Elon Musk's grand transportation vision

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by cabasse

i thought he hit is 5k/week mark. that's a lot of teslas. the new and current beef is that he "can't build the cheap one, it'll lose money."

There is almost no profit in building small and mid-sized cars, even in the huge volume that GM, Ford, Toyota, etc., build them. The big automakers only make about $1,000 per unit on small cars whereas they usually make $4,000+ per full-sized car, crossover, SUV, or truck.

The labor for parts, warehousing said parts, storing/transporting finished vehicles, and labor for final assembly of a vehicle is roughly the same no matter how large the vehicle is. But for decades the market has shown a willingness to massively overpay for physically large vehicles.

That's why GM, Ford, and Chrysler can still build their pickup trucks and SUV's in the United States whereas compact cars like the Ford Focus/Fiesta and Chevy Cruze are assembled in Mexico or elsewhere.

Tesla made a big and possibly fatal mistake by trying to get into small/midsized cars. Not only did they willingly wade into the least-profitable segment of the auto market, they're building them in the United States and so have to pay much higher wages.

Above that, Tesla is poised to exhaust its Federal tax credits before any other automaker. So if they ever actually manufacture a $35,000 Model 3, that car will cost more like $45,000 while the Chevy Bolt, etc., still sell for $35,000.

[mousquet]

^ My country's automakers drew the same kind of conclusion.

They've been producing average vehicles meant for the average/middle class or for people who simply don't care so much about their cars for decades, because most people here think luxury cars are ostentatious, overly showy of one's wealth, which is basically arrogant and unfair.

However, figures tend to prove that upscale personal vehicles are indeed much more profitable.
E.g., Peugeot has to sell like 5 of their small cheaper cars to make the same kind of profit as a single big Merco.
It is a plain fact of the automotive industry. The reason why France's auto manufacturers are starting to invest in higher-end projects, so they can rival Germany's more easily.

However, I would seriously argue about the fact that this type of industry remains a main engine of the overall manufacturing sector. This is no longer any 1960s/70s.

Moreover, driving fast a sport vehicle is surely fun, few would deny. But it is illegal on regular roads for obvious safety reasons.
So driving a $3 million Bugatti on a random highway is nothing but pointless.

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Tesla made a big and possibly fatal mistake by trying to get into small/midsized cars. Not only did they willingly wade into the least-profitable segment of the auto market, they're building them in the United States and so have to pay much higher wages.

Above that, Tesla is poised to exhaust its Federal tax credits before any other automaker. So if they ever actually manufacture a $35,000 Model 3, that car will cost more like $45,000 while the Chevy Bolt, etc., still sell for $35,000.

Elon Musk has pretty openly admitted he doesn't actually care about making money. His current endeavours are more about him perusing his dreams (or stoking his ego) than they are trying to make profitable companies. Obviously making smaller, lower cost cars is a bad business decision, but the goal wasn't to be good for business, it was to get credit for popularizing electric cars.

[NSC1109]

Elon Musk is being sued for libel after repeating "pedo" allegations against Vern Unsworth.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-mu...eeps-tweeting/

I don't get why anyone takes this guy seriously. He makes claims that he can't live up to and few people seem to care. Like the Chicago O'Hare Loop system. There's no way he's gonna have that running in a few years and definitely not under $1 billion.

[M II A II R II K]

Elon Musk’s Boring Company wants its tunnel network to connect all the way to your garage

https://electrek.co/2018/09/13/elon-...onnect-garage/

.....

- Elon Musk has confirmed plans for the Boring Company’s tunnel network to be able to connect all the way to residential garages so that commuters can enter the high-speed loop directly from their homes.

.....

[jmecklenborg]

The Boring Company is basically just a twitter account. We're years into it and they have yet to build a single TBM. They have yet to do anything other than buy somebody else's old TBM, dig a short, pointless tunnel, and post pictures of it to Twitter.

It's Theranos. There is no there there.

[NSC1109]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

All the Boring Company is basically just a twitter account. We're years into it and they have yet to build a single TBM. They have yet to do anything other than buy somebody else's old TBM, dig a short, pointless tunnel, and post pictures of it to Twitter.

It's Theranos. There is no there there.

Completely agree. A lot of the experts I’ve read talk about the Hyperloop basically say it’s DOA. Technologically it is possible. Practically, not so much. The Hyperloop has to be a straight tube. No curves. You also can’t have stops unless you find a way to safely depressurize the tube at the station without it affecting everything else as well as the various safety features needed to ensure you don’t kill everyone in the tube.

The loop isn’t any better. As far as I am aware, there’s no prototype, yet Musk is building a system for Chicago supposedly under 1 billion dollars and the City isn’t paying a dime for it. That 1bn price tag would equate to 55.5 million/mile, which would be the cheapest tunneling operation in history. It’s close to DOA as well.

[Mister Uptempo]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud, according to court documents filed Thursday. Sources close to the company told CNBC the company was also expecting to be sued, though Tesla was not named as a defendant in the complaint.

Shares of the automaker fell roughly 10 percent in extended trading Thursday.

In August, Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private, adding "funding secured." The tweet spurred a scandal-ridden fall for Tesla.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/tesl...ed-by-sec.html

[M II A II R II K]

Hyperloop company unveils its full-scale 750-mph 'passenger capsule'

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...le/1449869002/

[M II A II R II K]

Hyperloop's First-Ever U.S. Feasibility Study Shows Huge Cost Savings

https://www.inverse.com/article/4999...e-cost-savings

.....

- Hyperloop, the vacuum-sealed transit system, could bring big economic benefits to local areas. That’s according to Virgin Hyperloop One, which announced on Wednesday the completion of the first-ever feasibility study focused on the benefits it could bring to the United States. — The report, independently produced by engineering and procurement firm Black & Veatch, looked at a proposed route through the Interstate-70 corridor in Missouri that would reduce trips from Kansas City to St. Louis from three-and-a-half hours today to just 28 minutes. It considered issues like social impact, station locations, rights-of-way and regulation questions.

- The team found a number of big benefits to building a hyperloop. It could offer an 80 percent increase in ridership demand from 16,000 to 51,000 passengers on each round trip. It would reduce interstate accidents that would save $91 million per year, while also saving on time spent on the road that would result in $410 million in savings. — The cost of taking the hyperloop could also be lower than the cost of the gas to drive the journey. The study also claims that linear infrastructure costs are around 40 percent lower than high speed rail projects, with much higher speeds.

.....

[canucklehead2]

I hope this route goes through since it would be an almost straight shot through flat terrain and link two cities that are needing some infusion of fresh ideas... Short of a BOS-NY-WASH & NorCal/SoCal link where there's an obvious demand for travel, it's nice to see this area take a chance on the future!

[jmecklenborg]

This is total b.s. We have nothing approaching a working model anywhere. How does a terminal station work? How does a local station work?

Answer: it doesn't. And it never will. Because we won't have vacuum tube transportation for hundreds of years.

[dubu]

but why do you have to be in the next city so fast? that will make people that would never go to the other city go there and you might as well have the cities closer to ech other.

[Busy Bee]

More fantasy.

This is the type of nonsense that keeps people all googly eyed and completely ignoring the real need to connect regional economies together with fast, frequent MASS transportation in the form electrified conventional steel/steel railways... you know, like the rest of the world. But America and Americans have this Jetson's always-pregnant-with-the-future complex that leaves us content and complacent with having nothing in the present.

[SIGSEGV]

If it really was that fast, the capacity couldn't keep up with the induced demand and it would effectively be like flying.

[ssiguy]

Musk is a rather distasteful and certainly narcissistic individual and yet the world needs a thousand more like him.


Regardless of what you may think of the man as a person, he is the type of dreamer that is needed to solve our 21st century transportation problems. We are an increasingly mobile and urban world and new technologies must advance at a rapid speed if we are to manage this growth, improve our quality of life, and lessen our enviornmental footprint.

Most of our cars today are essentially the same technology as they were 100 years ago but thankfully that is changing with the switch to electric cars of which Musk is a pioneer. Our trains are the same technology as they were in the 1800s and with endless delays and security checks, nearly every plane trip takes longer than it did 50 years ago.


We desperately need more Elon Munks who are willing to throw all the preconceived notions and set transportation paradigms and to 'go boldly where no one has gone before' because our world is facing transportation problems that we have never seen before. Monk is a dreamer which is a wonderful attribute made even better by the fact that he is willing to put his own money where his mouth is.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

he is the type of dreamer that is needed to solve our 21st century transportation problems.

He's a scam artist. Like a fake religious preacher, he plays the part of benevolent nerd/tinkerer when in fact he's a cold-blooded capitalist.

Most of our cars today are essentially the same technology as they were 100 years ago but thankfully that is changing with the switch to electric cars of which Musk is a pioneer. Our trains are the same technology as they were in the 1800s and with endless delays and security checks, nearly every plane trip takes longer than it did 50 years ago.

Shilling for Musk, aren't we?

Musk's main innovation over Henry Ford is that he has a Twitter account.

[M II A II R II K]

His car tunnel is open to the public on Dec. 10

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

His car tunnel is open to the public on Dec. 10

...which goes nowhere and was dug with an old TBM that dug the gold line light rail tunnel.

Get on the gold line train and you're going through the exact same thing.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

This is total b.s. We have nothing approaching a working model anywhere. How does a terminal station work? How does a local station work?

Answer: it doesn't. And it never will. Because we won't have vacuum tube transportation for hundreds of years.

actually no. we have already had vacuum subway transit. it was in nyc in 1869 for about 5yrs. it was planned to go up to central park, but that never happened. it was not known if it would really be practical, hindered by boss tweed and finally shut down during a stock market crash.

a good outcome was it lead to the nyc pneumatic mail system, which was very useful for a long while. the mail tube operators were known as 'rocketeers.' can you imagine? so my good man what line of work are in? i'm a rocketeer.