And what we need to learn from him!

Either people love him or hate him, but everyone has an opinion about him.

On Medium itself, there are tens of articles every day about him. I rarely have a very strong opinion against anyone, but I do have one against Elon Musk. I firmly believe that if he leaves Twitter, he might be more appreciated. But I guess, it would not matter to him what this stupid monk thinks of him — the monk who himself is a failed writer with only a handful of readers for his articles 😃.

My strong opinion against him is one of the reasons why I never invested in Tesla stocks. But we must give credit where it is due — and there is one thing I believe we all need to admire about Elon Musk.

The story goes back to 2014.

I was presenting my dissertation “How hydrogen is going to fuel the next generation of automobile vehicles?”

It was the time when electric cars had started making an appearance but no one was taking it seriously. It was more of a toy for the rich than an actual automobile (maybe it is still that way). During my presentation to an esteemed panel of researchers and industry professionals, one of them asked —

“So are you sure you can defend your thesis and that ‘Electric Cars’ are not the next generation automotive fuel we are looking at?”

I replied in a very confident manner — “I am pretty sure that we are nowhere even close to making the electric vehicle a household thing.”

To this I gave a very elaborate response, highlighting all the downsides of an electric vehicle, such as:
👉Unsuitability for long-range drives
👉Low power of electric cars as compared to diesel vehicles
👉Unsuitability for heavy-duty trucks
👉Need for a completely independent infrastructure
👉Need for a major breakthrough in battery technology to even think about electric vehicles in the near future

Everyone on the panel agreed with my logic and explanation. My dissertation was so well researched that I was awarded ‘Best Dissertation’ as well as an ‘Institute Medal’ for the same. Safe to say, there was some merit in my work.

Coming back to 2023 — and I could not have been more wrong.

The hydrogen vehicle industry has hardly made any progress, and literally, everyone is talking about Tesla these days. I look at my bullet point list of challenges in electric vehicle technology, and I still found all of them to be pretty valid!

Yet, there is one and only guy who has managed to change the entire narrative of the automobile industry.

Elon Musk had an entire industry against him which included the biggest names such as Toyota and BMW. Yet, he changed the direction of the winds. Not just that, every oil major company today is talking about electric vehicles and is installing charging stations rather than opening new petrol pumps. Every government is talking about green energy and how to bring more electric vehicles into the market.

Almost a decade later of my hypothesis, the hydrogen car is nowhere even close where I anticipated it to be, and each automobile company is busy chasing the EV category.

I could not have been more wrong!

Would any of this have been even remotely possible if Tesla was not there? Absolutely No!

By my own estimate, and considering the pace at which the energy and automobile industry moves — Tesla has advanced this industry by at least 50 years, if not more, in a very short span of time.

We might hate this man as much as we can, yet we must give credit where is due! And Elon Musk has single-handedly shown the world what electric vehicle technology can do!

But then again, I don’t think he would even be bothered to read this article 😃!

If you like my articles, please do subscribe to my stories and weekly newsletter so that you never miss one!