In addition Tesla is betting big on making better batteries. If they can pull that off then that will end up being their true legacy with the whole car thing becoming a neat historical footnote.
As for SpaceX they'll go down in history as pioneers of commercial space flight and wherever future commercial companies decide to take us, they'll all point back at SpaceX as the company that first showed that it could be done.
I genuinely don't believe we need electric cars though at all. We need less travel and transport and redistribution of facilities and skills. That's a much bigger problem. At the moment, the hub/spoke and centralised model of society has no redundancy and providing ubiquitous cheap transport isn't going to solve that, just make the problem hang on longer by forcing people to remain sitting on their butts on a freeway in a slightly better car rolling into a job they could probably do at home or doesn't need it exist anyway.
Also batteries need to be filled up, recycled, disposed of still. We'll see how that goes shall we...
SpaceX isn't fundamentally changing the model of anything, just packaging the same turd differently. That might be to build capital (customers = capital) but there isn't anything fundamentally different to what they are doing at the 10,000ft level. ESA have had a similar model for a couple of decades.
If he built an electric car for the masses, that would be a big deal for the world.
Of course he's pushing inovation, but he still hasn't done "a great deal for the world".
Maybe he caused some changes in the US, I'm not in a position to see that, but saying he changed the world is quite a stretch
This is exactly Tesla's goal with the Model 3, targeted at $35,000.
I don't think you understand the amount of time and money required to reach mass production scale of affordable vehicles. Tesla was very wise to start with high-margin sports and luxury cars, because it gives them the capital needed to continue re-investing in production capacity and battery technology for more affordable cars in the future.
Tesla is playing a long game, and so far it's working. The popularity of Tesla alone has driven other auto makers to step up their electric car game, which is indeed a "great deal for the world" to help get us all off combustion engines.
Agreed that maybe the luxury car is the right way to start his attempt with a healthy cash flow.
In fact, I'm a big fan of people like him, who have the money and instead of just playing the markets to get more of it, he uses it to build something that can eventually help us.
The main reason for my comment was that some people idolize him like he has cured cancer or erradicated world hunger. These people should to take a step back :)
