Sunday, January 12, 2014

TED Talks | Day 10

 
Summary:
Entrepreneur Elon Musk is a man with many plans. The founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX sits down with TED curator Chris Anderson to share details about his visionary projects, which include a mass-marketed electric car, a solar energy leasing company and a fully reusable rocket.
 
Key Points:
  • Sustainable energy is the biggest problem we have this century
  • mid level electric car comes with lifetime free charging on super chargers - charges in 20-30 minutes
  • SolarCity - we are already a solar powered system as all earth systems depend on the sun.
    • solar power once installed just keeps working
    • to make it feasible, get the cost of infrastructure low
    • solar will beat natural gas, it must as natural gas is not sustainable
    • premise is no money down, utility bill decreases. SolarCity raises a chunk of capital from a company/partner, charges the homeowner a monthly fee that is still less than utility bills. Essentially, SolarCity is a giant distributed utility.
  • Elon sold PayPal to fund SpaceX with a goal to expand rocket technology to have a reusable rocket in order for humans to be a space faring society
  • Question? How does one person innovate such huge projects from start to finish?
    • To do something new - boil down to the fundamental truths and reason from there.
    • Discover new things that are counter intuitive to current thinking.
    • Pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it.

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