Never bet against Elon — oxblog
You should never bet against Elon.
Peter Thiel, Economic Club of New York,<br>2018
Thiel then admitted that he had considered rocket reusability<br>inconceivable. SpaceX did it anyway. The distinction is useful:<br>skepticism costs nothing; a specific public prediction creates a ledger.
What follows is the strict ledger: public dismissals from named industry<br>leaders or people with exceptional access to relevant expertise, paired with<br>measured outcomes. No deadline bets and no viral anecdotes that cannot be<br>traced to a contemporaneous source.
Rockets
In 2013, Arianespace’s Richard Bowles said SpaceX was “selling a dream” and<br>that “reusability is a dream”. By March 2026, Falcon 9 had made<br>more than 570 successful booster landings and 540<br>launches using flight-proven first-stage boosters.
In 2015, Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël called Falcon Heavy un lanceur virtuel — a virtual<br>launcher. Falcon Heavy reached orbit on its first flight, landed<br>both side boosters, and had flown 11 missions by March 2026.
In 2024, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said SpaceX’s newly revealed<br>Raptor 3 was a “partially assembled engine”, missing<br>controllers, fluid management and thrust-vector-control hardware. SpaceX<br>subsequently fired it for about 30 seconds. Since then,<br>two V3 Starship stacks — 39 Raptor 3 engines each — have launched on<br>Flights 12 and 13. Seventy-eight Raptor 3 engines have now flown.
Vehicles
In 2018, Daimler Trucks chief Martin Daum said a 500-mile Tesla Semi at highway<br>gross-weight limits would strain the same laws of physics that applied in Germany.<br>In 2022, Tesla reported that a Semi drove 500 miles at a gross combination weight of 81,000<br>lb. Daum lost the physics argument. Musk lost the schedule argument: initial customer deliveries began in 2022,<br>not the promised 2019.
Daum was not alone. In 2020, after years studying and investing in energy<br>technology, Bill Gates wrote that even with battery breakthroughs, electric<br>vehicles would probably never be practical for<br>18-wheelers because each additional battery added weight and demanded more<br>energy. The same 81,000 lb run answered the weight-and-range premise, though<br>not fleet economics.
In 2016, former GM vice-chair Bob Lutz predicted that the Model 3 would not make money and that many of its<br>orders would evaporate. In Q3 2018, Model 3 gross margin exceeded 20%,<br>Tesla said fewer than 20% of roughly 455,000 net reservations had been<br>cancelled, and the company posted $311.5 million GAAP net income. Tesla then<br>delivered 145,846 Model 3s in 2018; by Tesla’s<br>estimate, it was the best-selling premium vehicle in the US, at roughly twice<br>the sales of the runner-up.
Satellite internet
In 2018, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg said small low-Earth-orbit satellites such as<br>SpaceX’s were unlikely to match the speeds of large<br>geostationary satellites. By March 2026, Starlink reported 225 Mbps median peak-hour residential download<br>speed. Viasat advertised plans up to 150 Mbps in select areas. The<br>figures are not like-for-like measurements, but they settle the technical<br>possibility.
The electric-car market
In November 2017, Toyota chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada said battery cars were not ready for mass<br>production. Tesla delivered 145,846 Model 3s the following year. In<br>2023, the Model Y sold 1.22 million units and became the world’s<br>best-selling vehicle, regardless of powertrain.
In 2019, BMW development chief Klaus Fröhlich said Europeans would not buy one million battery-electric<br>vehicles. In 2023, the EU alone registered about 1.5 million.
That same year, Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo said he did not believe there would<br>be a dramatic global increase in demand for<br>battery vehicles. Global battery-electric sales reached about 9.5 million in 2023 — roughly six<br>times the 2018 total and 12% of all car sales.
The error
Hanlon’s razor applies: no conspiracy or malice is required. In several cases,<br>incumbents mistook constraints of their factories, cost structures or existing<br>markets for constraints of reality. Musk’s companies changed the relevant<br>architecture or production system, or demonstrated a larger market.
None of this is a counting game. For every achievement above, there is a<br>missed promise, a failed attempt or an ambition that remains unproved. The net<br>record is what matters: Musk has repeatedly brought improbable systems into<br>existence. By the dates and measures above, his companies surpassed incumbent<br>benchmarks in reusable launch, electric-vehicle volume and satellite-internet<br>speed.
You do not back a horse because it always wins. You back it because it wins<br>more often than the odds imply.
A necessary aside: people who bet on or run horse races — and anyone who puts<br>animals through injury, pain or suffering for entertainment — are fucked in the<br>head.
“Never bet against Elon” is not a claim of infallibility. It is the observation<br>that, in several of the hardest industries to enter, conventional judgment has<br>repeatedly...