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I'm not sure Tesla and SpaceX are actually "effective". Tesla did certainly do a lot of good in making electric cars "cool" but the product on offer is far shittier and more expensive than Chinese or even US automaker electric cars. SpaceX is a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering. It can't even do something the US government could do in the 1960s consistently.
what specific you mean here? Manned moon landings?
SpaceX instead focused on vastly lower launch costs and managed to do this.
Still, what was delivered just crushed competition.
$INSERT_VIDEO_OF_ESA_HEAD_LAUGHING_AT_MUSK.MP4
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I would argue that before Tesla, an electrical car was for the greenest 10% of the population who were willing to drive an expensive substandard car because they wanted to stop CO2 emissions. Rich people who wanted a nice car typically got a premium brand German gasoline car.
Tesla changed that. Suddenly you could drive a car which would impress the ladies while also being electric. In response, the German car industry (which had largely dismissed electric cars as a fad) worked hard to build electric models. While I would probably by a SE Asian car instead of an American or European one, I really think that Tesla moved the industry forward a lot.
Often, the premium brands are trendsetters, and the things they implement (e.g. ABS, airbags, backwards-facing cameras) eventually trickle down to the cheaper brands. Before Tesla, you could belittle that die-hard green running an extension cord through his garden to charge his car. After Tesla, it was clear that electric cars were a viable (if still expensive) alternative.
The main innovation of SpaceX is that they are able to recycle first stages. The Saturn V was very impressive on capabilities, but it also cost about 1.5G$ per launch in today's money to get 140 tons to LEO. The Falcon 9 costs 67M$ for 23 tons to LEO. Sure, SpaceX is overpromising and underdelivering a lot, but that fact alone is impressive.
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AFAIK, Tesla’s battery and motor tech is very competitive, and sees use in aftermarket retrofits. That can’t be a huge market, and I suppose it could be a political or branding statement, but I take it as evidence that their fundamental parts are decent.
It’s the interiors and user experience that has always bothered me about Teslas. Fragile paneling, that big ugly screen… I could tell a story where Tesla was able to surpass legacy automakers in their core design, but failed (or chose not) to compete on making it feel luxury. That’s the kind of decision I could see Musk making, especially when pressed for time and money. But perhaps it’s too tidy .
Must just be a different perspective. I have a fairly new Tesla (2022) and the interior is, in my mind, perfection. None of the stupid buttons everywhere. Just a clean invocation of what you need to drive. There isn't even an "ON" button because you don't need one. Get in the car, hold the brake, get in drive. No off button either, just leave, and it turns off and locks behind you.
By comparison, I got in my buddy's luxury car, and the saturation of useless controls is mind boggling. There is a dial for turning up and down the intensity of the fog lights. How in the world is this an affordance that needs to be in front of a driver? Why should that take up space?
It's not that I'm even against twiddling. But the beauty of software interfaces is that you can put all that stuff in a searchable place.
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It's honestly too bad that bad UX on Li-Ion powered electronics understandably soured people on electric cars.
It's a subtle thing, but when you're using your smartphone and the battery says 100% until it completely dies in the cold, or has enough energy to say "fuck you, powering down", that has consequences when companies want to put the same batteries in electric cars- people remember their devices were [either only in perception, or in actual fact] used to abuse them and think "oh, these cars have unreliable fuel gauges and their usable capacity runs into the ground after X time".
Honestly, though, I just want a Roadster. Best product Tesla ever made, mainly because the only parts they did make were the powertrain.
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I thought they were buying their batteries from third parties?
It looks like they source batteries from Panasonic and then integrate them into packs. So they’re involved relatively early in the process.
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I just bought a Tesla, and I didn't find any of the other American market very competitive on price, and none of them offered FSD.
I'm gonna be sad when we have our third kid and the MX is too small.
Congratulations, that's a nice problem to have.
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