While I think just about anybody could do a better job with US car companies than the current management (or of the past 20 years), I don't know that Elon Musk has proven he has the ability to run a car company effectively, either.
Tesla has consistently delivered late, made numerous financial and legal missteps, and they've underestimated (dramatically) the cost of producing their cars (the Tesla roadster is more than twenty grand more expensive than the early price estimates). That's not to say they aren't learning fast enough, or that they won't build a great car company...I just think it's early to suggest that Elon Musk is a genius at running a car company at this point in time.
To be fair, this has absolutely nothing to do with Musk actually trying to run Detroit and everything with getting some free press for saying that he should.
The only reason Tesla is still in business is a massive $350 million U.S. government loan. Tesla is just as bankrupt as Chrysler and GM but has better PR and lobbyists. They are exhibit A in America's new crony capitalism-- US taxpayers give a loan while a bunch of millionaire investors and Daimler get all of the upside.
But they're not successful yet, that's the point. (Of course, this is under the crazy assumption that we're defining business "success" as turning a profit)
"relative" to what? Relative to Toyota, Tesla is not successful. Relative to, say, General Motors, Tesla has, so far, successfully avoided bankruptcy. Tesla has built cars and sold a few of them, but they are years away from making money at it. Which is OK, of course...car building is capital intensive and takes a long time. But the jury is still out on whether Tesla will succeed or fail. I just think it takes massive chutzpah for Musk to present himself as someone that knows the answers to fixing Detroit, when his own car company has a lot of blunders in its history (which it may have learned from, and it may very well turn out to be a great car company...but, as I said, nobody knows that yet).
I could be remembering my history wrong, but wasn't Paypal successful because they didn't do any of the stuff Musk suggested when Confinity and X.com merged?
Was he the guy that pushed for a mass-migration to Windows for PayPal infrastructure (despite the fact that the existing UNIX infrastructure was working fine)? If so, I retract anything nice I've ever said about him. The man is clearly an idiot.
It wasn't necessarily that simple. They were trying to merge a company with a Windows infrastructure with a company that had a Unix infrastructure and were trying to decide on one infrastructure moving forward. But yes, he was the one pushing for Windows.
Definitely an idiot. This was way back in the 90's. Windows was simply not an acceptable substitute for a server operating system back then (though it might be today, for some classes of problem). I'm actually not able to find Max Levchin's deeper technical discussion of the issue (which I remember being a pretty compelling case, and I read it a couple of times back then), but I did find several references from others discussing it, including pg:
PayPal only just dodged this bullet. After they merged with X.com, the new CEO wanted to switch to Windows—even after PayPal cofounder Max Levchin showed that their software scaled only 1% as well on Windows as Unix. Fortunately for PayPal they switched CEOs instead. - http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html
I think what is simple is that Musk ignored technical reality based on a personal whim, and seemingly let personal conflicts get in the way of sound technical decision-making for a multi-million (soon to be billion) dollar business.
That typo is an interesting coincident given the recent lawsuit by Eberhard (one of Tesla's two founders who was ousted by Elon). It seems like Musk is using Wired to publicly disparage him: “I said .. 'There will be no assholes.' I fired someone for being an asshole. And I only had to do that once, actually.”
While I'm no fan of Detroit's management this Silicon Valley in-fighting is definitely not what they need.
Well "Detroit" is really 2, or maybe 3, different "holding" companies, making up about a half dozen brands (give or take after everything shakes out).
Additionally, 1/2 of "Detroit", Ford Motor Company, while not posting stellar returns has managed to stay viable and not take any government bailout money. We will see what the future brings...
So, what he is really saying is "Let me run GM", a job for which he is fully underqualified and unprepared for.
Paypal was a pretty big success for him. It is unclear if that was more skill or luck, although it seems like it lands on the side of luck if I had to pick one or the other. Paypal also gained a rightfully earned reputation, even before ebay bought them, for having fairly horrible customer service. Maybe Elon's plan for fixing GM is just to randomly deny valid warranty claims and seize customer cars without warning (you could file a dispute process though, if you really wanted to).
Yeah, this whole thing is a PR stunt, but it kind of makes him (IMO) come off looking like an ass. I might feel differently if his tenure at Tesla has produced something that has a chance of being a free standing viable car company, but that is so far not a foregone conclusion.
My biggest complaint about Tesla and the reason Musk is not ready to 'Run Detroit' is that we have not seen manufacturing innovations from Tesla, and it seems they are building a similar infrastructure to the Detroit.
Compare that with Fisker who is designing and marketing cars while leaving manufacturing and distribution to those with expertise.
What other modern consumer brand manages the entire eco-system from design to sale? (somewhat ignoring the fact that the Tesla Roadster parts was sourced by Lotus, the Tesla sedan I believe is completely an in house product).
apple isn't doing their own manufacturing, they outsourced that years ago.
Apple is a design & marketing company, much like Fisker. (sure they have some of their own 'flagship' stores, but I doubt the majority of Macs/ipods/iphones are purchased through these outlets.
Sounds like he'd run the US auto industry even deeper into the ground. He has the same broken mentality of telling consumers what they want and not learning from what they are actually buying. He just happens to believe that it's electric cars consumers want whereas the old US auto industry believed it was gigantic SUVs and hideous station wagon/mini-van abominations even when the market was changing under their feet. For the most part affordable/dependable 35-40MPG cars are completely acceptable to people. Most people don't need 100MPG hybrids or 100% electric cars and most won't pay the premium for them.
I'd love an electric with 100 mile range, provided recharging after partial discharge didn't compromise battery life. That would suit me just fine. Once economy of scale starts working with the battery tech, this will work out better economically for a large fraction of consumers.
Even better, EVs with 100 mile range and an optional petro fuel or propane generator module to turn it into a series hybrid on long trips. I only need the long-range capability of an internal combustion engine occasionally. Why do I want to pay for the overhead of hauling such equipment around when I'm just commuting or running to the store? Essentially, that's what many of us do with our internal combustion cars. We drive a heavier, noisier, over-capable long range vehicle that's less appropriate for the short neighborhood trip, just so we have the long range capability available, even though we use it only occasionally.
Tesla has consistently delivered late, made numerous financial and legal missteps, and they've underestimated (dramatically) the cost of producing their cars (the Tesla roadster is more than twenty grand more expensive than the early price estimates). That's not to say they aren't learning fast enough, or that they won't build a great car company...I just think it's early to suggest that Elon Musk is a genius at running a car company at this point in time.