Elon Musk On Tesla’s Role In History, SolarCity, And Our Cleantech Future (VIDEO)

September 18th, 2013 by Zachary Shahan

For all you Elon Musk, EV, solar, and general cleantech fans, here’s a short video of Elon Musk talking about all of these matters:

h/t NewEnergyNews

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Tags: Elon Musk, SolarCity, Tesla, videos

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

Wayne Williamson

Cool to see him post on big think. These are some of the best videos I’ve seen….
Ivor O’Connor

I’ve seen/heard this. Many times. One of the problems with Elon Musk is that he repeats himself. Over-and-over-and-over again. It is as if he has prearranged sound snippets he must find a way to use to answer all questions. Perhaps he has worked with legal to determine these sound snippets. It’s good though that I agree with all the sound snippets!

Winston Churchill’s relatives apparently felt the same way. Saying Churchill would spend all his time locked away practicing to find ways of putting sound bites in to those few minutes he would have an audience. Churchill described it much more positively, saying he would spend an hour working on every minute of a speech he would give.

I guess it is impossible to stay out of trouble in the public if you don’t have a preapproved list of sound bites to use. So it is probably better that he continues to use these prearranged responses.

I’m a bit angry with him slipping his SpaceX launch this weekend. I guess I can wait until the 28th or 29th though…
- PaulScott58
  
  Amazing response, Ivor. You had an opportunity to write something positive about the world’s greatest living entrepreneur and all you could muster was some lame criticism about sound bites.
  - Ivor O’Connor
    
    Don’t get me wrong and think I do not have the highest respect possible for Elon. However when you have been watching him constantly for a few years you’ll start to get tired waiting for him to say something outside of the scripts he uses. Elon in my opinion has done incredible things and sees the world in much the same way as I do. He’s a perfect role model. I however would love to see him put his foot in his mouth, make mistakes, deviate from the script a little. So I can learn more!
Charles

Anyone who follows physics, has got to put Tesla right up there with Newton, Maxwell and Einstein. My personal opinion is that he perhaps had a better grip on the real electrical physical world than any one who has ever lived. After all, he gave us radio and our entire AC electrical world, especially the electrical motors found throughout everyone house. With a little assistance would have put us into the 22d century.
- Ivor O’Connor
  
  Unfortunately Tesla encountered this jerk called Edison who constantly worked on sabotaging him. However who can really tell if the troubles made Tesla invent more or less.
  
  Though sometimes I wonder if “great inventors” are actually great at merely implementing and then riding that wave out.
  
  For instance we have Musk. He has done a profound job of implementing existing technologies. Lesser people would have given up and failed. If you look closely at history I see lots of great inventors who were actually great facilitators…