MUSK & T HE TICKING CLOCK

When SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket in early February, it gave to the world a couple of technically impressive and quite profoundly moving moments of wonder. The ‡irst was the choreographed return, post-launch, of two of its three booster rockets, which touched down on nearby launchpads instead of smashing into the ocean. Where launchers have traditionally been seen as ‡ire-and-forget, SpaceX’s commitment to re-usable hardware is key to Elon Musk’s cost-reduction sums – sums that have seen SpaceX move from near-bankruptcy to domination of the global commercial launch market. The second moment of wonder came later in the same space ‡light, when the rocket opened to reveal a red Tesla Roadster silhouetted against the swirling blue and white marble of Earth.

While humbling NASA sounds even more far-fetched than transitioning the world to electric cars, Tesla is the more troublesome of the two ventures. And ‘ventures’ is the right word: Musk insists the motivation for both is a desire to better humanity’s lot, not to make money.

Which is just as well. Tesla’s expected to burn more than $4 billion this year. Production ramp-up remains the key challenge. Musk’s charisma and vision grants his companies an astonishing amount of goodwill, as do their still uniquely desirable products and services, but the fact is Model 3s are being built at a fraction of the rate promised just a couple of years ago. In 2016 Tesla claimed it would be building 5000 Model 3s a week by the end of 2017, and 500,000 cars a year by the end of 2018. The latter looks unlikely given Model 3 production for the last three months of last year was just 2500 cars. But so long as they can’t go anywhere else – and for now they can’t – people are willing to wait for Elon.