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The snake oil continues flowing

Whether you love him or hate him, everyone must admit that Elon Musk is the consumate showman.

Whether it's his outlandish claims in respect to delivering ground-breaking technology or his apparent fumbling nervous incompetence when making presentations to a crowd, Musk certainly comes across as somewhat "different" to your average businesman.

Recently however, it seems the wheels may have started wobbling a littleon the Musk snake-oil wagon.

Despite half a billion dollars being thrown at it, the Hyperloop appears to be dead.

For years now, Musk has been promising that the Hyperloop would revolutionise transport in the modern world. This "train in a vacuum tube" would enable supersonic travel at a fraction the cost of aircraft and in a fraction the time of even the fastest high-speed conventional train.

Musk's BS was so good that fellow entrepreneur Richard Branson even invested a princely sum in the concept -- and lost it all.

None of Musk's fabulous promises panned out, which was no surprise to anyone with even just a high-school understanding of science.

Alarm bells sounded in my head right from the get-go, when Musk claimed that he had invented this fabulous new transport system and that he was not going to patent it but instead was making the idea 'public domain' so that anyone could develop it.

Sorry Elon, you didn't invent this concept, it's been around for a century or more. The REAL reason you didn't patent it is because you didn't invent it, it wasn't novel and the amount of prior art was almost endless. What Elon did was what he always does... he takes something that already exists, brands it as his own and then hypes the crap out of it, making promises that are never delivered on time if at all.

Hyperloop officiall went bust a few weeks ago, that's no surprise. What is a surprise to me however, is just how calmly everyone is taking this. All those hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet with nothing to show and nobody's pissed off?

So what's next for Mr Musk?

Well he seems to have started refocusing on his robotics dreams.

From this technology commentator's perspective, the Optimus robot is almost comical in respect to the hype vs reality ratio.

Remember that Musk's first demonstration of the Optimus concept was a real person, dressed in lycra and dancing to music. Yeah, this didn't start well.

When the real Optimus was unveiled a while back it needed help just to stand and it could barely wave to the audience of Musk fanboys who, regarless, cheered the house down.

Last month, Optimus 2 was unveiled and we got to see the robot actually walking, squatting and holding an egg. This is all stuff that other robotics companies have been doing for many, many years. In fact some of the leaders, such as Boston Dynamics have a huge lead in this market with both their humanoid and dog-like robots being incredibly capable.

Take a look at the official Tesla Optimus Gen 2 launch from last month:

Note how human-like its movements are? There's a reason for that which I'll get to in a moment.

However, contrast what you saw above with the video below, from Boston Dynamics:

Wow... there's a *huge* difference!

Now watch this video of Optimus Gen 2 folding laundry -- pay particular attention to the right of the frame at the 31 second mark. Did you see what momentarily appeared in sight?

Yes, that's a robotic glove being worn by a person. The Optimus demonstration looks cool, until you realise that all you are seeing is a hi-tech puppet. There's a human operator just out of shot with a tracking suit and the robot is simply following the gestures and movements being performed by that person.

This is a world away from what Musk has been claiming the Optimus is capable of. I also note that there appears to be no copy of the original Optimus inveiling and associated promises on the Tesla YouTube channel. I wonder where that went?

Eventually people will wise-up to Elon's massive use of hype in respect to what are things that already exist but which he chooses to rebrand and somehow "invent" with ridiculous claims and unfulfilled promises.

Tesla full-self drive? When was that supposed to be available to the public? 2020?

How many rockets should Musk have landed on Mars by now?

The new Tesla Roadster is where?

Tesla solar roof tiles... are they actually delivering on the promise yet?

When Elizabeth Holmes made outrageous promises and failed to deliver in the timeframes she set for herself, she was jailed for fraud.

When Elon makes outrageous promises and fails to deliver on time (or at all in the case of Hyperloop), he's hailed as the second coming of Christ and the saviour of mankind.

I'm afraid I just don't get it.

And before someone emails me to say "but Tesla does make EVs and SpaceX is the pre-eminent purveyor of launch vehicles I would say "watch this space" -- the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

All of the above is, of course, just my honestly held and voiced opinion :-)

Finally... a note on yesterday's column in which I predicted that all vehicles in New Zealand would be moved to a "per Km" charge for using the roads. Well just hours after I wrote that column, the government announced that this is now indeed their intention.

Call me a prophet :-)

Carpe Diem folks!

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