Last week, we asked Electrek readers a simple whether they believed that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, after becoming the world’s first trillionaire, would finally make good on the ambitious promises he spent years making about accelerating sustainable energy, delivering unsupervised full self driving, building useful humanoid robots, and ultimately making humanity a multiplanetary species. After more than 3,300 responses, here’s what you told us.
For the majority of Tesla’s early history, Musk had claimed the company’s mission was, “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” framed the end goal as something bigger than building electric cars. He talked about covering roofs with solar panels, building batteries to stabilize clean energy grids, and (eventually) using Tesla’s success to help fund humanity’s first missions to Mars (in the first half of 2019).
That vision was undeniably ambitious, and many early Tesla fans bought into its progressive idealism – but Elon’s decision to take his personal politics public have given many of those supporters pause. Today, with Musk’s personal fortune hovering over $900 billion, it seems like a shortage of capital, if it ever was ever the limiting factor, is no longer a problem. With that in mind, we asked readers whether they believe more money would finally translate into delivering on those old promises.
By the numbers
The vast, sweeping majority of Electrek readers responded with either a “no” or a “not even a little” answer, which suggests a consensus that whatever was holding Elon back from delivering on his early promises, it wasn’t money.
“Back when Elon was a measly $80-$100 billionaire he was given a challenge to contribute just a small portion of his fortune to completely end world hunger and he chose not too,” wrote a reader going by Weezedog1. “He has the money to completely change the world for the better and he chooses not to. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about his character (notwithstanding all the other data out there about his character) I don’t know what will.”
Others were more direct in their judgement …
A good person might try to make things right. Elon is not a good person, and he does not try to be one.
… while others, still, focused not on Elon himself, but on the fallout of Hoarding Disorder.
Hoarding more wealth than the combined wealth of 3.8 billion people isn’t a goal, it’s a disease.
Whether those comments are fair or not, they reflect a noticeable shift in sentiment among many who, a decade ago, would have focused any conversation about Musk on his companies’ technology and the mission of accelerating sustainable energy. Today, the conversation is just as likely to focus on his public persona, right-wing political activity, and whether his and his companies’ actions still align with the goals that attracted many early supporters in the first place.
And, while this was an informal poll of a relatively small sampling of the public, the results so reflect the opinions of people who chose to participate – and, among them, the margin was decisive: nearly eight in ten said they don’t believe additional wealth will lead Musk to deliver on the early promises that helped define Tesla’s early years.
Whether Musk proves them wrong, ultimately, is up to him.
Original content from Electrek.
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