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Elon Musk Recode Interview 2018
- Thread starter mongo
- Start date
'You’re the first person I’ve met that actually uses the subway.' -- Musk
He's caught in a bubble. This probably explains some of his blatant idiocy when it comes to public transportation.
Longer quote (boldface is Kara Swisher, plaintext is Musk):
Millions of people use subways. Seriously, he's never talked to any of us? He needs to.
The thing is, Musk is absolutely right that massive cost-cutting is possible in tunnelling; he's been focusing on the engineering side but it isn't even that. In the US tunnelling is controlled by a construction mafia who jacks up the prices due to, basically, price-gouging; eliminating that alone will cut the cost in half.
But he's living in a bubble and hasn't talked to enough people who actually know something about subways, which accounts for his stupid operational proposals. Hopefully he'll correct this at some point soon, because cutting tunnelling costs could be extremely useful if he doen't waste the tunnels on dumb low-capacity stuff.
Honestly he probably hasn't had enough time to sit down and learn this stuff but hopefully he does now. A few days' research could save him from making an awful lot of dumb mistakes, and he really could take over the tunnelling business in the US, if not worldwide.
(But he'd better have good personal security, because when I describe the tunnelling business as being run by a "construction mafia"...)
He's caught in a bubble. This probably explains some of his blatant idiocy when it comes to public transportation.
Longer quote (boldface is Kara Swisher, plaintext is Musk):
Millions of people use subways. Seriously, he's never talked to any of us? He needs to.
The thing is, Musk is absolutely right that massive cost-cutting is possible in tunnelling; he's been focusing on the engineering side but it isn't even that. In the US tunnelling is controlled by a construction mafia who jacks up the prices due to, basically, price-gouging; eliminating that alone will cut the cost in half.
But he's living in a bubble and hasn't talked to enough people who actually know something about subways, which accounts for his stupid operational proposals. Hopefully he'll correct this at some point soon, because cutting tunnelling costs could be extremely useful if he doen't waste the tunnels on dumb low-capacity stuff.
Honestly he probably hasn't had enough time to sit down and learn this stuff but hopefully he does now. A few days' research could save him from making an awful lot of dumb mistakes, and he really could take over the tunnelling business in the US, if not worldwide.
(But he'd better have good personal security, because when I describe the tunnelling business as being run by a "construction mafia"...)
I like DC and Atlanta's rail systems, but never used the bus side of things. If Boring combines both (location density and scheduling), I like it.
I get where you are coming from on efficiency/ density, but if Boring can cut the price per mile by 10 and only carries 1/5 the people per tunnel, wouldn't that still be a win? Especially if the cost allows for digging tunnels at a faster effective people per mile rate (multiple simultaneous and/or faster tunneling).
Is that really a required problem to solve? I (and many others) drive based on the data from only one eye (or at least no depth perception). Further, all non-VR video games are played in a 2-D space.
On v9, the use of two frames at once allows for positional vs time data extraction which get past the single static frame issue.
An interesting listen, largely. HOWEVER...
As a world citizen who tries to keep an open but realistic mind, the Saudi question and how it was phrased is deeply, deeply offending. How does a South African feel about them based on one murder case? Seriously? They are using US and UK arms to commit a large scale genocide on Yemen. And it's no secret the whole Syria thing is Saudi commissioned, they wouldn't get their hands dirty there, but it's for them and Israel's benefit 100%.
One murder, how does that chance Elon's perspective on the Saudis he wanted to sell most of the company to after years of discussing it with them, seriously?
Tesla has accepted US government support to some degree. How does Elon think about USA's foreign policy and bi-partisan and electoral system? This journalist killed her own credibility and independence with that one question. She is part of the main problem of this world, and actively doubles down on it. Ruins my day's mood. Journalists suck, apparently being pro tech progress doesn't necessarily get them on the Light side.
I am itching to dive into the various technical aspects in the talk, so much goodness there. But as a human patriot, I cannot start that without addressing the above issue first. Anyone who wonders what I'm on about, switch off CNN and look up what's actually going on, and who's throwing bombs on citizens built by whom, for whose benefit.
Why fight to give humans a livable planet for millennia to come if we can't stop deceiving and murdering to this scale?
As a world citizen who tries to keep an open but realistic mind, the Saudi question and how it was phrased is deeply, deeply offending. How does a South African feel about them based on one murder case? Seriously? They are using US and UK arms to commit a large scale genocide on Yemen. And it's no secret the whole Syria thing is Saudi commissioned, they wouldn't get their hands dirty there, but it's for them and Israel's benefit 100%.
One murder, how does that chance Elon's perspective on the Saudis he wanted to sell most of the company to after years of discussing it with them, seriously?
Tesla has accepted US government support to some degree. How does Elon think about USA's foreign policy and bi-partisan and electoral system? This journalist killed her own credibility and independence with that one question. She is part of the main problem of this world, and actively doubles down on it. Ruins my day's mood. Journalists suck, apparently being pro tech progress doesn't necessarily get them on the Light side.
I am itching to dive into the various technical aspects in the talk, so much goodness there. But as a human patriot, I cannot start that without addressing the above issue first. Anyone who wonders what I'm on about, switch off CNN and look up what's actually going on, and who's throwing bombs on citizens built by whom, for whose benefit.
Why fight to give humans a livable planet for millennia to come if we can't stop deceiving and murdering to this scale?
Well, that quote was in the context of using the LA subway.... I honestly don't really ever hear of anybody using it either. Clearly some people do, but I don't get impression the LA subway is a default transportation system and as ingrained in to the culture there anywhere near like it is in NYC.
I was forced using trains for 10 years... you will not get me live into another one.
Deal with it. Classic trains just plain suck giant ass.
Deal with it. Classic trains just plain suck giant ass.
I am so going to buy this pickup.
(even more so (not possible) if he references Snow Crash or Disaster Area as other sources of influence...)
Nope. Not if you want to operate at a profit. If you're happy to rely on taxpayer subsidies, then sure, I guess it's a win... but taxpayer subsidies are unreliable, so it makes more sense to me to try for profit or at least breakeven.
You have to actually run up a spreadsheet separating out capital, fixed and variable costs to see why. You need high volume to cover the fixed costs, and even if capital costs are 1/10 of the current bloated costs, the capital costs are still *high*, and the fixed operational costs are actually quite high too.
This is why new toll roads go bankrupt; they can't get enough volume to cover the fixed costs.
(Why is it that failure to understand the difference between fixed and variable costs is the thing I keep running into over and over again?)
The key is, as usual, volume. Weirdly, Musk understands this when it comes to manufacturing, with his emphasis on producing as many cars as possible out of one factory, or having one highly efficient production line, rather than building lots of low-volume factories or lots of low-efficiency production lines... it's the same thing with transportation.
More tunnels on the same route is typically unhelpful; you end up bottlenecked at the entrances and exits. It's also extremely silly, financially speaking, to have five layers of tunnels on the same route if you can move the same number of people in one tunnel just by using higher-capacity vehicles.
One of the highest-capacity theoretical designs is kind of interesting. It's basically a grid of subways, a bunch running east-west in parallel, a bunch running north-south in parallel, and maybe diagonals as well. Passenger interchanges (via elevator) at every point where they cross. After four layers, to separate the north-south from the east-west, from the northwest-southeast from the southwest-northeast, you're not really gaining anything. Anyway, no city has ever really had this much demand for transportation except possibly Tokyo. My point regarding this is that you don't need lots of layers to maximize throughput if you have a clue. Making deeper tunnels just means longer trips to get to the surface.
This is not complicated stuff and Musk actually already knows a bunch of the principles behind it; he just hasn't been thinking clearly and hasn't bothered to spend any time studying urban geometry or urban planning.
Well, it is pretty new (started in the late 1980s) and some rather bizarre things (worries about boring through flammable tar pits!) meant that it's taken far too long to go through the densest corridor in the metro area. (This is NOT something Musk could have sped up; he had no way of preventing the fearmongering which led to a legislative ban on boring through the tar pit areas for decades.)
That said, the LA urban rail system is actually very heavily used; the only way to not meet someone who uses it is to not know a significant cross-section of people in LA. (Which would be unsurprising if you don't live in LA -- I haven't met anyone who uses the Tokyo subway, but I assume that's because I don't know any people from Tokyo.)
If you're in the Beverly Hills bubble, of course, you wouldn't meet the subway riders.
Most of the urban rail lines in LA run through predominantly nonwhite, non-rich neighborhoods. I don't think Musk knows a single person from South Central. Probably doesn't know any college students at USC either.
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Depth/ distance to objects is. However, you specifically said "binocular vision" which is a specific case of an approach to depth perception.
Boring doesn't adhere to the same route setup at subways. Many more points distributed in the region so the endpoint bottle neck is not the same (basement terminals at business and stores will still be less volume that block level aggregators)
If current subways are viable, and you have a 2x cost/person/mile advantage, how can you be un-profitable unless your are negative on variable costs?
Roads are not a good comparison due to maintenance requirements (weather and high mass loads) . Tunnel with limited access are near zero maintenance. Look at water mains for instance. Especially since the pods are self powered, no contacts to maintain.
What are the operating costs you envision?
Yeah, start going through the details on your entrance/exit proposals. Hint: they've *all* been tried historically. You haven't got something new.
Current subways largely *aren't* private-sector-financially viable, due to the excessive capital costs, and the subsidization of the competition. (There are exceptions in Japan and some other parts of Asia, which have less subsidization of roads and lower capital costs.)
You're doing idiot division, the sort of calculation I've been decrying for years in the Tesla context. I am NOT in the mood to go back to elementary-school-level laying this out one step at a time. Maybe I'll do it some other time, but for now I'm tired of dealing with people who do not do their homework.
No, they're not. Do your damn research.
Stupidest thing Musk says in the interview:
I will 100% guarantee that Tesla will not get to full all-circumstances self-driving next year. They may still be better than all the competition, but they won't have solved the general problem.
Still delusionally optimistic. How many years has he been saying he'll have this next year? 5? 10?
I will 100% guarantee that Tesla will not get to full all-circumstances self-driving next year. They may still be better than all the competition, but they won't have solved the general problem.
bhtooefr
Active Member
Musk specifically calling it a midsize SUV is interesting - midsize SUV means things like the Explorer, Pilot, and Highlander are the non-luxury competition, and those are solidly three-row. (Midsize luxury SUVs are often two-row though.)
Also, interesting that Tesla might do an electric bicycle. Depending on how good (and stealthy) it is, I might actually buy that (automaker-branded bicycles tend to be mediocre branding exercises, or some impractical demoware of carbon fiber technology or something, rather than actually good bicycles, though...) even though it's illegal to actually use here in Ohio (although some municipalities are warming up to them - the scooter sharing backlash caused Columbus to actually legalize and regulate e-bikes and e-scooters within municipal limits).
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