Elon Musk—Revolutionizing the Transportation Industry
It has been exciting to watch technology revolutionize every industry, especially in the past decade. Every such revolution has one or a few players who are visionaries in leveraging the technology to align with their domain—a Steve Jobs in the mobile space, a Jeff Bezos in the e-commerce world, or very recently Elon Musk in the transportation industry.
Elon Musk is cofounder and CEO of Tesla Motors. Although Tesla is still a new entrant in the automotive world, it has already created a niche for itself and has seen its profits rise and stock price soar in 2013. That said, it has an uphill challenge to establish itself as a mature automobile player, especially with all the turmoil the industry has been facing because of the recession years and battles with existing auto groups and dealers. According to Elon, the challenge for Tesla is not due to lack of demand but to meeting the demand it has.
Tesla has had its history of ups and downs in the past ten years. But now that Tesla has a position of its own in the marketplace, Elon has created a lot of interest and excitement with his most recent Hyperloop project. Claimed to be the fifth generation in transportation, this proposed airborne solution is expected to leverage technology to lead a major revolution in transporting people at the fastest speed possible and at a very reasonable and affordable cost.
Although Elon had engineers work on and create the model plans in the past nine months, it is Elon who has had this Hyperloop thought in the works for the past two years. Elon is so closely involved in this project that he said he would build a demonstration prototype himself. Obviously this level of involvement will make a huge difference.
It's exciting to watch visionaries take their projects from an ideation to a reality phase, but there are always critics who question the feasibility of new projects. And the Hyperloop project from SpaceX is no exception. Ever since the plans for Hyperloop were revealed, there have been posts about the project’s flaws—such as cost, technical feasibility, Elon’s commitment, etc. Elon has hinted that he may just work on Hyperloop at a sub-scale version and have someone else drive the project in full swing down the line.
It is exciting to keep track of the thought process behind such a revolutionizing move and the technology that is fueling such radical inventions.
