An automotive commentator about to post confession how he misjudged Musk. Anything he left out?

EDITORIAL On Observing the Phenomenon we Know As Elon Musk




Mea Culpa. I think that's Latin for "I'm guilty."
And I am , of the sin of not recognizing a sea change in the auto industry that took place right in front of me.
On my watch as it were.
I've always been an internal combustion guy, more so when I moved to California from Michigan and got rides in cars like a Ferrari P250 and Ferrari GTO.
I was seduced by the siren song of the V12.
But a few years ago I kept reading about this upstart South African immigrant, Elon Musk, who wanted to make an electric car. When it first appeared I could see ir was naught but a Lotus converted to electric.
A novelty, I thought, good for a niche but not significant in terms of the entire auto industry. It made no dent in Detroit's plans.
Back then I wasn't yet aware of what a hot property Elon Musk was. A lad from South Africa, who back there, old his first software program (for a game) at age 12.
Part of my ignorance, my failure to see this change he instigated, coming, I say, was due to my background. I am from Detroit. I worked in advertising there, writing ads for performance cars like the Camaro Z/28.
I thought the executives who lived in those lakeside mansions in Bloomfield Hills had a handle on it, could turn the Detroit auto industry's guns to counter any threat. from abroad. I never thought it would come from within. I mean who would be dumb enough to go up against GM or the Big Three in total?
Now with the recent Hertz order of not just 10,000 Teslas, not just 50,000 but 100,000 cars, I can see Tesla is a game changer for the entire American auto industry, Because the only thing holding the Tesla back, besides its high price, was not enough people had experienced driving one.
All the Tesla owners I have met are The Converted Ones. The ones Not Going Back.
Only recently did I investigate more Elon Musk's approach to building the car. There was a lot of internal resistance in me there, because I am the son of a UAW worker--a European immigrant-- who worked at Ford in the 1930s, building Model As. I thought Musk was trusting robots too much but you have only to go to You Tube and watch them at work inside a Tesla factory to see the cars being built largely without people. People, you see , don't want to work 24 hours a day and on holidays. I would almost say the pace of building Teslas is relentless compared to the days when I toured auto factories and saw people building cars.
And then I've studied Musk more--in relation to the growth of his "side hustle," building rockets at Space X. I never knew an executive in Detroit who could handle being a kingpin in two industries simultaneously. Up against the formerly richest man in the world Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Musk shot past him with superior spacecraft. He sees a need and builds something to meet that need. Example: A lot of the third world can't get wireless? No problem, Just put a ring of satellites around the world so even in the jungles of the Mato Grosso, a native can dial up Google.Musk is doing that.
So , in my role as a co-host of a radio show (Autotalk, broadcast on KUCR FM RIverside 88.3 6:30 Thursdays) last week, on the show, I confessed that I had underestimated Elon Musk. True, I can still say disparagingly that electric car sales at this point in time, November 2021, are less than 3% in the US, But he has created a product that is almost irresistible to the intelligentsia.
More important, though, he has changed the American auto industry in the 21st Century as much as Henry Ford did in the 1920s. He has shown the way. shined a light into the darkness and said "follow me."
Oh, I had many clues along the way, which I chose to ignore. Like the first inkling I had that he was on to something was when I saw a dashboard video from a Tesla in Holland on You Tube where the Tesla was following another car on the freeway at around 55 mph. The Tesla kept slowing when I could see no problem with the car ahead--no brake lights. Then the car ahead of the Tesla hit a car stopped on the freeway and both cars spun around to a dead stop, The Tesla, well back of them, slowed to a stop and the driver went to give assistance. I was blown away. The Tesla had somehow seen underneath the car ahead and knew there was trouble up ahead and slowed down. The Tesla had anticipated the accident before it happened.
Some of Elon's other ventures-- digging tunnels for fast transport subsurface , the flame throwers, the colonization of Mars--I'm not on board yet but I can say this--I'm a little more open now to those guys that come out of nowhere with a fresh idea....