Elon Musk’s Companies Used to Be Really Innovative

With all the hatred directed towards Elon Musk due to his political views and involvement in DOGE government spending cutting program, one can forget how innovative his businesses once were.

Remember, it was his businesses that brought the first really-good electric car with several innovations in design such as single-pour aluminum frames, touch screen controls, self-driving. It was his businesses that brought the world reusable-rockets, which in first fifty years were considered disposable, jettisoned to the oceans after launch, lowering the cost of sending satellites and people into outer space. It was his businesses which brought StarLink Internet service to millions in remote areas, with much better service then competitors, namely HughesNET.

There is a fair bit of evidence though that his companies weren’t as innovative as they were after they starting bringing in the profits. They got fat and lazy, as did their CEO and biggest investor, Elon Musk. It seems like in the late 2010s, Musk became more obsessed with moon-shots like self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and the CyberTruck. Then he got into right-wing politics, first by purchasing Twitter in a hostile take-over, and then becoming the right-handed man for the Trump campaign and later his head of DOGE. Why try to excel when you are raking in the big bucks? It seems like hubris which often does in highly-successful entities got to the core of Elon Musk. Younger, more nimble businesses will likely gain on his losses, while capitalism destroys the once powerful for in favor of more innovative.