And Tesla's Gigfactory is a JV with Panasonic and partially funded by taxpayers.
I'd say the largest value add about Elon Musk is his ability to create a reality distortion field to convince large swathes of people to follow his dream.
I'm actually not being critical of Musk here. Jobs did this and you can see how transformative certain technologies have been as a result.
> And Tesla's Gigfactory is a JV with Panasonic and partially funded by taxpayers.
What you don't seem to understand is that the battery tech's problems currently are not the chemical process or format of the cells, but the volume. The volume of cells that we are able to produce. This is a major bottleneck of electric cars. It is not just some minor problem, it is a great fundamental problem.
This is also why tesla can churn out hundreds of thousands of cars with battery only, and with range of hundreds of miles, and where practically all other manufacturers in this price range are only able to do hybdrids with small batteries. This is not coincidence, this is because tesla has a gigafactory and those others do not and are subject to volume problems in the outside battery production chain.
So no this is not only about vision, Tesla (whether Musk himself or his engineers) identified a real problem, and engineered a real solution - the gigafactory.
> What you don't seem to understand is that the battery tech's problems currently are not the chemical process or format of the cells, but the volume.
> So no this is not only about vision, Tesla (whether Musk himself or his engineers) identified a real problem, and engineered a real solution - the gigafactory
So, Musk identified a problem (manufacturing batteries at scale), found a vendor with a solution (Panasonic) and sold it under the name Tesla.
Every car manufacturer uses parts sourced from other companies - software, parts of engines, whole engines, whole gearboxes, complete modules, raw materials... That's how the industry works...
I assume that you have undertaken some engineering tasks in the past, and so then you have surely experienced that research, proper selection and setting up the sourcing chain for the parts is a big chunk of decisions that go into engineering a production line or even a single project/machine. Research that ultimately affects the choice of mechanical and otherwise building of the machines itself, because it depends on which parts are viable to source.
So not sure why you would focus on that superficial difference here, like what are you trying to prove? I don't understand your point. Elon Musk has a lot of results behind his companies to prove that he can engineer and a good ratio of technical terms and numbers he can spur off the top of his head in an interview to prove that he is not even mainly marketer, his brain is in engineering, he knows the technical stuff deeply down to revision numbers and decimal points and can give you an educated opinion on technical matters. So this shows you that he is indeed an engineer, not sure if that's your point even though?
Renting COTS tunneling machine, digging a plain old and quite unimpressive 1-mile-long tunnel, and calling it something fantastic and extraordinary is a good example of said reality distortion field.
Let's put it in perspective: London is covered by a network of small tunnels dedicated to cart mail around by autonomous vehicles. The tunnels were opened almost a century ago.
Passion and vision are a part of it, but the reality distortion field encompasses everything good, bad, and ugly about musk that he offers to the public, unsavory tweets included.
Can we not use the word 'passion'. In a world where subway job applicants need to have a passion for sandwiches the word has long since passed its sell by date.
I'd say the largest value add about Elon Musk is his ability to create a reality distortion field to convince large swathes of people to follow his dream.
I'm actually not being critical of Musk here. Jobs did this and you can see how transformative certain technologies have been as a result.