I can count plenty of incredibly ambitious announcements from them that have turned out amazing! In fact, they are an outlier in how many they have challenges they have taken on and succeeded in.

[x] Partially reusable rocket that dropped cost to orbit by an order of magnitude. And no, the space shuttle (while an amazing piece of engineering), doesn't really count. It cost a billion+ to refurbish and did nothing to make space more accessible. Now we have businesses that exist purely because the Falcon 9 exists. Heck, the entire new space industry got validated (and hence got investment) due to SpaceX's success.

[x] Returning human spaceflight capability to the US at a fraction of the price, using the same reusable rocket platform after the old defense primes failed to do so. And then making it cheap enough that it has now also flown about half as many private missions as it did for NASA.

[x] Global satellite constellation providing gigabit-scale internet with 10000+ satellite (once written off by "experts" as yet another "incredibly ambitious project" that will never happen).

[x] Commercializing and bringing down the cost of electric cars to the point where they are actually a viable option now (unlike the compliance cars made by OEMs 10 years ago).

[x] Building the largest rocket to ever exist that now has a clear path to being the first ever fully reusable launch vehicle.

[x] A BCI implant that has now brought back mobility and communication ability to multiple patients with debilitating conditions.

Given that each of these were things that no one had done successfully before, or had failed spectacularly - I don't really care that they took longer than initially planned.

There is, in fact, a graveyard here. It is mostly filled with confident predictions that his companies would never do the things they have since done.

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UltraSane 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

SpaceX is the most successful Musk company because it is the one he has the LEAST direct involvement with. Compare SpaceX to how Musk is causing Tesla to crash and burn.

Gwynne Shotwell is the actual reason SpaceX is as successful as it it.

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wat10000 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Both things are true. Musk's companies have done quite a few remarkable things people didn't think were possible, and Musk overpromises to an absurd degree and has left a trail of abandoned projects in his wake.

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modeless 5 hours ago | parent [-]

People often cite Hyperloop but he explicitly said he wasn't going to build it himself. They often cite FSD but it is far from abandoned and is driving my car today. What other projects are you thinking of which are actually abandoned? The Tesla solar roof is the biggest one I can think of, I think it's fair to count it as abandoned. I guess the project to make building bricks out of Boring tunnel dirt didn't pan out either, seems pretty minor though.

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zzrrt 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572 "Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins." (July 2017, years after saying he wouldn't build it himself.) Technically it's not a commitment to build, but any other leader in the market would be considered to have failed if they made such a statement and then quietly abandoned it.

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modeless 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah under that post he also says "If you want this to happen fast, please let your local & federal elected representatives know" and "Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly". Not just "technically" not a commitment to build. Clearly dependent on other factors.

Go ahead and count it as "abandoned" if you want. He did talk about building a Hyperloop and is not currently pursuing it directly. But I think failing to win required government approval/funding is a bit different than capriciously giving up on an idea, and The Boring Company itself is far from abandoned. Very different from the solar roof which is unambiguously a commercial failure.

	▲	zzrrt 35 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Feels a bit like saying I can provide lots of free electricity, if someone just gives me some perpetual motion machines. Political viability is as important to building something like this as the laws of physics are. TBC's continued existence isn't very relevant; the point was they/he have yet to build a lasting, full-scale hyperloop, despite his statement they would try. He stopped trying, and I'm fairly sure government approval is far from the only significant obstacle to making a functional and profitable hyperloop anyway. I might even let go of the hyperloop concept, if they built something else of DC-NYC scale that beats the alternatives in a few measurements.
	▲	wat10000 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That would be reasonable if not for the BS “verbal govt approval” bit.

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YetAnotherNick 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Boring company maybe? It's not abandoned, but they likely gave up the idea of an underground system of roads under a city, and just focus on single project individually like traditional construction company.

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modeless 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's far from abandoned. They're actively building TBMs at their factory and tunneling in Vegas and it's pretty different from any other transportation project I'm aware of.

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wat10000 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

DC to Baltimore tunnel, LA tunnel network, Chicago airport tunnel. New Roadster, possibly Tesla Semi. Battery swap stations. “Alien dreadnaught” factory with no humans on the production line. Dragon 2 propulsive landing. Self-driving ought to qualify at least partially, because although the project continues and is doing quite well, a huge number of cars were sold with hardware that was promised to be capable of it and turned out not to be.

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modeless 4 hours ago | parent [-]

TBC is still pursuing government permits and contracts to build tunnels. Not having succeeded in every case is not the same as abandoning the project.

The new roadster is delayed, not abandoned. It's known to be in active development and is very likely to be demoed this year. Wrong timeline but not abandoned.

The Tesla semi is on the road daily and the factory to build large quantities is almost complete. They're hosting a "factory inauguration" event next month. Certainly not abandoned.

Tesla has already committed to replacing hardware as necessary on cars that purchased FSD in the past so that they can run unsupervised as promised, after Tesla has unsupervised FSD working. Certainly the timeline was wrong but again, clearly not abandoned.

	▲	zzrrt 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The DC tunnel was billed as a hyperloop, so it's not good faith to both excuse him for never intending to build one and also claim it takes time and will eventually succeed.
	▲	wat10000 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Did TBC ever pursue government permits and contracts for the DC tunnel? The nonsense "verbal govt approval" they mentioned makes me skeptical of the whole thing. New Roadster is over six years late and has basically gone silent at this point. Maybe it'll still come, just extremely late, but I'm very skeptical. Semi might be real, we'll see. If cars that were built with AP2/2.5/3 get upgraded to unsupervised FSD, I'll eat my hat. They don't even know what hardware will be needed yet and some of those cars are now a decade old.

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zzrrt 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wait, is hyperloop not a Musk failure because he never said he would build it, or is it not a failure because his company is still building it? You've said both.

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modeless 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What they're building in Vegas is not a hyperloop.

	▲	zzrrt 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I see my logical flaw and agree (to the specific arguments about tunnels made in this subthread), though I made an adjacent post showing Musk later expressed intent to build a hyperloop in DC, so you can't also say he never claimed to try.

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miltonlost 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Can't believe you forgot about Mechahitler and the CSAM creation robot! And the AMAZING hyperloop! And FSD is coming next year now (back when he said it in 2016, and every year since)!

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DarmokJalad1701 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> And the AMAZING hyperloop

Wow! Was there a Musk company dedicated to building that? Where is the press release announcing it? Surely it must have been a big deal if you are so excited about it's failure!

> And FSD is coming next year now

It is already here. You can hail one right now in multiple cities.

And in my own car, I use it every day and have for 2+ years. For the $3k I paid in 2019, I definitely got what I paid for. It's also gotten dramatically better since then. It drives me to and from work every day without having to so much as touch the wheel. And there is no 2018/19 non-Tesla that can do what it does.

So yes, by all means, keep listing the things you think prove Musk is a fraud. You're mostly just making my point for me.

	▲	miltonlost 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I notice you ignored the child porn and revenge porn maker that he wanted and demanded
	▲	zzrrt 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Was there a Musk company dedicated to building that? The Boring Company. Are you saying if Musk or his company essentially gives up on building something he hyped for years, it's not a failure?