It's one thing to be off by, say, 5%. It's another thing to be years or two orders of magnitude off. I'm not expecting Musk to be perfect, I'm expecting him to be reasonably close with his predictions.
And many, many of Tesla's predictions aren't predictions. In 2014, Tesla promised full self driving on cars and took money for it. Those cars today will never have it (despite paying for it), and it's been nearly a decade with FSD still an indeterminate period away.
And yeah, new account. That's how I interact with HN -- create an account, keep it until it gets some amount of karma (usually 500-1000) decide it's too much of a drain to try and be grounded here, and delete the account. Inevitably, someone comes along and makes a breathy and incredible claim like "tesla is an absolute success" and I feel like I need to come in and provide just a little bit of "Hey, so, the facts don't exactly line up there..." To be clear, I don't create anti-tesla accounts, and this isn't an alt for another existing account, I just don't like having a long term account here.
What burning process? There is heating without burning in this process (and in fact, most of the things being melted are oxides and the energy is used to pull oxygen off of the iron and silicon.)
It's electrical heating, not coal fire heating, which requires no oxygen.
> With both companies having an almost absurdly good track record of execution.
Musk has consistently produced the wrong numbers. Some examples (and there are many, many more):
Number of teslas in 2018? Musk: 500k Actual: 35K
Tesla base price objective, 2016: Musk $35k Actual: Much more
Self Driving Cross Country Trip: Musk: in 2017 Actual: NaN
Financing Rounds: Musk (2011) "We will never need another financing round" Actual: there were many more
Supercharging cost: Musk (2013) "Always free" Actual: Definitely not free
Tesla Semis Production Line Date: Musk: "2019" Actual: Not yet happened
Gigafactory placement: Musk (2017) "Two to four more" Actual: Only one operational
Hyperloop NY-Phil-Balt-DC: Musk (2017) "I have verbal approval, 29 minutes NY-DC" Actual: This appears to be made up
Mars Missions: Musk: "Every launch window from 2024 onward" Actual: TBD, maybe 2029?
Neurallink: Musk: "Human trials in 2021" Actual: "Lots of dead monkeys"
Covid-19 Ventilators: Musk "Our factories will produce them" Actual: Musk sent 1,000 cpap machines
Updated Tesla Roadster: Musk: "It exists!" Actual: "It doesn't"
There are so, so so many more of these. There's nothing remotely close to an "absurdly good track record". SpaceX is doing well because of Shotwell, not Musk, and Tesla has been plagued with build quality and recall issues from day 1. (To say nothing of absurd repair costs and issues with FSD.)
And many, many of Tesla's predictions aren't predictions. In 2014, Tesla promised full self driving on cars and took money for it. Those cars today will never have it (despite paying for it), and it's been nearly a decade with FSD still an indeterminate period away.
And yeah, new account. That's how I interact with HN -- create an account, keep it until it gets some amount of karma (usually 500-1000) decide it's too much of a drain to try and be grounded here, and delete the account. Inevitably, someone comes along and makes a breathy and incredible claim like "tesla is an absolute success" and I feel like I need to come in and provide just a little bit of "Hey, so, the facts don't exactly line up there..." To be clear, I don't create anti-tesla accounts, and this isn't an alt for another existing account, I just don't like having a long term account here.