> If all cars are electric, how we'll be affected by increased electric demand? This will mean increased CO2 production with geothermal production, and increased nuclear waste to be disposed off with nuclear production. Will we have to build more dams? Will we instead use the same dinosaur oil to to produce electricity, canceling out the gain?
The answers to those questions are simple if you care to look for them - or even listen to the "SV messiah". Sure increased electricity demand may mean upgrades to infrastructure, but this happens anyway as peoples' dependence on electrically-powered devices grow. Nuclear waste is an utter non-problem, it only seems so because of unfounded fears. The fact is we can manage it. As for using fossil fuels, even that outcome would be a huge win - power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines in cars, so even by just centralizing the burning of that oil you're saving lots of energy.
I'm not going to take a position on "statistics manipulation" - I haven't seen anything besides few HNers jumping to conclusions, and I recall that the actual outcome turned out to favour Tesla's position even more. But maybe I'm missing something, I'll happily read up if you could point me to a good source.
Circling back to the point about companies - what you described is the mechanism how companies work. What I was talking about is the reason to found them. As it is today, most companies are what I fondly call "toilet-paper companies" - ones that couldn't care less about what they're actually doing as long as it turns in profit, and would gladly switch to selling toilet paper if it was more profitable than their current operations. Tesla and SpaceX are the rare kind of companies for which their stated goal is the terminal value, not an instrumental one. That's why their decisions keep baffling people - because we're not used to see businesses actually driven by ideas (as opposed to saying so for PR benefit) very often.
The answers to those questions are simple if you care to look for them - or even listen to the "SV messiah". Sure increased electricity demand may mean upgrades to infrastructure, but this happens anyway as peoples' dependence on electrically-powered devices grow. Nuclear waste is an utter non-problem, it only seems so because of unfounded fears. The fact is we can manage it. As for using fossil fuels, even that outcome would be a huge win - power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines in cars, so even by just centralizing the burning of that oil you're saving lots of energy.
I'm not going to take a position on "statistics manipulation" - I haven't seen anything besides few HNers jumping to conclusions, and I recall that the actual outcome turned out to favour Tesla's position even more. But maybe I'm missing something, I'll happily read up if you could point me to a good source.
Circling back to the point about companies - what you described is the mechanism how companies work. What I was talking about is the reason to found them. As it is today, most companies are what I fondly call "toilet-paper companies" - ones that couldn't care less about what they're actually doing as long as it turns in profit, and would gladly switch to selling toilet paper if it was more profitable than their current operations. Tesla and SpaceX are the rare kind of companies for which their stated goal is the terminal value, not an instrumental one. That's why their decisions keep baffling people - because we're not used to see businesses actually driven by ideas (as opposed to saying so for PR benefit) very often.