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Elon Musk: If You Don't Make It at Tesla, You Go Work at Apple
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... Except Musk is very much like Jobs. Taking jabs, soft and hard, at the competition. Even slams. Too bad he slammed employees. That's a bit un-sportsman-like. Anyway, should be interesting.
Yes, and also any real indication of Apple buying Tesla would significantly affect Tesla's market value, which would make it even more expensive. Has happened before in e.g. forest industry, where actual deals had to be cancelled because of this.
No, it isn't. SpaceX is funded by NASA and Air Force contracts and to date has only repeated and perhaps refined what other people have been doing for half a century. They may yet go on to bigger things, but so far nothing they have done compares to the fundamental leaps made by the Wrights, who self-funded their principle accomplishments.
I respect what SpaceX has accomplished, but let's not devalue history with unjustifiable hyperbole.
Wow! What a disgustingly pretentious statement. It is none of your business what my mind, or anybody else's mind works on. I will work on what I want to work on and you get no say in the matter.
That being said, Apple has made numerous innovations that have dramatically impacted the world in hugely beneficial ways. (Just as have many others.) The tools they have created and helped to create are now ubiquitous in the very pursuits you cite as worthy as well as many other areas.
Not that they owe you even that justification - what they do is the business of their investors who fund them, their employees who choose to work for them, and their customers who choose to buy their products. Unless you are one of those, you don't get a vote, and if you are one of those, the vote you get is to not buy their stock, not work for them, or not buy their products. Beyond that you have no business telling the rest of them or us what to do.
You seriously need to learn how to mind your own business.
I do agree with you in some regards, however most technological advancements are built on the backs of others.
also,
Nasa and the DOD are customers, Not funders.
The initial investments came from Musk personally to the tune of $100million USD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
"SpaceX, the space exploration startup helmed by ex-PayPal founder Elon Musk, has confirmed that it has raised $1 billion in new funding, in a round including Google and Fidelity, who join existing investors Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn.Jan 20, 2015"
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/20/spacex-raises-1-billion-in-new-funding-from-google-and-fidelity/
Let's also not lift Tesla cars on a pedestal they don't belong. For all the advances in the electric drive train they arguably contain, they're not well-made cars. Technological excellence in one field does not mean you have mastered car manufacturing.
My evidence for this is limited to a single, yet representative Model S. It was exhibited for a couple of weeks in a large shopping mall near my workplace to garner interest. I was appalled by the quality of the bodywork. There was hardly a parallel panel gap to be found anywhere, and the bonnet (or whatever the front lid is supposed to be) was particularly skewed. Looking under the boot lid I saw botched spot welds with material spluttered all around. They didn't even bother to clean that up but painted right over it. I mean, who uses spot welds in a expensive car like this anymore? Even the humble Golf has full-length laser welds everywhere.
Now, one could argue that a lemon can happen anywhere, but when you select a car for exhibition wouldn't you pick a good one? With build quality like that Tesla will have a hard time competing against the established quality car brands once they get their electrical game going.
The fawning Musketeers that have descended on this thread will undoubtedly claim that all the people involved in building that particular car are now working at Apple, but in my experience Apple has a better eye for build quality.
However, Mr Musk is living proof that creating an internet payment service is proof of the right stuff, so Apple should be right as rain following their experience with Apple Pay...
Where "rigged" in TeslaSpeak means having the audacity to point out the elephant in the room that is the restricted range; that 250 miles per charge figure was based on "typical driving conditions" and wouldn't get you very many laps of foot-to-the-floor fun on the racetrack before you had to recharge it - a slow process unless the track happened to have a supercharger - and could pretty much forget about driving 50 miles to a "track day". Top Gear doesn't do "typical driving conditions" but, frankly, if you're paying 6 digits for a "Roadster" then "track day" suitability may well be an issue...
Yes, they "rigged" the test in that they didn't actually run it flat before filming it being pushed off the track, but that was an accurate depiction of what would have happened, unless the magic electron fairy had paid a visit.
This denial about the range issue is what annoys me about Telsa fanbois. By all accounts the cars are brilliant to drive, and the range isn't a deal breaker for everybody, but the reality is that (a) not everybody can charge at home, (b) you're going to have to rent an ICE for long road trips*, unless they're happily provisioned with superchargers on route and mains sockets at each end. Even a cheap ICE compact will manage 400 miles in a day (with a couple of 5 minute petrol stops) and yes, I've done that (unplanned) once in the past, but I do over 200 miles in a day several times a year.
(* of course, the ecological solution would be to go by train and rent an EV at the other end. Good luck).
And most of that investment was made on the prospect of profits expected to be earned largely from said government contracts. Details aside, SpaceX has been created largely on the basis of government funding, which as I said is NOT comparable to the history of the Wrights.
Read what I said - SpaceX deserves respect for the impressive things they have done, but they have done nothing that deserves comparison to the what the Wright brothers did. Very few people have. Trying to force such a comparison is an activity for fanboys.
I'm sorry but Elon is spot on. Apple is an entertainment company now - one which does entertainment very, very well. But a car company? Don't bet on it.
Space X is more like the civil aviation succeeded to the mostly commercial, adventure and war aviation of the early days.
Maybe Musk is more akin to Howard Hugues than anything.
Hugues also had a very big ego.
Hugues was a bridge from the pioneers to the full flight of civil aviation starting in the 50s.
Musk's stuff is built mostly on tech that has already proven its worth space and defense in the previous 50 years.
This is not blue sky devellopment.
More taking the best of what already exists, been developed, been learned over the last 50 years,
integrating it all together into a whole, then alliteratively improving on the various parts until they
mesh tightly forming a cheaper, more efficient whole.
That's a bit what Apple does, except the tech Apple is integrating is usually newer.
A lot of things about going in space are known for a very long time.
I can't understand why Apple wants to make cars when they can already make a mothership UFO.
They should just make UFOs instead and actually revolutionize transportation.
Benefit how? by using toxic batteries that are difficult to recycle? or by making a 3 ton cars that needs 20x the energy to move at 500bhp?
Where do you think this energy comes from?
So what? He's trying to change an industry which is hell bent on not changing for the past 100 years. Those government subsidies come out of my pocket as taxes and I'm all for it, probably a lot of them from the taxes I pay to buy gas, register and title my car, pay tolls, etc. He is single handedly changing the industry, now all the other car makers are rushing to announce their own EV's, that would never have happened without him.
Oh and the alternative is better? EV's may have a long way to go, but the opportunity should be there for the technology to mature. The alternative has had 100 years to improve, and how has that gone?
Cool, I'm glad that many are betting on him reaching Mars before NASA. Now if one of those twelve year olds reach Mars before Musk or NASA that would be a lot of pie on their faces. I wonder which twelve year old we should bet on.
You are exactly correct sir. Teslas are cool, but the range/price ratio is not good enough to justify being anything other than toys for rich boys.
And for all you eco-heads, the dirty secret of electric cars is that with the present electrical generation industry, electric cars are of no net benefit in terms of reducing pollution. They serve only to shift the point of emissions to places a little more remote from yourself so that it is easier for you to ignore. In fact, if you take into account the net industrial cost of producing the vehicle along with producing the electricity over the life of the vehicle, your miles driven are likely to produce less total pollution if you keep driving your current fossil burner than if you replace it with a shiny new Tesla. Not that all cars don't eventually get replaced, but if you try to accelerate the natural vehicle replacement cycles with the goal of introducing electric technology faster, it will be self defeating in terms of ecological goals.
And for all you eco-heads, the dirty secret of electric cars is that with the present electrical generation industry, electric cars are of no net benefit in terms of reducing pollution. They serve only to shift the point of emissions to places a little more remote from yourself so that it is easier for you to ignore. In fact, if you take into account the net industrial cost of producing the vehicle along with producing the electricity over the life of the vehicle, your miles driven are likely to produce less total pollution if you keep driving your current fossil burner than if you replace it with a shiny new Tesla. Not that all cars don't eventually get replaced, but if you try to accelerate the natural vehicle replacement cycles with the goal of introducing electric technology faster, it will be self defeating in terms of ecological goals.
What I said - "I do agree with you in some regards, however most technological advancements are built on the backs of others."
In this case the Wright brothers and others were the backs I spoke of.
I guess the US government funds Apple too based on your arguments, which is fine. Private industry lands big contracts from time to time. This is nothing new.
http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-lands-159m-government-contract-for-iphone-ipad/
I am not a fanboy or any tech company. No company is infallible. I am a fanboy of innovation as a whole..
Lets be clear, Musks comments were absolutely inflammatory.He was being a bit of a troll. Are his statements true? I am not close enough to the situation to be able to say yes or no.
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that is strange because both of you (and the ones upvoting) dont seem to know what ballmer actually said. he criticised the iphone mostly for its price which btw nonsense. how often is there a majo price drop and change in a product lineup for a device only a few months old?
Is it true? Did Apple "hire away" engineers from Tesla or were those engineers fired and Apple simply scooped them up?
I get that any criticism of Apple by another company's CEO will be considered "talking ****" by many here. If Apple really did hire engineers that Tesla had fired shouldn't the record be set straight? If Apple really did hire away engineers from Tesla that should be made clear too.
This "talking smack about Apple is a sign of fear" thing is already old.