Of course the flying Tesla Roadster is a gimmick, but that sort of misses the point. It’s the tech flex! Which isn't a gimmick.Tesla's bulk business is about advanced technology from EV to self driving, but decided to create the most ridiculous manual drive supercar. Supercars are a gimmick almost by definition, based on how wild can you make them.The gimmick that can make the car literally fly, briefly, can make it corner like no other supercar and accelerate, literally like a dragster on a test track. It's got nothing to do with flying continuously, but having a car that will outperform every Lamborghini, Ferrari or McLaren with technology that they cannot replicate because it requires experience from space launches and computation that they don't have now nor will in future.So Porsche, Bugatti, Aston Martin just became legacy prestige brands, like Rolex, Richard Mille or Patek Philippe. These cars celebrate the bygone age and the baroque, physical complexity of the internal combustion engine just as mechanical watches do for non digital, complex time-keeping mechanisms.But they won't be faster, any more than a mechanical watch keeps better time than a Casio. They are now, de facto, mobile jewellery and no longer supercars with superlative performance. And this affects their ability to market the bulk business of mainstream European internal combustion engine cars.It's the end of an era of industrial era manufacturing.
H/T: David Galbraith. I like the comparison with watches. The classic analog, vs cheaper, more accurate quartz.
So, of course “Elon’s Has the Last Laugh” as Rich Lowry says.
In Lowry’s vid… honestly the cheek of Gavin Newsom and AOC! Who between them have destroyed more jobs than Elon has created in his whole life. Then dumping on Elon, who single-handedly has created nearly 200,000 jobs. And counting.
AOC’s signature “achievement” was blocking Amazon from setting up in NYC, depriving the city of tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.
Gavin’s signature “achievements” (plural) are to drive businesses out of California due to his high tax regime and suffocating regulations. The leavers include Tesla, hence Gav’s “Elon Bad” schtick.
Well done, Alex and Gav! Not.
