this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Their engineers and designers did the work. He was the money. At most he stirred up some attention.
Also, side note, why do these points always mention the engineers and designers doing the actual work, and almost never the assembly workers for example?
Usually I'd side with you but in this case, where the target was to introduce electric cars they weren't the ones making the difference. On the assembly floor it's just a job, they'd probably just have worked for Ford or Chevy building ICE cars as well.
VW had a hard time finding employees that wanted to take part in their qualification programs for assembly of their ID line in the beginning, very conservative community.
I met a test driver for Mercedes at a fast charger in 2021, he had an EQS test mule with him. Thought I'd ask some questions, got a tirade about all this electric shit won't work and how he prefers the proper S-Class test jobs. Very conservative bunch, indeed.
The challenge was to make people talk about it and to make them want one, and that required a vision more so than just solving the engineering challenges. Their choice to first make a sports car - the Roadster - didn’t come from the engineers.
Because electric cars were a relatively new concept that needed to be designed and prototyped. That’s a job done by engineers. Factory workers don’t really come in until mass production, after the engineering is done.
Okay, but my point was about changing people’s minds about it being cool and a product you’d want to own. Tesla’s strategy was to make a sports car (the first Roadster) to show that electric cars could compete with combustion engine cars and to make people want one.
The engineers who solved the challenges needed to achieve that didn’t come up with that vision - that came from the top. Of course, that was because those guys had the money and could therefore dictate the direction, but if they wouldn’t have made that choice electric cars would most likely be mass adopted quite a few years later. That’s what I’m talking about, and that’s why “engineers did the engineering work” isn’t an argument against my point.
Also, let’s be real; even now people talk about the engineers and designers being the driving force behind Tesla.
Divide and conquer by the rich. Pit white collar workers against blue collar workers so they don't collectively rise up against the real exploiters. White collar workers are told right from the start of university that they're on a better path and are better people than those bottom tier laborer serfs and that general attitude gets normalized even if you don't actually believe you're better, and it comes out without even explicitly intending to, which is precisely the point.
The engineers and designers were not the people who changed the perception of electric cars - which was needed to got us to where we are now. Both the actual founders and Musk were instrumental in pushing this.
Which was definitely needed, and which he does deserve credit for. He’s still a piece of shit regardless, but that doesn’t mean we should overlook and/or dismiss the part he actually did play.
Like yeah, you’re right about engineers and designers doing the actual engineering and designing work, but it’s a generic (though correct) dunk on Musk that has little to do with the point I’m making.
But that's like saying the engineers at Apple did all the work. But it would not have grabbed the zeitgeist without Jobs. And as much as I despise Musk you do need to give him credit for how he marketed Tesla and SpaceX. As the now is showing he was just making stuff up and lucked into some good decisions, but the accomplishment stands.