And of those things we've been told, a high percentage of them have had to do with battery technology. Science is full of discoveries, science at scale doesn't always work out like we've hoped.

Everything I remember about the Jobs RDF was entirely about things like MacWorld Expo presentations. Selling lesser-performing products for more by claiming they did more with things like Photoshop bakeoffs, or with (claimed) style over substance. (I was a big long-term Mac user so I felt like Mac OS was enough of an advantage over Windows for a long time that it wasn't just style over substance.)

Musk just took it way further. When Jobs missed with the RDF it was on stuff like the G4 Cube being "cool" enough to make up for its issues. He wasn't promising miracles.