The fact his name is on the patents means literally nothing. I work at a company where a former employee put his name on patent filings when he had absolutely nothing to do with them and was not the inventor. Our department head was not at all happy about it when this was discovered, as I am sure you can imagine. Anyone can file a patent, and patents can also be amended.
As I understand it, it was in the contract when Musk took over Tesla, that he had the right to put his name on the patents even though he had nothing to do with inventing them. IMO, that's BS at best fraud at worst, and certainly pretending to be something he's not in any event. Tesla's were invented by the original founders of the company, not Musk.
If you want to play the "you should check under your own hood" game, fine. I know where my head is, do you?
Let's take Musk's hyperloop. Babylon 5 had that exact concept in at least two episodes in 1997. Its not a Musk original - by far. And why did he just drop that concept and farm it out to others to develop? There's nothing patentable there because it was in Babylon 5. No one can get a patent if even the idea has been in a public forum before.
And let's take Musk saying that he would be on Mars a few years ago, by this time. Where's that? Where it is, as I am sure you know since Musk is not on Mars, is in the wind with the bag of gas that Musk emitted from his various orifices in saying he would be on Mars. As I see it, Musk has a tendency to blurt out BS without ever considering what it would actually take. Musk could give a crap about whatever he says other than self-aggrandizing himself.
Yes patents and the copyright thereof can certainly be gamed, however the fact that no one is trying to take Musk or any part of his teams to court over the patents in question considering how preposterously valuable they are means that no one has a case. There is no smoking gun here simply conjecture and accusation.
Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, but Elon Musk brought the investment to the table that brought the Roadster project to fruition.
www.greencarreports.com
The Tesla roadster based mostly by component content on the Lotus Elise shares for all intents and purposes nothing with the Tesla model S and their subsequent models. There was nothing to Tesla before Musk came on board with funding. Let me be clear, there were two engineers from silicon valley with a dream and a pitch to make. Mush provided them the capital and took on duties designing the body of the car while they created the motors and electricals. This has been excruciatingly well documented over nearly the last 20 years. The two initial founders parted ways with Tesla over disagreements with Musk around 2009, 3 years before the launch of the model S. This is well known fact and again document across hundreds of pages and periodicals across the internet.
I'm asking you to take a step back and gauge your perspective because you're a genuinely respectful cat with views I don't always agree with but I respect your commentary and it provides a counter point to my views on things which is always important. I genuinely, honestly don't grasp the fact that folks have married themselves to this near religious belief that Musk must be up to no good or some type of schill. It simply does not fit the data, if he wanted to profit from a fraud then there a hell of a lot simpler ways to do it than to build a car company from scratch (or as near as makes no difference) in the 2000's. I'm honestly asking here as I don't get it, is is simply a matter of him suggesting fealty to the other political side? Like I don't get the mentality of US political discourse at the best of times but surely it can't simply be a quip about the excesses of a certain political party? Again literally asking here.
Hyperloop is most effectively compared to the vacuum tube systems used across office buildings throughout the 20th century (some places still use it but we have email now so it's just kinda quaint). You could view hyperloop as the beginning of the eventual move that took Musk and his companies out of California. Let met get this out there so it is clear, I've been to California and I'd live there tomorrow except the management is broken. I'm a child of the 80's and every Saturday morning cartoon and every cool thing of my youth came from California, I'm really quite sad that I'll never get to go to E3 but that's life. Now with that said, you cannot do business in California as it stands right now, they have gone so far as to try and decommission perfectly functional Nuclear power plants that have already paid back their sunk costs for no other reason than naked ideology and pandering. The days of California being the startup and innovation capital of the world are over...for now. The unmitigated disaster of High speed rail is talked about in engineering circles around the world, they've built an industry out of environmental protection. Hyperloop was a wake up call to a lot of entrepreneurs that the party was over but for Musk Tesla was already centered at the Freemont factory and they weren't in any place financially to pick up and move shop. That is one of the major reasons SpaceX is in Boca Chica, the primary reason is location as space flight is finicky like that.
The basic idea of something being in public is not enough to clear the bar of a patent filing as you do require a reasonable technical description of design and function (more if you expect it to withstand a court challenge). Fair use from artistic media recreation, reenactment or satire are not quite the same but I can see where you're going there.
The was never a serious time frame for humans on Mars, if you go back and watch any of the speaking engagements it is always said light heartedly with an obvious view toward optimism and aspiration. I would point out that in the time frame we're talking about SpaceX went from the dream of a reusable booster to hundreds of successful retrievals, they built and have extensively tested the largest (by mass) man made object ever to take flight and damn near got the bloody thing into low orbit. They've won multiple NASA contracts including being the first private company to ferry crews to orbit. Like am I missing something here? This is a categorical list of some of the most preposterously difficult undertakings any human has ever even considered and they've been successful, and when they fail they make fun of themselves to boot! Your argument seems to be he's not on Mars yet so the fact that they've redefined the state of the art in private aerospace while doing all the other things is a failure? I'm not trying to put words in your mouth I'm genuinely asking if you see it all as a fraud because they aimed for a distant planet and have only redefined how we go about orbital travel thus far while Mars is still a ways off. Though starship has on paper the capability to do it.
I'm trying to understand your view point but from my perspective it appears that you're ignoring or at least glossing over things that to anyone else are true hammer blows of accomplishment. Yes he's a cocky mother and as a species we need cocky mothers or we're never going to get anything done. I feel like you haven't actually watched a long form factor interview with Musk as there's no "self aggrandizing" to speak of, joking yes, self deprecation and bad puns also yes, but mostly a genuine sense that the dude gets just how ridiculously difficult it is to build something. Even more so when your products almost universally makes everyone's lives better while being cheaper and more efficient, that just shows up the ineptitude of the competition and they REALLY don't like that! Fords CEO Jim Farley had the guts and self confidence to state just how far ahead Tesla is in multiple interviews after they inked a deal with Tesla for access to their chargers which shows the strength of his character. Also Tesla created a charging network (which was subsidized in large part by US govt. EV tax credits) in less than a decade as well as a charger that is more efficient to produce, easier to use and more reliable than the one the US government created with millions in tax dollars and then Tesla open sourced the patent so other makers could use it.
The further this story goes on the harder it is to make claims against Musk and his companies, the simple truth is they're making amazing strides in every bloody direction and it's making a lot of people jealous. This in turn leads to a cottage industry of negative press as anything with Musk's name, likeness or a vague reference to his companies has a decent likelihood of netting a viral story for their engagement numbers. I always try to use 5 sources to limit spin on anything I choose to talk about, usually this includes but is not limited to Forbes, Bloomberg, CBC, BBC and Al Jazeera. If those 5 agree on anything it's fairly certain to be accurate.
Anyways, I genuinely enjoy sparing with you as you're a good egg and have a perspective I can't have. I genuinely, honestly don't get the Musk hate but now my fingers are sore so it's time to go play some more Quake 4 on xbox 360 because I'm feeling a lil 2005 nostalgic this evening.
Perhaps you'll appreciate the hilarity in this -
