101–110 of 215 posts
edit: in this case someone pointed out it's a different nation so I'm surprised
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So, this is admittedly a little tinfoil, but I wouldn't be surprised if Musk is happy for some degree of espionage to happen. If it looked like there was a possibility of China getting this capability first, it would light a fire under the US government to give financial and regulatory assistance to the Starship program.
Musk does seem to think in terms of how much money he can get from the government for his companies. But to be fair, government subsidies are a successful strategy for entrepreneurs who want to make a lot of money. Maybe they shouldn't be? And I think honest people can have that debate. But you can't really argue against the effectiveness of government subsidy as a path to prosperity for the guy getting the money.
Gee, I wonder which nation-state actor was orchestrating this...
This article was just the headline repeated in various forms with some generic filler So strange
This article was just the headline repeated in various forms with some generic filler So strange
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>If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. There is a 100% chance multiple countries/companies will have replicated it in the next decade. If SpaceX never existed, they likely would have achieved it at the same pace regardless. This is the same with EVs. If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same r…
I question your EV take. Tesla proved a business model, the technology and path from niche sports car to the best selling car on earth, and now on to the lowest cost per mile robotaxi. Simply knowing that a solution exists and is financially viable, is enough to motivate the competition.
Through almost all of Tesla's existence, its business model was ironically the sale of gasoline vehicles. Because, of course, Tesla's entire business model relied upon selling green credits to incumbent ICE vehicle makers.
So it didn't really prove much of a business model, effectively being parasitic.
>the technology and path from niche sports car to the best selling car on earth,
The overwhelming bulk of the technology advancements that enable modern EVs -- from advances in batteries to cameras to sensors to embedded controllers and CPUs -- is thanks to the smartphone industry. Modern EVs owe infinitely more to those than they do to anything Tesla did.
>knowing that a solution exists and is financially viable, is enough to motivate the competition.
I think of this much like compact fluorescents. Remember those? We all rushed to transition, and then they were absolutely demolished in every metric -- efficiency, colour, and most importantly the amount of environmental contamination when disposed -- by LED lights. I feel like we're going to feel the same about early EVs.
>now on to the lowest cost per mile robotaxi
Is this a serious comment?
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Just knowing how the thing is built doesn't seem to be enough. Comac still sources its jet engines from Pratt and Whitney for instance, despite many years of trying no local manufacturer has been able to build them to the same spec.
A relative of mine worked at a medical devices company (brain sensors). She told me how small intricacies of the manufacturing process were critical to reach good enough yield or functioning devices, at all. The critical process steps were closely guarded and only a handful employees knew how to do them. The devil is often in the details - and the moat, too.
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>If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. There is a 100% chance multiple countries/companies will have replicated it in the next decade. If SpaceX never existed, they likely would have achieved it at the same pace regardless. This is the same with EVs. If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same r…
If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same rise. would have seen the same rise _eventually_. I know from a friend that worked R&D at a major car company that Tesla really lit a fire under then and 'forced' them to push their own EV experiments from proof of concepts to commercial product much faster than they where originally thinking about doing it.