Tesla And the 100 Day Battery Challenge

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again — the greatest thing about Elon Musk, even if he fails, is that he is willing to try more than most. I like his imagination, and I like that the things that he imagines aren’t as vanilla as the things most people in the tech sector seem to be interested in.

He definitely generates a feel around him that matches the buzz that Jobs used to create. If you think about the impact that the Mac and the i-phone and the i-pod have had on people and the way that they interact with the world it is pretty damned intense and far-reaching. If you look at the potential for where the projects Musk is working on could go, and the ramifications of their success, it really is game changing.

Even if the ideas he is pushing out there aren’t as well thought out as they should be, according to some, they generate the kind of dialogue that pulls in influential thinkers who may just come up with even better ways of doing what needs to be done.

Currently he is in South Australia, where he promised to build the world’s largest lithium ion battery plant in less than 100 days. What happens if he fails to do this? It’s free for the state government, and it could cost Tesla $50 million.

The system is designed to store energy and release it into the regional electrical infrastructure, where it could provide electricity to 30,000 homes.

Apparently the promise derived from Musk making a promise on Twitter after South Australia had a state wide outage when its renewable energy source failed.

Here’s the thing — Musk seems to operate on the basis that he is going to push a project through, and when he bumps up against an issue, he works out how to solve that engineering problem. Most of the criticism seems to come from people who don’t understand that the whole thing of building any project or product is a process, and that you very rarely hit on the right formula on the first go. It is strange how, when someone is doing something designed to benefit everyone, some people will sit on the sidelines willing it to fail, or expecting the person involved in the project to give up. If you aren’t making mistakes you aren’t doing anything, and if no one ever starts these kinds of projects then no one is ever going to move forward in these areas. Look how many manufacturers are now dragging their heels, but finally getting into the electric vehicle market.

As Elon said: : “Optimism, pessimism, f*** that — we’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.”