Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday that the movie industry is to blame for manufacturing being underappreciated as compared to invention.
What Happened: Musk said there is a significant gap between the number of movies focusing on invention and the number of movies looking at manufacturing. This attention, Musk said, is not proportional to the hardship behind each of the two processes.
"Compared to the insane pain of reaching high-volume, positive-margin production, prototypes are a piece of cake," Musk wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The CEO responded to an X user who noted that despite the large number of movies made on cars, none focus on manufacturing.
Musk agreed, "Many movies exist about a lone inventor in a garage having a eureka moment, but almost none about manufacturing."
Many movies exist about a lone inventor in a garage having a eureka moment, but almost none about manufacturing, so it's underappreciated by the public.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2024
Compared to the insane pain of reaching high-volume, positive-margin production, prototypes are a piece of cake.
In March 2022, Musk said that making an electric car was relatively simpler for Tesla than scaling production, given that many players, such as General Motors, had tried to make an EV before.
"The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is poorly understood. It's 1000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes. The machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself," Musk wrote in a September 2020 post on X.
The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is not well understood. It's 1000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes. The machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 22, 2020
"Special products that come along once in a long while are just incredibly difficult to bring to market, to reach volume, to be prosperous. It's fundamental to the nature of the newness," Musk said in October.
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