I have mixed feelings about Musk. I'm all about dreaming big and following your dreams with hard and smart work, but he sometimes comes across as delusional or carnival barker-ish. Look at Tesla's sales compared even to a dog like GM, for example. I can't help but wonder if we won't eventually see Musk on an episode of "American Greed" someday.
Considering that (a) Tesla cars
start at $70,000 and GM cars start at about $12,000 and (b) Tesla currently has a car that targets a single market and GM has a wide array of models, then comparing the two is rather stupid. It's like comparing TGI Friday and Smith & Wollensky and claiming TGIF comes out on top because they have mozarella sticks.
So, how about if we compare Tesla against the models it's actually up against? According to
Forbes, in 2013, the Mercedes S-Class sold ~13,000 units, the BMW 7-series and Lexus LS sold another 10,000 each, while the Audi A8 and the Porsche Panamera moved just about 6,000 units each. Tesla, on the other hand, delivered just over 22,000 units - almost half as many as the other five brands
combined. Things got even better in 2014.
Is Elon Musk eccentric? No doubt. Are his ideas a bit far fetched? Some are, but the simple fact is this: more than once he has demonstrated that he can deliver. When he started Tesla, the notion that you could have an electric car that was practical and had upwards of 200 miles of range was considered the stuff of fiction. The notion that the car would receive accolades for handling and build quality wasn't even fiction. Everybody said that he would fail. They argued that even if the world was ready for an electric car, building a car company from scratch was nigh impossible and they bet against him. Guess who came out on top?
And this isn't just a "one hit wonder." People laughed at the concept of SpaceX and argued endlessly about how it would fail. And yet, today the company routinely flies missions to space and resupplies the ISS using the Dragon capsule. And it has effectively demonstrated a reusable rocket with vertical-landing capability on a robotically piloted floating platform.
So what the hell are we talking about? The guy is doing some amazing shit and has
single-handedly advanced technology by at least a decade, which is no small feat.
The stuff about Mars I can take or leave (although I don't think he's wrong that we need to colonize other worlds in our solar system; I just don't think we need to start yesterday, as he does). The stuff about solar power, I'm 100% in favor of, not because I have any fundamental problem with oil, but because I think that solar technology, combined with improved battery chemistries and more efficient motors, electronics and electrical devices together, have become a viable proposition and will only get better from here.
I agree with you that the government shouldn't be "giving gifts" to anyone or regulating markets to death.