The security issue was a straw-man argument the whole time. The data was public anyway. This was the key aspect: analysis of the open data, and the potential negative implications.
It was very clear from the start, especially seeing his past with how aggressively he litigated even minor criticisms of the tesla as if it was slander.
* edit: I forget down voting is a thing. Why I thought i was clear from the start: If someone actually cared about their private jet privacy they would be renting jets... Cause its common knowledge that one can be tracked publicly with ownership information. Or he could push for a change in gov policies, he certainly doesn't mind sharing his political opinion now.
To be precise they don't sell carbon offsets, they sell regulatory credits. These schemes force the sum of all cars sold to be lower in emissions than in previous years; the ability to trade credits provides extra incentive to companies which are making an out-sized contribution to the overall efficiency.
The problem isn't that Tesla is selling. The problem is that others are buying. At the end of the day it's not Tesla's fault if these government schemes aren't resulting in ideal overall outcomes.
Yes, but most electricity in the US is produced using natural gas. Natural gas produces much less CO2 emissions than all other fossil fuels. Plus, the efficiency of power plants is double the efficiency of an ICE engine in a car. Switching to an EV easily cuts the emissions by a factor of 2, even when the electricity is produced with fossil fuels.
Even if all electricity comes from the least efficient coal plants, EV's still tend to produce less CO2/mile because EV's are designed to have regen braking, low rolling resistance and low aerodynamic drag.
It's actually a lot more difficult to quantify the total emissions of electric car than it might seem at first glance. For one, the electricity might easily be generated through carbon so this doesn't offset emissions as much as direct use of fossil fuels.
Not only that, but focusing just on emissions is not comprehensive enough when thinking about the environmental impact of these technologies as a whole. As an example, the extraction of lithium in south america is decimating extremely delicate ecosystems (such as ancient archeon that resides in these extreme environments).
So I do wonder if trying to offer an similar but not quite alternative to car transportation is actually doing as much good as we think, it might be better for governments to push for more collective solutions to transportation that will drastically reduce environmental impact as a whole. Not that electric cars are not better than petrol or gasoline cars, but still, I think as a whole the car industry (this includes electric) is probably a net negative to environment and electric cars in particular are prolonging the life of technology that we should be thinking of reducing as much as possible.
No, they're saying it's complicated. That means that if you try to make it uncomplicated again that you are going to miss crucial information and nuance.
>So I do wonder if trying to offer an similar but not quite alternative to car transportation is actually doing as much good as we think, it might be better for governments to push for more collective solutions to transportation that will drastically reduce environmental impact as a whole
I like how speculative and yet casually confident we get on here. Cities like NYC and Chicago have respectable public transportation systems. Have we analyzed what cars are used for here?
One problem is how do you propose getting people from a dense area to a weekend getaway to the woods, the mountains or a beach?
Another problem is, people live in semi rural and suburban areas, too, not everyone lives in an apartment building five minutes from a bus or subway.
Renting cars when you need them, buses, trains? How do you think old people who can't drive anymore get around in Europe?
Cars are obviously useful for the country side, but that's not really the issue. The issue is that cities in America are designed with cars in mind first, the whole idea of the suburbs is a car-centric city design. Reducing the need for cars is a huge ordeal that doesn't just touch transportation but housing and jobs as well.
I think it's pretty conceited to think we can have both sustainability and car-centric design at the same time. But it is possible to transition, I mean, the city I live in (Melbourne, Australia) has lots of suburbs but you can get anywhere by tram, train or bus and this obviously includes residential suburbs and the city center. It's a little crazy to me when you say people don't live five minutes away from bus stops, I just can't imagine how you'd get around such a living situation. I mean, what do you do when you go out drinking? How do you get home? I guess you rely on ubers and taxis?
But reducing the need for cars of course means increasing the means people for people to go places in different methods of transporation and changing the way our cities are structured. To me, starting to invest in public transporation is the right way of moving forward, rather than subsidies to electrify cars.
This is a non-sequitur. Apply the same argument to a serial killer who is a trauma surgeon. Just because you have the same units doesn't mean you have an equation.
Batteries are constrained right now so they could have gone as a better use into plug in hybrids instead. For each full electric car you produce you get 1 full electric and 6 gas cars, or you get 7 plug in hybrids, using the same amount of batteries.
The batteries in each Tesla Semi could make multiple shorter range delivery trucks/vans that benefit from stop and go regenerative braking much more.
The obsession about private flights in general feels like greenwashed hatred/jealousy towards rich people - environment-wise those represent a rounding error of all total emissions.
I would understand it if the individual preaches that people shouldn't fly and then do it themselves but in this case there is no reason to hate on him. Of course he is going to fly private, he can easily afford it and would probably be stalked and/or harassed by everyone if he didn't.
Most haters would for sure fly private themselves if they could so I think it's jealousy masked as critique.
If you don't see a post about other rich people using jets to travel, you could be the first to be the change you criticize others off not being.
What good has he actually done?
Tesla was never founded by him, nor has Tesla been the driving force of adaptation of the ev, since the industry has been having its ups and downs for over 100 years.
He has hyped up evs for sure, that he deserves all the credit for.
I never understood this obsession with founding. As anyone in the technology sector knows, brilliant ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is what matters. So what was the brilliant idea of Tesla, and what was the execution? The three people who "founded" Tesla wanted to make a tiny number of hand built sports cars for wealthy elites, and their outcome was the Roadster, a certifiable lemon. Elon's Tesla wanted to mass-produce electric cars for a mainstream audience, and the company succeeded far beyond the predictions of anyone in the legacy auto sector.
I don't either care about "founding", but I do not like how everyone throws the industry's efforts under the buss and think the only meaningful/impactful work has been Tesla & Elon.
My point with "founding" was that a common rebuttal is "Tesla was founded by Elon, he sacrificed so much for EVs!", when in reality the foundation of Tesla was already built and Elon instead did a take over.
It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing" while in reality they impacted the industry in profound ways, yes, but never would they eclipse the entire industry.
> "Tesla was founded by Elon, he sacrificed so much for EVs!", when in reality the foundation of Tesla was already built and Elon instead did a take over.
That is wildly incorrect, or at least is inconsistent with the consensus opinion of Wikipedia. Martin and Marc had done zero design or engineering work prior to Elon Musk's involvement. All they had was notions of commercialising work already done by other people — namely AC Propulsion with their tzero prototype — something which Musk also wanted to do. In fact this parallel interest was what connected Musk with Tesla in the first place.[0]
Musk was the first and most significant investor in Tesla, which is to say that it was his personal wealth which allowed a functioning company called Tesla to exist in the first place. In its formative years, Musk continued to pour more of his personal wealth in to stave off Tesla's bankruptcy.[1]
While Musk wasn't involved in the day-to-day running of the company until around 2008, he had some involvement in engineering work from the earliest moments that the company started doing any engineering work.[1]
> It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing"
I think it would be reasonable to describe Gates and Jobs as the "fathers of personal computing". It's an apt metaphor when one considers the relative involvement of a biological mother and biological father in the formation of a new human person.
Other than as a straw man constructed by detractors, nobody claims that Gates, Jobs or Musk did anything of significance single-handedly. But to the extent that any one person can possibly impact an industry such labels are reasonably applied to persons like Gates, Jobs and Musk.
I appreciate that it's easy to overstate the role of inspired leadership, but it has become very fashionable to understate it. Yes, Apple had many incredible engineers. Without the return of Jobs to Apple, would those brilliant engineers have done anything like the iPod? More likely they would have executed with technical excellence on a new Apple LaserWriter printer motherboard or another iteration of the Newton MessagePad.
Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Did Jobs personally make the iPod? No. Did the skilled engineers at Apple make the iPod? Well, they didn't make micro hard disks, LCD screens, invent semiconductor photolithography or develop the MP3 audio codec either... What we can say for sure is that the iPod wouldn't have existed in 2001 without Jobs' vision and execution.
> He has hyped up evs for sure, that he deserves all the credit for.
Literally the most important part, proving they were sufficiently advanced that governments could confidently begin phasing in bans of new combustion vehicle sales, dragging legacy auto to EVs as well. Who cares who the founder is? And what about JB!?
No the most important part is that there is an industry that has research & developed and advertised the technology so that the masses can take part of it.
Something that has been in the making as I said, over 100 years for EVs.
Elon has done the advertisement part, but he's only 1 person not an entire industry.
I am not even that much of a fan tbh. But to say Elon hasn't done any good for the environmemt and technical progress is just objectively false.
Who cares if tesla was founded by someone else, he saw potential and executed the growth to what it is today. Tesla is also just one of the several great companies he has founded or been an early part of that does amazing things.
What companies have you been a key player in that has made great technical progress or reduced our environmental impact? Stop the hate man, be mature.
A bit off topic but I wish someone would make a similar page
about how much fuel the president of the US uses when travelling
per year while in office.
Let us take a foreign trip to Norway.
A friendly allied country with a low threat profile.
4 - 6 weeks prior to travel a team flies in to plan the route,
mitigate problems, update schedules and demand accommodations
from the host country.
Weld your manhole covers shut, empty out floors on some buildings.
have all traffic stopped in a radius of X miles, etc etc
Same with the hotel, the venue etc etc.
The closer we get more aids, vehicles, infrastructure air airlifted in.
The flight with POTUS itself, who might or not have fighter jet escort
for parts of the trip. and the "Pentagon and military command and control
jet accompanies AirForce one.
The presidential limousine (The beast) has to gulp gasoline like no other
two cars on earth. Perhaps there are other equally armored and fortified limousines around the world, I really dont know
Then of course everything in reverse to return home.
I bet that in a year, the emission from POTUS traces exceeds that of
several countries.
Something I often think about when POTUS travels to environmental
conferences. The best POTUS could do was to attend remotely (and
sign documents digitally? (not sure if that can be done)
This is the way it has always been. The same politicians pushing water conservation and other environmental issues are the ones invested in businesses that are the biggest abusers, but then they go put the guilt on the people using a very small fraction and get them to spend more money thinking it is them causing the problem.
34 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 60.1 ms ] thread* edit: I forget down voting is a thing. Why I thought i was clear from the start: If someone actually cared about their private jet privacy they would be renting jets... Cause its common knowledge that one can be tracked publicly with ownership information. Or he could push for a change in gov policies, he certainly doesn't mind sharing his political opinion now.
Is he net negative?
The problem isn't that Tesla is selling. The problem is that others are buying. At the end of the day it's not Tesla's fault if these government schemes aren't resulting in ideal overall outcomes.
Not only that, but focusing just on emissions is not comprehensive enough when thinking about the environmental impact of these technologies as a whole. As an example, the extraction of lithium in south america is decimating extremely delicate ecosystems (such as ancient archeon that resides in these extreme environments).
So I do wonder if trying to offer an similar but not quite alternative to car transportation is actually doing as much good as we think, it might be better for governments to push for more collective solutions to transportation that will drastically reduce environmental impact as a whole. Not that electric cars are not better than petrol or gasoline cars, but still, I think as a whole the car industry (this includes electric) is probably a net negative to environment and electric cars in particular are prolonging the life of technology that we should be thinking of reducing as much as possible.
I like how speculative and yet casually confident we get on here. Cities like NYC and Chicago have respectable public transportation systems. Have we analyzed what cars are used for here?
One problem is how do you propose getting people from a dense area to a weekend getaway to the woods, the mountains or a beach?
Another problem is, people live in semi rural and suburban areas, too, not everyone lives in an apartment building five minutes from a bus or subway.
Cars are obviously useful for the country side, but that's not really the issue. The issue is that cities in America are designed with cars in mind first, the whole idea of the suburbs is a car-centric city design. Reducing the need for cars is a huge ordeal that doesn't just touch transportation but housing and jobs as well.
I think it's pretty conceited to think we can have both sustainability and car-centric design at the same time. But it is possible to transition, I mean, the city I live in (Melbourne, Australia) has lots of suburbs but you can get anywhere by tram, train or bus and this obviously includes residential suburbs and the city center. It's a little crazy to me when you say people don't live five minutes away from bus stops, I just can't imagine how you'd get around such a living situation. I mean, what do you do when you go out drinking? How do you get home? I guess you rely on ubers and taxis?
But reducing the need for cars of course means increasing the means people for people to go places in different methods of transporation and changing the way our cities are structured. To me, starting to invest in public transporation is the right way of moving forward, rather than subsidies to electrify cars.
The batteries in each Tesla Semi could make multiple shorter range delivery trucks/vans that benefit from stop and go regenerative braking much more.
I see no posts for all the other rich people who uses their jets for trips that does nothing to reduce our impact to the climate.
It seems quite stupid to me to obsess so much over one persons negative impact and ignoring all the good that has come from the companies he runs.
Most haters would for sure fly private themselves if they could so I think it's jealousy masked as critique.
If you don't see a post about other rich people using jets to travel, you could be the first to be the change you criticize others off not being.
What good has he actually done?
Tesla was never founded by him, nor has Tesla been the driving force of adaptation of the ev, since the industry has been having its ups and downs for over 100 years.
He has hyped up evs for sure, that he deserves all the credit for.
My point with "founding" was that a common rebuttal is "Tesla was founded by Elon, he sacrificed so much for EVs!", when in reality the foundation of Tesla was already built and Elon instead did a take over.
It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing" while in reality they impacted the industry in profound ways, yes, but never would they eclipse the entire industry.
That is wildly incorrect, or at least is inconsistent with the consensus opinion of Wikipedia. Martin and Marc had done zero design or engineering work prior to Elon Musk's involvement. All they had was notions of commercialising work already done by other people — namely AC Propulsion with their tzero prototype — something which Musk also wanted to do. In fact this parallel interest was what connected Musk with Tesla in the first place.[0]
Musk was the first and most significant investor in Tesla, which is to say that it was his personal wealth which allowed a functioning company called Tesla to exist in the first place. In its formative years, Musk continued to pour more of his personal wealth in to stave off Tesla's bankruptcy.[1]
While Musk wasn't involved in the day-to-day running of the company until around 2008, he had some involvement in engineering work from the earliest moments that the company started doing any engineering work.[1]
> It's similar to how people see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as the "fathers of computing"
I think it would be reasonable to describe Gates and Jobs as the "fathers of personal computing". It's an apt metaphor when one considers the relative involvement of a biological mother and biological father in the formation of a new human person.
Other than as a straw man constructed by detractors, nobody claims that Gates, Jobs or Musk did anything of significance single-handedly. But to the extent that any one person can possibly impact an industry such labels are reasonably applied to persons like Gates, Jobs and Musk.
I appreciate that it's easy to overstate the role of inspired leadership, but it has become very fashionable to understate it. Yes, Apple had many incredible engineers. Without the return of Jobs to Apple, would those brilliant engineers have done anything like the iPod? More likely they would have executed with technical excellence on a new Apple LaserWriter printer motherboard or another iteration of the Newton MessagePad.
Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants. Did Jobs personally make the iPod? No. Did the skilled engineers at Apple make the iPod? Well, they didn't make micro hard disks, LCD screens, invent semiconductor photolithography or develop the MP3 audio codec either... What we can say for sure is that the iPod wouldn't have existed in 2001 without Jobs' vision and execution.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero#Lithium-io...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...
Literally the most important part, proving they were sufficiently advanced that governments could confidently begin phasing in bans of new combustion vehicle sales, dragging legacy auto to EVs as well. Who cares who the founder is? And what about JB!?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Straubel
Something that has been in the making as I said, over 100 years for EVs.
Elon has done the advertisement part, but he's only 1 person not an entire industry.
Who cares if tesla was founded by someone else, he saw potential and executed the growth to what it is today. Tesla is also just one of the several great companies he has founded or been an early part of that does amazing things.
What companies have you been a key player in that has made great technical progress or reduced our environmental impact? Stop the hate man, be mature.
Let us take a foreign trip to Norway. A friendly allied country with a low threat profile.
4 - 6 weeks prior to travel a team flies in to plan the route, mitigate problems, update schedules and demand accommodations from the host country.
Weld your manhole covers shut, empty out floors on some buildings. have all traffic stopped in a radius of X miles, etc etc Same with the hotel, the venue etc etc.
The closer we get more aids, vehicles, infrastructure air airlifted in.
The flight with POTUS itself, who might or not have fighter jet escort for parts of the trip. and the "Pentagon and military command and control jet accompanies AirForce one.
The presidential limousine (The beast) has to gulp gasoline like no other two cars on earth. Perhaps there are other equally armored and fortified limousines around the world, I really dont know
Then of course everything in reverse to return home.
I bet that in a year, the emission from POTUS traces exceeds that of several countries.
Something I often think about when POTUS travels to environmental conferences. The best POTUS could do was to attend remotely (and sign documents digitally? (not sure if that can be done)