It almost seems unbelievable that one man could have so much influence on the future of this planet however, Elon Musk really is shaping the way the world will operate in the years to come.
Being elbow deep in a number of key industries, Elon Musk is pushing the envelope in the technologies that have the biggest impact on our lives. The companies under his umbrella are changing the way that we access power, communicate and travel from A to B, which in turn will drastically change how we live entirely.
Today we look at how Elon Musk is building our future through eight of his industry-leading business ventures.
Tesla
First up we have Tesla the automotive company that recently overtook Toyota as the world's most valuable car maker. Tesla benefits from the biggest portion of Musk's time and the results really do speak for themselves. While Tesla has achieved in the past 17 years since being founded it's all but unrivaled in the industry and the EV kingpin is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact Tesla's development and progression rate is only increasing as the company builds momentum which is making for almost unimaginable leaps in battery material and driver aid technologies.
Musk and Tesla are proving that big risks equal big rewards which is an ethos that is hopefully rubbing off on other companies as well now. Tesla's role to play on our future spans way further than simply building better more affordable electric vehicles. Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving technology which is without a doubt a feature that will be present on all future cars. Musk even believes that self-driven vehicles will eventually be outlawed due to the many human error safety concerns. Tesla is also working on the next generation of semi-trucks, is building car batteries that will operate for a million miles and is already expanding their repertoire of Gigafactories which have set new standards in car manufacturing and efficiency.
Solarcity
Solarcity was acquired by Tesla back in 2016 and the solar panel manufacturer has been playing a key role in Musk's goal of getting the planet carbon neutral. Ever since Musk says that getting the planet carbon neutral is technologically viable right now and that it is essential for the human race's longevity. For this reason Musk brought the failing company out of the ashes pumped in some funds and expanded the product offering. While there are a ton of solar panel manufacturers out there what sets Solarcity apart from the rest is that they are targeting the regular consumer as well as big businesses and the wealthy.
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Solarcity's solar roof tiles for example can be installed quicker than any competitor and costs around the same as an ordinary roof solar panel combo. By increasing accessibility, Elon Musk is leveraging Solarcity's products towards being available to the masses resulting in complete solar city tiled roofs cropping up on new builds all around the US. By partnering solar city's solar panels or tiles with a Tesla power wall homeowners can also store the excess solar power that they capture to use later charge up their vehicles and even sell to the national grid for a profit. A huge ideal that Musk is bringing to the future is versatility and the adaptability of products. Investments such as solar panels will not only save you money but make you money in the future as well.
Hyperloop
Predictions of what transport will look like in the future always seem to take place in the sky whether it's flying cars or jet packs. Going airborne has forever been regarded as the next step but what if we go down instead! Musk's vision of the future of travel does not involve going up into the sky but instead going deep down into the earth.
Elon Musk's Hyperloop is said to be a cross between concord, a rail gun and an air hockey table! Yes it's as crazy as it sounds. The Hypertrain-like capsules will travel in low-pressure tubes supported by air and gain power through magnetic accelerators thanks to the low pressure environment. The Hyperloop capsules travel through what is essentially a vacuum that has virtually no air resistance or friction. This allows travelers in the Hyperloop to travel at speeds of up to 600 miles per hour which is faster than a commercial jetliner. To put that in perspective a 30 mile journey would take just two and a half minutes and the six hour car journey will take just 30 minutes and the best part is that it's cheap to operate too.
That 30-minute commute would only need to cost around 20 dollars each way to be sustainable which is pretty competitive even in today's market. Sure there's a lot of technology that needs to drastically improve to make the Hyperloop a reality but getting there is not an ‘if’ but a ‘when’.
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The only real problem surrounding the Hyperloop are the costs of building the infrastructure. Currently it costs between 100 million dollars and one billion dollars to dig and put in place one mile of tunnel! A number that would need to be slashed a great deal in order for the Hyperloop to be viable. But don't worry, Musk is already working on a solution.
The Boring Company
The Boring Company as in boring holes not putting you to sleep is Musk's fun company on the side but still this is anything but a venture to sleep on alongside making a limited run of flame throwers and rather appropriate fire extinguishers. The Boring Companies must answer to taking personal public and commercial transport underground by developing an industrial machine that can dig lay and reinforce tunnels at the same time. Musk's boring company is working towards drastically reducing the cost of tunnelling and is opening new doors for underground travel solutions. Musk proposes that his first tunnel systems called loop will allow cars to travel underground throughout cities avoiding congestion, traffic lights and speed limits.
These tunnels will only be accessible by electric vehicles removing the need for ventilation and will most likely be reserved for autonomous vehicles as well.
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Stations for the loop would only require a very tiny footprint so it could easily be dotted throughout the city and the amount of tunnels that could be put in place is virtually endless. So capacity would never be an issue either the second tunnel network would be for inter-city routes it will be for the ultra high speed Hyperloop system as previously explained. Now this is when we start to look way ahead and how Musk's ideas will likely touch the lives of the distant generations of the future.
Musk has openly said that he aims to put 1 million people on Mars and that an elaborate tunnel system plays a key role in the vision. The big red planet is not exactly known for its habitable environment so humans will probably have to live underground if they actually plan on staying. While the Boring Company’s boring machines are great at digging tunnels for autonomous EVs and 600 miles per hour capsules they will also do a great job at tunneling out the living quarters on mars if need be.
SpaceX
Musk has a lot to say about Mars and appears to be incredibly fixated on making humans an interplanetary species so it's no wonder that he's nurtured SpaceX into becoming one of the world's leading aerospace companies. SpaceX is in the midst of building reusable rockets that can go up into orbit, to the Moon, maybe one day to mars and then return to Earth to live another day. The reason why reusable rocket technology is so important is because of how significantly it reduces costs.
If a rocket can be reused 100 times the price of each launch can be slashed without impacting profits. Reusable rockets open a lot of doors in the aerospace industry and are paving the way towards space tourism becoming a reality. SpaceX already has plans to send Japanese billionaire Yakazu Maezawa along with six to eight accompanying artists on a trip around the moon in 2023 and as the cost of space flight continues to fall so will the chances of securing a seat become accessible to the wider population.
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SpaceX is also working on using its rocket technology to build suborbital rockets that will be capable of carrying out super fast international flights and by super fast we are talking flights from London to Sydney in less than an hour. So while flights to the Moon and Mars might be the norm one day sub-orbital commercial flight is something that Musk and SpaceX are almost certain to achieve in the next couple of decades.
Now building and developing these rockets is anything but cheap not even for Musk with his deep billionaire pockets which takes us nicely onto our next company.
Starlink
Musk started Starlink under SpaceX with the purpose of generating additional income to fund his ambitious Space exploration goals. For those of you who don't know Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX with the aim of providing high quality affordable internet to essentially the entire planet. Seeing as SpaceX was already in the business of sending stuff to space capturing a significant portion of the estimated 1 trillion worldwide internet connectivity market seemed like a pretty good business move. There are currently 420 Starlink satellites in orbit today 300 of which were sent up between January and May of 2020 alone. SpaceX said they would like to send up around 1200 Starlink satellites to complete their constellation however this number might climb to as high as 30000.
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What Musk's Starlink satellites will offer us in the future is fast, reliable, cheap internet that benefits from very low latency and what his satellites will do for him is generate around 30 billion dollars a year in revenue which is a boatload of cash that he can put towards the development of his rocket technology. So we get great internet and Musk gets to build better rockets sounds like a win-win to me.
Open AI
Electric vehicles, tunnel systems and space rockets, Musk also finds time to work on the industry that is arguably going to have the biggest effect on our future lives artificial intelligence. Open AI, Musk's non-profit research company was created to avoid the development of artificial intelligence getting out of hand and becoming a danger to humanity. Musk has spoken frequently about the possible dangers of artificial intelligence and felt that an organization such as Open AI is necessary to overwatch advancements in the technology without having any financial agendas. Open AI is not looking to develop the next great leap in AI but instead wants to make sure that the great leaps made by others in the field are safe and containable and just in case AI does start to do more than simply take our jobs and actually start replacing us all together. Musk is working on a backup plan to allow humans to keep up with our computer counterparts.
Neuralink
Cutting to the chase, Neuralink is how Musk plans to merge humans with artificial intelligence in order to save the human race from an AI takeover to think that AI could literally wipe out life as we know it does sound rather out there but Musk isn't alone in his worries. In its current state AI can already outperform humans and almost any mental task from simple math to playing video games and if the rate of development continues, soon AI would outperform humans in every way imaginable especially when partnered up with robotics. Musk is doing his best to contain the best with his team at Open AI but still believes that artificial intelligence will eventually be too intelligent for our own good his solution is to somehow merge our own intelligence with machine intelligence essentially turning us into a race of Cyborg hybrids. This all sounds very sci-fi but this is genuinely something that Musk is working on by implementing a small chip into the brain.
Neuralink is already exploring ways how they can use computer signals to help those with disabilities and as the technology advances so will these tiny chips capabilities. Musk suggests that one day these Neuralink chips will allow users to have complete access to the internet through thought alone.
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So no need to Google a question or do research just think it and you'll know it. The first human testing of Neuralink's first chip is planned for the end of 2022 so this technology is well underway who knows where it will be in 50 years from now!
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