> Why did Tesla work initially?

Becaues they were ~first to market - and honestly, as a tesla driver for the last 6 years - It's the best car I ever owned (including Toyota, Mazda, and domestics).

6 years ago, for the effective price of a Honda Accord, I was able to get a car with excellent AWD for NorEast winters, perfect weight distribution (previously drove a Miata for comparison), could beat ~95% 'super cars' in a straight line, and it got 140MPG.

6 years ago. And I've had 0 maintenance outside of tire / air filter changes since. There was nothing anything remotely like it on the market, and it still holds up today. That's incredibly compelling.

Then PedoDiver, and it's been downhill from there... I'll likely get an R3X when it comes out.

Tesla won because Elon is a great seller, the product is mediocre at best but I’ve heard many times from friends that it was the same quality as a Mercedes Benz, so the reality distortion field is very real.

And Americans in general don’t want electric cars for some reason. I’m happily driving my Buzz and charging on my solar panels instead of paying 5 bucks a gallon on diesel. The propaganda here is strong and people buy it.

They must have outcompeted Musk at intelligence and/or insanity with their dedication into maximizing production volume of liquid fueled rocket engines.

Tom Mueller was a VP of propulsion at TRW Inc., which, among numerous other things you know from textbooks, made the Apollo LM descent engine, as well as early Space Shuttle TDRS data relay system sats. Calling Mueller a guy interested with engines having issues with his bosses is like referring to Craig Federighi as a guy interested in designing his own laptop.

I guess now that everyone knows about Elon, and Elon himself probably becoming more paranoid from both age and after SpaceX years and exposure to Twitter infoflood without adequate mental immunity, on top of most people who'd be in position to meet him not being as smart and quietly lunatic as literal Old Space trained rocket scientists, the scheme of temporarily impinging ideas upon Musk so to securely attaching the funding for your own thing do not work so well anymore.

It always seems to be companies that Musk has more impulsive interactions with that seem to end up actioning both the good and the bad ideas. Twitter and Tesla being examples of this. It seems like SpaceXs longer term goals has worked out well for them.

I would think because the original founders spent a lot of time planning, researching, and designing combined with decent timing of Musk jumping in with money. Why else would Musk have bought them in the first place if they didn't have incredibly impressive ideas and engineering to sell? When the roadster originally came out, it was expensive, but also had a near 300 mile range which nobody else even came close to offering and boasted very impressive engineering and crash safety. And im sure a lot of that work was put into atleast the next 2 models released.

Of course the quality has fallen faster than the price over time, but initial impressions still hold on for a long time in general.

I think SpaceX's success is mostly down to throwing money at the problem. The US had tons of graduated aerospace engineers with limited places to go, and places they could go directly in aerospace fields were already committing their funding to established programs. SpaceX startup would of been a dream job for the top aerospace engineers because it was all fresh ground but with a far larger budget than 99.9% of startup aerospace companies. They weren't offered to build one piece of a rocket that may or may not get sold to NASA or someone 15 years down the line, they were offered to work on and put their mark on a completely new rocket design that was going to at the least be test launched. And im sure their early successes helped boost recruitment even further, combined with government contract to keep the money flowing.

We probably don't see many rising EV companies in the US because you need an ass-ton of capital to start an automotive company, and most people holding enough capital to do so know that try to sell cheap consumer cars that most people want is not really the highest margin business. Selling a few hundred or even a few thousand cars still leaves you with a mountain of capital requirements in front of you that your margins are going to have a really hard time climbing. And if you don't climb fast enough, good luck fighting established auto makers and their lawyers with every cent tied up into trying to scale and engineer.

How is Tesla falling apart? Cybertruck was a flop, but Model Y is still one of the best selling cars in the world, and very well reviewed.

I can't find one at the moment, but I recall seeing several interviews where people claim that SpaceX is structured with "handlers" or "stage managers" to keep Elon away from where the real work was being done. SpaceX has had Elon the longest, since the beginning, so they're just the most experienced with it. Though, now that people have discussed that publicly, I wonder if Elon ever caught on...