I think you found my point.
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And this time it didn’t even require several hours with a machete to clear out the dense undergrowth.
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Not really. The big automakers have known for decades that the writing was on the wall for combustion engines and have been experimenting with alternative fuel technologies for a long time. The problem was never that nobody wanted electric cars, the problem was that battery chemistry wasn’t at a point where it was practical.
These same improvements to lithium battery chemistry that can make an iPhone run for 24 hours with a battery that’s the size of a few credit cards stacked together that only weighs a couple ounces can allow a 2 ton car to drive for 250 miles at highway speeds (obviously at a much bigger scale).
So, Tesla didn’t create a market segment out of thin air through magic. Tesla’s rise just so happened to coincide neatly with huge gains in the efficiency of lithium battery chemistry along with hugely lowered costs. It’s not like the other automakers were caught with their pants down. The idea that Tesla created a market segment out of thin air is just the RDF talking.
What Tesla did do is exploit their position to try to build a charger monopoly and lock out the competitors, which is a pretty asshole and anti-environmental thing to do.
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Mary Barra…first mass market ev …affordable…long range…car of the year for doing so years before Musk.
But doesn’t have a penis. So didn’t do it.
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The thing with Musk is that he makes himself visible. There are hundreds of worse rich people, but they keep a low profile while raking in the dough. Lots of people hate Uber, and for good reason, but how many can even name the people behind it? Then there are all the company looters who buy working companies and suck them dry. You have fossile fuels and so on.
At least Musk helps doing something worthwhile.
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Travis Kalanick is a well-known jackass that fosters a very toxic environment. Silicon Valley has a lot of toxic hype men. You do find toxic billionaires all over the place. I’m sure there are some that don’t crave attention, but I think most, like a lot of politicians, are just too old and out of touch to wield social media and tech seems to have an outsized voice in the media.
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40 posts were split to a new topic: Libertarian Screed Derail
You do realize that neither Tesla nor SpaceX would even exist if not for huge infusions of taxpayer money, right?
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