, they don't produce anything.
Facts before words do it for me and this guy won me with his presentation :D
He's actually gotten better over time. But there's another side to this. He has this kind of humble "aww shucks" way about him that I and I suspect many people find endearing.
I've said this before, but I think Mr. Musk is one of a handful of "altruistic capitalists" that, if we are to stay with capitalism as a system, we desperately need more of. His somewhat awkward but "gee I could imagine playing XBox with him" style goes well with that image.
I'm hoping his next big project, HyperLoop, lives up to his ambitions for it. Being able to travel to any city in the continental U.S. in about 30 minutes will permanently change the entire economy and daily life for everyone.
I have some thoughts on this. They don't really have a central theme but I love to think about this stuff:
- Pneumatic / maglev hybrid seems like the optimal choice. With magnetic levitation and no air resistance, extreme speeds are possible.
- Initially I thought that the ideal mass transit system would allow people to carry their cars with them. The idea is that people often have to choose between the benefits of mass transit and the loss of freedom that comes with not having their car once they reach their destination. But recent innovations lead me to think this won't be necessary. I can easily see a time when all cars are autonomous and you can call one up on demand (as others in this thread have pointed out as well). Therefore, it's easy to conceive of a time when you can hop on the HyperLoop, pull out your smartphone, pick the destination, and tell the system you want a (semi-)autonomous vehicle waiting for you when you arrive.
- To make this feasible, we HAVE to get the cost down. It shouldn't take a trillion dollars or more to build this network across the US. The rest of the points will be about that.
- The system should be built, as much as possible, out of a series of standardized components that "snap together". I'm envisioning a "series of tubes" sections that are straightforwardly snapped end to end with standard mounts to hang them or put them on pylons. There would be different lengths, curve radii, etc depending on how you needed to route the track.
- These "tubelets" themselves should be constructible on-site or close to it, similar to how concrete for roads is made on-site. The idea is to minimize shipping costs as much as possible.
- Ultimately, it would be nice if we could employ molecular nano-assembly and have the tubes build themselves, but as a compromise, many parts of the construction could be handled by autonomous or semi-autonomous moving construction rigs that can set themselves up, perform most of the construction work, then tear themselves down and drive off. Again, the more standardized and "Lego like" you can make the components, the easier this would be.
- Each section should have solar panels, a way of storing energy, and a way of giving or receiving energy to nearby sections. Ideally, this would all be connected with a "master bus" that would, when necessary, send power to sections of the loop that haven't had decent sunlight in a while, etc. In general, the idea would be to keep the system as self-sufficient as possible, but have full failover when needed.
- We'd also need to solve the cultural-political problems involved in getting all the landowners to agree to run elevated track over their property.
Thinking about the last two problems, an interesting solution presents itself:
- Why not partner with the power grid organizations and use the existing transmission line right-of-way to run much of the "long haul" routes? They already have the land, they have made wide "lanes" through brush and other unforgiving terrain to run the lines, and there's the power when you need it!
- You might even consider slowly replacing many of the transmission lines with just the tunnels. These tunnels would transmit the power and also help generate it with solar panels, taking only what the need to run the line and giving back everything else. This SHOULD be a massive net positive gain. The only downside I can see would be people that consider two sections of elevated tubes to be a massively worse eye-sore than the existing wires. But surely that would be solvable?
The precision manufacturing they learned with Space X is incorporated into the Tesla S. Their aim is to make the Model S the most reliable and problem-free vehicle due to this precision.
Now they are incorporating SolarCity technology into the entire system. This is absolutely brilliant!