Are you gonna get an electric car anytime soon? (Or do you already have one?)

[Marcel Birgelen]

The solution for the Las Vegas Loop is simple: Put in a bunch of light rail and put a bunch of trams on it. Autonomous people-mover and tram systems have been around for decades. Of course, then it would just 've been an ordinary metro system. But hey, those thingws have been proven to work for over 100 years now.

While you can't buy a humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics yet, their "Spot" bot is pretty awesome. I've recently seen it in action, the system works. While it's not an entirely autonomous system, the way it stabilizes itself on rough terrain is pretty spectacular.

The latest V2.0 update offers pretty amazing autonomy options, like patrol and some automated tasks. It will also reliably avoid obstacles, even difficult to predict ones that potentially move, like humans. To me, this technology seems to be much more advanced than any car auto-pilot system currently on the market...

[Randy Stankey]

Tesla has a bot that can shuffle its feet and make circles in an office while Boston Dynamics have robots that can do back flips on a parkour layout.

My point is not about what Elon does or says but the way he says and does. He claims that he will make robots in ten years when other companies already have product on the market, that you can buy TODAY which are decades ahead of anything that Elon can even fantasize about.

Take a look at Hyperloop. It was a research project, plain and simple. I'd have no problem with it if Elon said what it was. I'd have no problem if he even said, "This is my vision of the future..." I do have a problem when somebody says that they'll have commercial operations in 2020...2022...2029... and then the project folds and sells off its remaining assets leaving all those people looking for a job.

What about the Vegas Loop? Again, the promise was that it would be the future of transportation but the thing isn't even operational unless the Las Vegas Convention Center has an event. It's little more than a theme park ride...and a boring one, at that. (Get it? Boring? )

Oh, yeah! You can go to Disneyland and ride electric cars through a tunnel. They drive themselves, too. Tesla's cars have to be driven by a human driver. They promise to have self-driving cars in the future
Doesn't Tesla already have self-driving cars? You'd think that driving through a tunnel would be easy for them. It's a pre-planned route. You'd think that, by the way Elon talks, all they need to do is paint some lines on the ground for the cars to follow. Maybe some marker beacons/retro-reflectors on the walls and they'd be good to go.

Again, Elon promises in ten years what others are already doing better.

I understand creativity. I understand optimism. I understand looking to the future of things and wanting to improve the world but the guy's tendency to bluster makes him seem more like a modern day P.T. Barnum instead of a futuristic entrepreneur.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I finally got time to watch the video. While it certainly makes some valid points, the presenter also uses spin to make others. For instance, the failed engines on the first Starship test flight are presented as if the engines malfunctioned due to a design issue. The presenter has to know that the failures were due to the concrete that was under the rocket at the launch pad being blown apart and chunks of debris hitting several of the engines. Once they put a proper damping system on the launch pad, that problem ceased to exist.

The main problem isn't actually the point this Thunderf00t guy raises himself, but the issue this "Smarter Every Day" guy is raising: NASA doesn't even know how many launches of Starship they need to actually get ONE SINGLE mission to the moon, but it's probably about 28!! They only needed a SINGLE Saturn V rocket to get to the moon back in the late 1960s and with the current Starship design they would require 28, just to get all the fuel into orbit, to send a single lander to the moon and back. Don't you think there is a bit of a scalability problem there? Even if it would be technically achievable, are we really going to spend such a massive amount of resources just to prove what we've proven before with far simpler technology?

I'm not a rocket scientist so I have no educated opinion on whether the Starship architecture will or won't work. I can not be convinced that it won't based on the presentation of a youtube channel which appears to have a mission of criticize Elon Musk and tear him down.

My father is a former aerospace engineer that worked for the likes of Airbus, Boeing, DLR, ESA and NASA. He's been retired for quite a few years now and he may not be as bright as he once was, but he doesn't understand Atermis, stuff simply doesn't add up. Quote: While I'm happy to have witnessed when they sent the first people to the moon, I won't be around the next time they'll make it back.

The channel has way too much bias for me to give a lot of credence to. I mean there is a video on there titled "Elon Musk: 3 Years to Bankruptcy" with "Tesla Dying" pasted over the thumbnail. For a company that had over $13 billion in profit last year, it is preposterous to imply that it is "dying" or that somehow Elon Musk will end up bankrupt in 3 years. Twitter or X or whatever he is calling it these days might end up bankrupt in 3 years but Musk doesn't really have all that much skin in the game since it the buyout was so leveraged.

Yeah, the guy is a pretentious, attention-seeking ass-hat, he borrows some qualities from Elon Musk himself. I'm not a particular fan and his channel has become somewhat of an Elon Musk bashing channel. I liked some of his tear-downs of some wacky Kickstarter scams though and to give him credit were credit is due: His predictions have a tendency to become true. About 10 years ago, he pretty much predicted the fate of Hyperloop to the date... And yeah, his track-record at debunking those kickstarter scams has been pretty much flawless...

Like him or hate him, Musk's MO is, and always has been, to come up with unrealistic deadlines for things as a way to achieve the objectives as soon as possible. If I'm doing something and set a "realistic" goal for completion, it will likely be set at a point further out in the calendar than I could have completed it by. If I set an unrealistic goal, I'm not going to be finished by then but I'll likely be finished before the "realistic" date.

We probably learn more from failure than from succes. Most startups with some revolutionary idea eventually end nowhere. The problem is, Musk has been actively gaslighting, faking and misleading investors and potential buyers, not just overstating facts a bit here and there. You remember that Solar Roof demonstration on the set of Desperate Housewives in 2016? That turned out to be completely fake. None of the products demonstrated that day you can buy today, none of those products ever existed. Meanwhile, the competition caught up and you can buy actually solar roof shingles nowadays. That's exactly what Tesla does, their solar roof is made by Hanwah and based on their Q Cells product.

I don't really get why Musk gets criticized for over promising more than most in his position. Should I make a youtube channel dedicated to wondering why my Amazon packages aren't delivered by drone or why I can't get on a Virgin Galactic flight yet?

Because you can do this a few times, people will understand that you may have been too eager, but if you keep on doing this as a default, your credibility will simply reduce to zilch. That's why "nobody" believes your average politician anymore, yet, when Apple announces the next "big" thing, people listen.

But if you continue announcing vaporware after vaporware and if you then continue to seek the spotlight, people may actually start to dislike you, to such extend that your own image as a douchebag starts to be associated with the name of the companies you run. To me, it looks Musk managed to get to that stage and it's starting to hurt the companies he's associated with.

By the way: Maybe you should start that channel, if you look at the channel of our friend Thunderf00t, I'm pretty sure he's making quite a living from his YouTube channel.

[Lyle Romer]

Lack of a damping system isn't a design issue? It's a design issue in the launch pad, not the rocket but a design issue, it is. Since a rocket can't take off without a launch pad, I'd consider them as two parts of the same puzzle.

The water cooled steel plate was being designed already. Somebody miscalculated and thought the pad could handle the thrust for one launch.

Elon has a tendency to test rockets by simply lighting the fuse then sticking his fingers in his ears and waiting for a big bang. Sure, there's always an element of risk in testing new designs but he's too public about it. He makes it too easy for people to misinterpret him.

The iterative design was in the plans for Starship but the intention isn't to launch and see if it blows up or not. The third test flight went relatively well. The first stage did what it was supposed to do until the very end of the "landing" sequence (it was supposed to splash down into the ocean). The second stage got to orbital velocity and then obviously had some kind of control issue on reentry. It was not planned to actually put the second stage into orbit. The early failures of Falcon 1 were not planned that way. They were unexpected issues that were then root caused and fixed with design and profile changes.

Yes you are more likely to have a successful first flight if you exhaustively test every system for years before you try a launch but it will take longer to reach your operational rocket that way. I think it is wrong to characterize the SpaceX development method as if some lunatic just throws a bunch of stuff together to see if it blows up like a kid playing with model rockets.

A dancing man in a Spandex suit, pretending to be a robot?

https://youtu.be/TsNc4nEX3c4?si=qYqxNM1MLZMuLZ01

That was a presentation at a launch event for a project. The actual robot isn't dancing around like that but it is a real thing and can currently do a bunch of things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCDqaXT7CVM&t=46s

He just comes up with half-baked ideas then publicizes them as if they are real when the truth is that they're mostly just a lot of hot air.

Like Musk? Hate him? I don't really like OR hate him. I just think he's a big goof ball with more money than common sense.

He's a showman and a salesman. Obviously some of his ideas have yet to come to fruition and possibly never will but his companies have accomplished a lot under his leadership. Even some of the things that Marcel listed as vaporware actually exist. I can buy a solar roof if I want to.

[Randy Stankey]

The presenter has to know that the failures were due to the concrete that was under the rocket at the launch pad being blown apart and chunks of debris hitting several of the engines. Once they put a proper damping system on the launch pad, that problem ceased to exist.

Lack of a damping system isn't a design issue? It's a design issue in the launch pad, not the rocket but a design issue, it is. Since a rocket can't take off without a launch pad, I'd consider them as two parts of the same puzzle.

In the part of the video where he is sarcastically showing Musk speaking gleefully about the video of the uncontrolled second stage, from my recollection of watching that presentation, this is being taken out of context. From what I remember, Musk was talking about Starlink being impressive and allowing the HD video to be transmitted in real time, not that it was awesome that something went wrong with the re-entry sequence.

Elon has a tendency to test rockets by simply lighting the fuse then sticking his fingers in his ears and waiting for a big bang. Sure, there's always an element of risk in testing new designs but he's too public about it. He makes it too easy for people to misinterpret him.

I don't really get why Musk gets criticized for over promising more than most in his position.

A dancing man in a Spandex suit, pretending to be a robot?

https://youtu.be/TsNc4nEX3c4?si=qYqxNM1MLZMuLZ01

He just comes up with half-baked ideas then publicizes them as if they are real when the truth is that they're mostly just a lot of hot air.

Like Musk? Hate him? I don't really like OR hate him. I just think he's a big goof ball with more money than common sense.

[Lyle Romer]

I finally got time to watch the video. While it certainly makes some valid points, the presenter also uses spin to make others. For instance, the failed engines on the first Starship test flight are presented as if the engines malfunctioned due to a design issue. The presenter has to know that the failures were due to the concrete that was under the rocket at the launch pad being blown apart and chunks of debris hitting several of the engines. Once they put a proper damping system on the launch pad, that problem ceased to exist.

In the part of the video where he is sarcastically showing Musk speaking gleefully about the video of the uncontrolled second stage, from my recollection of watching that presentation, this is being taken out of context. From what I remember, Musk was talking about Starlink being impressive and allowing the HD video to be transmitted in real time, not that it was awesome that something went wrong with the re-entry sequence.

When he talks about the comparison of cost per launch cost of Starship with Falcon 9, the presenter goes out of his way to say 1/30th the cost of a REUSABLE Falcon 9. However, with Falcon 9, only the first stage booster is reusable so you are comparing apples to a fruit salad. Then he talks about how many launches it would take to average the development cost down to that level. Musk's statement doesn't say that the cost he is projecting includes amortization of development cost. You can look at the cost per trip both ways but the presenter picks the way to analyze it in order to make Musk's prediction look outlandish.

Near the end he states that SpaceX will be bankrupt long before the human landing system is finished but provides nothing to back up that claim.

I'm not a rocket scientist so I have no educated opinion on whether the Starship architecture will or won't work. I can not be convinced that it won't based on the presentation of a youtube channel which appears to have a mission of criticize Elon Musk and tear him down. The channel has way too much bias for me to give a lot of credence to. I mean there is a video on there titled "Elon Musk: 3 Years to Bankruptcy" with "Tesla Dying" pasted over the thumbnail. For a company that had over $13 billion in profit last year, it is preposterous to imply that it is "dying" or that somehow Elon Musk will end up bankrupt in 3 years. Twitter or X or whatever he is calling it these days might end up bankrupt in 3 years but Musk doesn't really have all that much skin in the game since it the buyout was so leveraged.

Like him or hate him, Musk's MO is, and always has been, to come up with unrealistic deadlines for things as a way to achieve the objectives as soon as possible. If I'm doing something and set a "realistic" goal for completion, it will likely be set at a point further out in the calendar than I could have completed it by. If I set an unrealistic goal, I'm not going to be finished by then but I'll likely be finished before the "realistic" date.

I don't really get why Musk gets criticized for over promising more than most in his position. Should I make a youtube channel dedicated to wondering why my Amazon packages aren't delivered by drone or why I can't get on a Virgin Galactic flight yet?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Regarding Starlink: Iridium failed to make a sub-100 satellite LEO constellation profitable for cellphone service, this back in a world where cell-phone reception was far spottier than it is today. The only reason Iridium survives is because the U.S. Department of Defense pays them hundreds of millions of dollars annually for communication services. At one time, the constellation was even operated by that same department, because it was considered critical infrastructure. Globalstar, another LEO satellite operator, also never managed to become a successful company. Teledesic, a LEO constellation based on ±250 satellites and focussed on delivering high-speed internet much like Starlink, backed by the likes of Bill Gates, never made it to orbit.

Meanwhile, StarLink now operates roughly 6k satellites, many of them still generation 1 satellites that can only operate in U-bend mode and don't have inter-satellite links. Eventually, they claim to need 42k (!!!) satellites to complete the service around the globe. A satellite constellation can never deliver the density needed for high-speed bi-directional Internet access in highly urbanized areas, so the primary markets are those less densely populated areas, where far less people live. I simply don't see how you can afford to maintain such a constellation, with normal broadband consumer-level pricing. Musks only hope seems to be to get some big military contracts from some major governments to keep this thing afloat. Keep in mind that those satellites need to be replaced every 5-or-so years...

It's obvious why Musk needs Starship: It has a giant payload capacity on paper, but it doesn't extend well beyond LEO, which makes it worthless for Athemis (see the video), but great to put the lower earth orbit full of future space debris... The irony is that he managed to get NASA to pay for it, further proving that NASA is nowadays also ran by complete morons, only caring about their own political agenda.

As for Musk v.s. Jobs: I'm an Apple user for over 30 years now, but by no means an Apple fanboy, I don't really appreciate their walled garden, for example. But I use Apple, Windows, Linux, Android, whatever fits the bill. I also have been a Tesla customer, in the past. I try not to become a member of a fanboy cult, although I would never claim to be completely unbiased, nobody really is.

But to the defense of Apple: most of the stuff they've announced over the past two decades or so, has materialized in pretty much the way they've announced it. Even though I'm critical about the usability of stuff like the Apple Vision for example, it turned out pretty much like the demonstrations they gave more than a year ago. Especially the things that seemed hard to get right, like the "virtual air keyboard" actually work pretty well. It also was released within the announced time-frame. In this regard, Apple has gathered a pretty solid track-record over the years of delivering what was promised. Have there been issues? Certainly. And they also certainly deserve the criticism they got for those.

Back to Musk: Most if not all of Musks promises over the last decade or so, of which there have been plenty, have already failed (e.g. Hyperloop, SolarCity, Solar Roofs), are still vaporware (FSD, RoboTaxi, Tesla Semi, Roadster 2, Spaceship/BFR, Spaceship 2, Optimus), will never come to fruition (Replaceable battery packs, Inter-City Rocket Travel, Mars colonization), have massively under-delivered (Vegas Loop, Cybertruck) or were delivered years and years behind schedule (fill in any Musk related project you like). And most of the achievements that have come to fruition, have cost the taxpayers around the globe, but especially in the U.S. billions of dollars in subsidies.

If you turn back the clock 10 years, I would still give him the benefit of the doubt, but after more than 10 years of big talk and mostly failures, it's clear to me now that the emperor really has no clothes. I guess the positive aspect of all this is that we can expect the movie of how it all went up into a piling heap of flames in a few years.

In this case, I'd not compare Musk to e.g. your average politician, who usually makes vague claims nobody really can account for, so nobody can later claim they've been lying.. I'd rather compare him to the master of conmanship himself: Donald J. Trump. What they both have in common is that as soon as they open their mouth, what comes out is just gaslighting and make-belief. Even if it's easily provable to be lightyears away from reality, nobody really seems to care. They're both exceptional showmen and people just want to believe... The trouble starts once you let those kind people actually run things and hordes of cultish followers keep on believing in it, despite all the proof to the contrary... The churches of yesteryear now have been replaced by the likes of the Church of Apple and the Church of Musk... Really, I should've listened to L. Ron Hubbard: If you want to get rich, you start a religion.

Edit: Some gender-neutralization, just in case the karma-police is watching.

[Lyle Romer]

Sometimes, "just because it's cool", should be enough motivation to do something. But I agree that I don't really see much promise in sending people to Mars. If we eventually want to leave this planet, then it may be worthwhile at starting to explore possibilities to do so. But I'd start by building a permanent outpost on the moon first. Although we seem to have sufficient struggles to get back to the moon, we at least have proven before that we know how to get people up there... Also, if something goes wrong, it's good to know that we could reach that place within weeks or maybe even days and not only in a few years.



Let us be very clear here that he has promised stuff like "cars driving itself from coast to coast" and stuff like the fully autonomous RoboTaxi feature as an "over-the-air-upgrade" in very public events, like public interviews on televisions and specially organized Tesla events.

And I do see a clear connection between Holmes and Musk here. They both over-promised and under-delivered, to a criminal level:

Theranos released a blood-test they knew was flawed, as a result of that, people got hurt, some people may even have died.
Tesla released many FSD releases they knew were flawed, they publicly over-promised the capabilities, it's almost certain, people died as a result of this.

As for the SEC taking action: Remember how long it took before the SEC took action regarding to Theranos or what about Madoff? Also, there are now a sufficient number of entities so deeply invested into Tesla, it's become a Ponzi scheme, almost too big to fail. The stock has already halved from its peak, but if it would crash to zilch, it would send off quite a shockwave. That's the main reason Tesla isn't likely to see the same fate as Nikola.

But things are getting ugly slowly but steadily... The amount of lawsuits, among them a number of class action suits are starting to pile up.




Musk has promised before he'd put a human on Mars before 2021 back in 2011. In 2016, he claimed we'll have the first human on Mars before 2025. We have "tapes" and they're no deep-fakes. This infamous guy deconstructs the whole concept behind Starship pretty efficiently. Is that guy a self-righteous, arrogant prick? Yes! But is he right? Let me say, it's hard to prove him wrong, despite being the arrogant prick he is...

Look, I could easily ignore Musk's otherwise idiotic antics if what he was doing was truly groundbreaking, but his actual business track record almost makes Donald Trump's business record look good. While he may have proven that mass-producing EVs based on lithium batteries is technically possible, the feasibility of those vehicles replacing current ICE models still hasn't been proven. Until then, those vehicles remain expensive toys for the happy few that can afford them.

While some may look in awe what he achieved with SpaceX, in reality, most if not all of what was achieved, had been achieved by NASA and other space agencies years before. Most of the technology was given to them and it isn't as if he did it cheaper than any of them. SpaceX has already burned $2 billion of public funds on Starship alone. And while Starlink may sound like a cool idea, nobody has found a way to make it profitable yet and the only way to keep it running is via public money backdoors, as in the U.S. military...

I'll watch that video when I have time. In my opinion, what separates Musk from Holmes is that she was lying and telling investors and customers that the mini lab thing was performing tests successfully and it was demonstrably NOT able to do what she said it was doing. In Musk's case, he is "predicting" what WILL be able to be done and implying that the currently released software is more groundbreaking and capable than it is with boisterous statements.

What Musk did with Tesla is similar to what Steve Jobs did with Apple. They both created a product that lots of other companies could have created but marketed it in a way that it build a cult following. I'm not a member of said cult (for either Apple or Tesla) and wouldn't buy an EV anytime soon, no matter who manufactures it.

Edit: As for Starlink, it's basically a lower orbit Iridium on steroids. Iridium couldn't make money without government contracts and I fail to see how Starlink can either. At least in the US, many rural areas are getting access to fiber internet service. I just don't see how there are enough potential customers to support a constellation of thousands of satellites. It is very cool from an engineering perspective.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Sometimes, "just because it's cool", should be enough motivation to do something. But I agree that I don't really see much promise in sending people to Mars. If we eventually want to leave this planet, then it may be worthwhile at starting to explore possibilities to do so. But I'd start by building a permanent outpost on the moon first. Although we seem to have sufficient struggles to get back to the moon, we at least have proven before that we know how to get people up there... Also, if something goes wrong, it's good to know that we could reach that place within weeks or maybe even days and not only in a few years.

I'm sure investors have bought Tesla due to Musk's hype but I guess that legally his "promises" are actually "plans" otherwise the SEC would charge him with violations of all kinds of regulations.

Let us be very clear here that he has promised stuff like "cars driving itself from coast to coast" and stuff like the fully autonomous RoboTaxi feature as an "over-the-air-upgrade" in very public events, like public interviews on televisions and specially organized Tesla events.

And I do see a clear connection between Holmes and Musk here. They both over-promised and under-delivered, to a criminal level:

Theranos released a blood-test they knew was flawed, as a result of that, people got hurt, some people may even have died.
Tesla released many FSD releases they knew were flawed, they publicly over-promised the capabilities, it's almost certain, people died as a result of this.

As for the SEC taking action: Remember how long it took before the SEC took action regarding to Theranos or what about Madoff? Also, there are now a sufficient number of entities so deeply invested into Tesla, it's become a Ponzi scheme, almost too big to fail. The stock has already halved from its peak, but if it would crash to zilch, it would send off quite a shockwave. That's the main reason Tesla isn't likely to see the same fate as Nikola.

But things are getting ugly slowly but steadily... The amount of lawsuits, among them a number of class action suits are starting to pile up.

I also don't believe his time frame to get humans to Mars was ever that short. Recently he said he thinks it can happen within 20 years.

Musk has promised before he'd put a human on Mars before 2021 back in 2011. In 2016, he claimed we'll have the first human on Mars before 2025. We have "tapes" and they're no deep-fakes. This infamous guy deconstructs the whole concept behind Starship pretty efficiently. Is that guy a self-righteous, arrogant prick? Yes! But is he right? Let me say, it's hard to prove him wrong, despite being the arrogant prick he is...

Look, I could easily ignore Musk's otherwise idiotic antics if what he was doing was truly groundbreaking, but his actual business track record almost makes Donald Trump's business record look good. While he may have proven that mass-producing EVs based on lithium batteries is technically possible, the feasibility of those vehicles replacing current ICE models still hasn't been proven. Until then, those vehicles remain expensive toys for the happy few that can afford them.

While some may look in awe what he achieved with SpaceX, in reality, most if not all of what was achieved, had been achieved by NASA and other space agencies years before. Most of the technology was given to them and it isn't as if he did it cheaper than any of them. SpaceX has already burned $2 billion of public funds on Starship alone. And while Starlink may sound like a cool idea, nobody has found a way to make it profitable yet and the only way to keep it running is via public money backdoors, as in the U.S. military...

[Mike Blakesley]

My theory is, whenever we get humans to Mars, their first ambition will be to get the hell back home. I mean, why would anyone want to spend more than a couple hours there? It's worse than the moon -- from there you at least have some scenery to look at up in the sky, but Mars looks like nothing but orange gravel and a lot of black space.

[Lyle Romer]

Well, the things really are in the details, aren't they? How many people haven't bought a Tesla with the promise of "Full Self Driving"? Or what about the RoboTaxi? Heck, his latest car is even rolled out without any auto-pilot-like function, even if you paid for it. How many haven't bought into Tesla stock, because of promise A or B from Musk? And regarding SpaceX: According to Musk, we should already have humans walking around on Mars. Meanwhile, his latest spaceship is barely capable of getting into earth's orbit.

Getting back to this Tesla "FSD" / Autopilot thing: The thing is legally blind. I had MULTIPLE near-death experiences with it myself, once as driver and twice as passenger. The fact that this kind of system is allowed to be put into production vehicles alone, I consider a crime.

I don't mind trying to push the envelope, quite the contrary. I can understand that some plans may fail. The thing is, most if not all the things Musk has started that did fail, did fail due to obvious reasons: Science and logic. You're not going to beat those, by "thinking outside the box" or by "trying to be different".

I agree that the Full Self Driving, Film-Tech Forums should not be named that in its current form (even if it did what it said perfectly). "Full self driving" implies that the vehicle, with nobody inside of it, can move itself from point A to point B. I am also highly skeptical that autonomous driving using only cameras feeding AI can work. The Autopilot system is essentially adaptive cruise control, active lane keep assist and active collision braking combined with a fancy name that makes it sound more capable than it is. I'm sure investors have bought Tesla due to Musk's hype but I guess that legally his "promises" are actually "plans" otherwise the SEC would charge him with violations of all kinds of regulations.

While many of his ideas that did fail may have failed for obvious reasons, some of the things he has been successful with were the result of thinking outside the box even if others thought failure was obvious. The willingness to take financial risks is what makes him able to push technology as far as it can go. The RoboTaxi may still come to fruition so I won't count that as a broken promise yet.

I don't think the criticism of the Starship rocket is fair given that it was planned to have an iterative design. The first test flight failed because they rushed it and didn't wait for a launch pad that wouldn't be severely damaged by the thrust so it kicked up debris and broke several engines. The third test got into orbit just fine, it was reentering that was the issue. Since this is the first rocket design in history that attempts to reenter the entire second stage rocket (including fuel tank) and trying to minimize heat shielding, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it will require some tweaking. The 2nd stage of Starship weighs 21,000 kg more than the Space Shuttle Orbiter so it's the most mass that anybody has attempted to return to earth. I also don't believe his time frame to get humans to Mars was ever that short. Recently he said he thinks it can happen within 20 years.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Except Theranos was pretending things worked that didn't and what they pretended was working WAS the core technology of the company. It would be like SpaceX pretending they were putting payload into orbit when it was all really crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

Well, the things really are in the details, aren't they? How many people haven't bought a Tesla with the promise of "Full Self Driving"? Or what about the RoboTaxi? Heck, his latest car is even rolled out without any auto-pilot-like function, even if you paid for it. How many haven't bought into Tesla stock, because of promise A or B from Musk? And regarding SpaceX: According to Musk, we should already have humans walking around on Mars. Meanwhile, his latest spaceship is barely capable of getting into earth's orbit.

Getting back to this Tesla "FSD" / Autopilot thing: The thing is legally blind. I had MULTIPLE near-death experiences with it myself, once as driver and twice as passenger. The fact that this kind of system is allowed to be put into production vehicles alone, I consider a crime.

I don't mind trying to push the envelope, quite the contrary. I can understand that some plans may fail. The thing is, most if not all the things Musk has started that did fail, did fail due to obvious reasons: Science and logic. You're not going to beat those, by "thinking outside the box" or by "trying to be different".

[Mike Blakesley]

a field-swappable battery solution will not work in practice. The battery is the very core of an electric vehicle. Swapping the battery in an EV is more like swapping the engine in an ICE.

Well, they screwed up by not starting with the idea of making the battery easily changeable. Instead they followed the cell-phone model, which is: Just make it work, the hell with the long-range viability, as long as it works really well when it's brand new.

All they did was come up with a new way to power cars, without thinking of the overall long-term practicality of the solution.

They should have followed the compact disk model. With the CD, inventors took all the problems of vinyl records -- short playing time, two-sides, non-durability, limited dynamic range, and scratchy sound -- and techology'd them all out. If they'd been content with just the idea getting the music off of a disk and nothing else, we would have wound up with a 12-inch CD that had to be flipped over after 20 minutes.

The difference of course is, with CDs the government was not involved.

[Lyle Romer]

“The sky’s the limit – if you can dream it, you can do it.”
-- Elizabeth Holmes
Founder Theranos Inc.

Except Theranos was pretending things worked that didn't and what they pretended was working WAS the core technology of the company. It would be like SpaceX pretending they were putting payload into orbit when it was all really crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I think Elon is the embodiment of the TS Elliot quote that, "only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." A lot of the ideas he pushes end up in the "going too far" category which is why they never end up coming to fruition.

“The sky’s the limit – if you can dream it, you can do it.”
-- Elizabeth Holmes
Founder Theranos Inc.