Elon Musk comes to Detroit
Elon Musk is not the type to hold back when it comes to sharing his thoughts. The founder of PayPal and SpaceX is said to be very driven and, like most successful entrepreneurs, he has alienated people over the years. In his current role as CEO of Tesla Motors he hasn't made many friends in Detroit, especially when it comes to the current financial crisis gripping the Domestic automakers. All this should make things very interesting on January 13 when Musk delivers a keynote at the Society of Automotive Analysts conference. Musk has been outspoken in his opposition to using money from the DOE Advanced Technology Vehicles fund to bail out Detroit. It should be an interesting meeting. We plan to be on hand for the event.
Related:
- AutoblogGreen Q&A: Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk Pt. 1 - In the beginning
- AutoblogGreen Q&A: Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk Part 2 - Transmission shifts
- AutoblogGreen Q&A: Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk Pt. 3 - Lessons and WhiteStar hints
- AutoblogGreen Q&A: Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk - Epilogue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mmstowes 11:17AM (12/19/2008)
Now that the money is coming from TARP (for now), I'm not sure he'll have much to complain about when he gets there.
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Jmi 11:30AM (12/19/2008)
The man is so out of touch. Tesla asked for $$$ from the government and they are a "startup company". I hope he has the coutesy to know facts whan he gives his speech, that would be unique. He needs to keep in mind why the burden costs are so high for the US auto makers, retirement, health care and things called compassion. When/if Tesle ever becomes a major producer those thing will start to be important too.
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mmstowes 12:26PM (12/19/2008)
I honestly think Tesla and other smaller companies should have the same right to the $25 billion allotted for green technologies as the larger manufacturers (how many times have GM pushed it aside and now we're all supposed to kiss their asses?). The problem is not that Tesla is asking, it's that they're asking but Musk apparently doesn't understand the terms. It's for retrofitting existing factories, not building new ones. To my knowledge, Tesla's still trying to build a $200+ million facility when there are plenty of existing facilities in America that would work just fine with the proper retooling.
Blame that on the typically smug Silicon Valley attitude...
Rei 1:05PM (12/19/2008)
mmstowes: Perhaps, then, Tesla should rethink building a new Model S plant and consider buying up some of the Big Three's assets with intent to retool. The Big Three are desperate for buyers, after all.
Jim 2:28PM (12/19/2008)
They should if they can afford the cost. Tesla has a long learning curve and will find out that if sales increase tooling and manufacturing costs willas well.
gorr 1:47PM (12/19/2008)
Tesla will never make money with their cars, it's not on par to anything, cost a lot to build and the hype is already going the cliff, LOL. It's not that im cynical, it's because as soon as hydrogen gas as fuel is ceased to be illegally fighted behing president gang doors, then it will start. The ones that been fighting hydrogen by worshipping limp batteries will be remember and in 2 to 3 years all the new car sold will have different brand names and tesla, autoblog green, gm, toyota, doe, white house, u.s.a, opec, exxon, japan, ford, city bank, wall street, time magazine, u.s army, buddism, vatican, great-britain, mercedes , etc will be just souvenirs.
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Ed 2:31PM (12/19/2008)
From U.S. Department of Energy fact sheet: Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program.
"The FY09 Continuing Resolution authorized up to $25 billion in direct loans to eligible applicants for the costs of reequipping, expanding, and establishing manufacturing facilities in the U.S. to produce advanced technology vehicles, and components for such vehicles. These vehicles must provide meaningful improvements in fuel economy performance." http://www.energy.gov/news/6709.htm
Looks to me like Mr. Musk knows what he is doing. It's a bit of an exageration to say "he's out of touch."
Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism" comes to mind for most of the comments I see here...
Carney 4:30PM (12/19/2008)
Actually, the President and his Energy Department have been major advocates for hydrogen.
And that's a BAD thing.
Hydrogen is massively inefficient, dangerous, impractical, and expensive.
It'll never work, and the time and money we waste on it is a distraction from the REAL solutions:
Short to mid term, to wean us off oil: flex fuel vehicles that can run gasoline as well as methanol, ethanol, and all other alcohol fuels.
Long term: electric cars charged by plugging into a rejuvenated, updated electrical grid powered plants using, cheap, extremely abundant fusion power.
Carney 4:31PM (12/19/2008)
Forgot this link, which drives a stake through hydrogen's heart, cuts off its head, burns the body, and buries it at a consecrated crossroads.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax
Bengoshi-San 3:37PM (12/19/2008)
Hold up, he founded PayPal?
It's official.. I hate him.
PayPal is a scummy company. They hold your money for no reason, dont guarantee you payment security as either a buyer or seller and take way too much off the top.
To hell with him. Wanker!
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Carney 4:37PM (12/19/2008)
Even if all electric cars become affordable, they're not the solution yet, because the power grid is not ready for the load.
It's creaking and tottering under the load it carries right now, in large part due to the lack of new power plants.
To dump the enormous power needs of our surface transportation fleet onto that grid will strain it beyond capacity, and break it. We'll have 3rd World level spotty power.
Wind, solar, tidal, etc, are all too weak, unreliable, expensive, and impractical.
The only way to give us the MASSIVE extra power at a cheap price is fusion, and we're not there yet. We do need to invest a lot more federal funds in fusion research, which is at around breakeven now (a many order-of-magnitude improvement from the starting point in the 60s). But we've been held back the last ten years or so by a misguided effort to abandon competition between countries to develop fusion power and instead band together to save money. Years wasted arguing over where the site would be, etc. We've floundered.
Competition spurs excellence, and we should bypass this mess and resume work on our own.
In the meantime, until fusion becomes a practical reality, the short and mid term solution to oil is flex fuel cars.
And of course, for now, all electric vehicles are NOT affordable, merely playthings of the super wealthy.
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