this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
751 points (96.3% liked)
Technology
59381 readers
2535 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I despise the man, but there’s an argument to be made that Tesla accelerated the adoption of electric cars by at least five years, compared to what it otherwise would’ve been. I know he didn’t found Tesla, but I do feel like he played a pivotal role in changing people’s minds about electric cars.
Their engineers and designers did the work. He was the money. At most he stirred up some attention.
Also, side note, why do these points always mention the engineers and designers doing the actual work, and almost never the assembly workers for example?
Because electric cars were a relatively new concept that needed to be designed and prototyped. That’s a job done by engineers. Factory workers don’t really come in until mass production, after the engineering is done.
Okay, but my point was about changing people’s minds about it being cool and a product you’d want to own. Tesla’s strategy was to make a sports car (the first Roadster) to show that electric cars could compete with combustion engine cars and to make people want one.
The engineers who solved the challenges needed to achieve that didn’t come up with that vision - that came from the top. Of course, that was because those guys had the money and could therefore dictate the direction, but if they wouldn’t have made that choice electric cars would most likely be mass adopted quite a few years later. That’s what I’m talking about, and that’s why “engineers did the engineering work” isn’t an argument against my point.
Also, let’s be real; even now people talk about the engineers and designers being the driving force behind Tesla.