Tesla Model 3 Sets New EV Cannonball Run Record (opens in new tab)

He makes crazy "moonshots", he has a vision and doesn't tone it down nearly as much as others do, and he's not afraid to be "wrong".

The SpaceX community has a running joke about "elon time" being set to mars time, because his predictions and goals are almost always late (and are often under delivering), but I honestly respect that. Him and his companies aren't taking the "easy way out" of making easily achievable goals and then making them again and again. They are shooting for unlikely and in some cases almost impossible goals, and getting 70-90% of the way there, and they aren't exactly ashamed of it. IIRC there was a reddit thread a while back that was "bashing" Elon and Tesla and SpaceX about only hitting something like 70% of the goals they set, but I read it differently. They set out to revolutionize 3 different industries (cars, space, and now "boring" and public transport), and even if they can only get to "70% revolutionized", it's still a massive win in my opinion!

He's not perfect, I hear lots of bad things from many employees about the work environment, but overall I really respect the man and the companies he has created, and I think he has and will continue to do a lot for humanity.

I really wish there is stronger support for him against these sorts of people. How can he be all talk when we see his rockets going up and coming back down.

I mean sentiments like that. It's just right in the feels ya know? It's a reason to go even read the news in the morning.

Musk arguably does significantly more talking than doing, but his goals are lofty enough that even failing to make it halfway still means significant advancement.

This is not a fringe philosophical concept bound to popular novel's either. Look to the background of villains in mainstream super hero movies, to our politics (many call Trump the first Postmodern president), and the drive to be "authentic" in every aspect of the self for reasons of self promotion in some kind recursive cynical loop which other view as a perfect specimen of our contemporary irony, nearly perfected!

I'm not an expert on French culture or any culture per-se, but perhaps Americans (of which I'm one) do have a more superficial embrace of sentimentalism and a less critical approach to hero worship and "getting rich" and maybe it isn't driven by cynicism as much as naiveté but that's only one aspect of the culture as a whole. Even still, I'd argue most people are driven by the Postmodern philosophy wether they know it or not; are more cynical then they even know and skeptical of our institutions (universities, churches, etc) on one side or another.

Sounds like HN: "Check out my cool new web app/hardware gizmo!" Army of critics arrive to poop on it

The situation for SpaceX is different. SpaceX got 18 successful launches last year, several of them with reused rockets and most of them recovered afterward (no unsuccessful landing attempts, though a few were intentionally expended for performance reasons).

Their only real domestic competitor ULA which launches Atlas and Delta, long held as the giants in American space launch, only had a total of 8 launches, all expended of course.

Not only does SpaceX have a huge technological moat in the form of operational space launch reuse, but operationally their Falcon 9 (which had complete success in 2017) is out-launching everything else, including both the Chinese DF-5 (which had a failure) and the Russian R7/Soyuz (which also had a failure).

And their future products build tremendously on this already sizable lead:

1) Falcon Heavy, completed pad fit checks by the end of the year and now getting ready for a static fire and launch in a couple weeks, is even MORE reusable (3 cores recovered, counting for 27 out of 28 of the engines) and MORE powerful than any other rocket launching today. Dragon Crew also nearing completion and will be the first (of 3 total vehicles nearing completion) to return Americans to orbit on a domestic vehicle, likely this year.

2) A satellite constellation which is readying satellite prototype launch in the next month or two, has the potential of making SpaceX a telecomm giant. The scale of this constellation would not be feasible without the reusability tech they've developed.

3) And BFR, which will further cement their space launch tech moat, make launching the full version of the potentially-extremely-profitable satellite constellation WAY cheaper, and potentially open several new markets.

SpaceX is like Tesla after a full ramp-up of the Model 3 selling as many cars as Toyota does but in a world where no one else has an electric car for sale. So understandably (for Musk), he's leveraging this position to make things like BFR a reality.

Both companies are in extremely good positions compared to 2008 when both companies nearly went under. SpaceX in particular. And given the fact that Elon was able to save both, it means a market down-turn is something he has seen before and he has some powerful strings to pull in case the market has some major problems.

And it might sound callous but plenty of companies have similar practices (and are not creating anything of earth-shattering value), so judging Tesla more than the others is a bit unfair.

Not a factor. Until we can travel many multiples faster than light, it doesn't matter how many things we can see far, far away.

You and I will both be centuries dead before that happens.

The man wants his car designs to evoke an image of being sexy and you consider him a creep? That's a way over-dramatic interpretation.

>informal exciting; appealing. "I've climbed most of the really sexy west coast mountains" synonyms: exciting, stimulating, interesting, appealing, intriguing, slick, red-hot "a sexy sales promotion"

(Also, is there a model Y in the works?)

The vehicles are sexy... to me at least.

It only gives ammunition to the chauvinists claiming that sex will be outlawed, or the idiots calling for politicians to resign for having sex out of wedlock.

Super chargers are available in all of those states, making any cross country driving in that area significantly faster and easier.

Add in winter conditions and driving at the usual ~75MPH and it gets worse than that. I wouldn't attempt any trip longer than ~200 miles in anything but a Tesla because even the superchargers at 130kW make it just ~bearable once the supercharger novelty wears off.

More like the Chevy Bolt / Opel Ampera e, the i3 has very limited range while the Chevy/Opel offers between 300 and 500km of range thanks to its much bigger 60kWh battery. The BMW i3 only has a 33kWh battery in the newer version, previous one was even less than that... The Leaf 2018 goes in the right direction, but 40kWh is still no enough to do 3h+ road trips.

Also, you make a very good point by saying that the Chevy Bolt/Opel Ampera E is a much better choice (ignoring the design). Same pricing as the Model 3 but the range seems much better. Given the experience of Chevy, I think that they can reduce the price and mass produce the Bolt much faster than Tesla can do with the model 3.

The Nissan Leaf isn't new in 2018, it's been around since 2011 and is (I think) still the most popular pure electric car. I'm aware that the 2018 should have some significant improvements, but I'm confused why you don't count either the current models or the 2018 as a competitor to the Model 3?

Sorry if it's the latter..

9 hours is (in my opinion) the max amount of driving you can seriously do without at least a couple hours of resting.

That'd be about 540 miles total, maybe a bit less if you could make those 30 minutes of rest stops at a fast charger.

Right now, EV's are clearly the future. I'd say that when they have a 500 mile range with an MSRP that matches ICE vehicles, they'll go from being "exciting new technology" to "the obvious choice for most people."