Llewellyn King: Elon Musk and the power of celebrity

Elon Musk and then President Obama  at the Falcon 9 launch site in 2010.

Agents of change are not always welcome. Seldom, in fact. Take Elon Musk, unquestionably an agent of change and not universally celebrated by his peers.

The public loves Musk, who has promised them pollution-free solar power, electric cars, space travel and an underground, intercity transport system called “Hyperloop,” in which they will be whisked in vacuum tubes on magnetic cushions at more than 800 miles an hour. He has hired Boeing  to build the tunnels for the system.

More, Musk has attacked artificial intelligence and its use in weaponry as a threat to humanity. In this, he has fed into the general unease about artificial intelligence.

Recently, the chairman and chief executive officer of one of the largest electric-utility holding companies unloaded on me about Musk, accusing the inventor of being “dishonest,” “lying” and using fraudulent data in pushing SolarCity, his rooftop solar company. Also recently, a nuclear scientist with creative credentials denounced Musk to me as a showman, a media darling, a hoax and someone who had used too much government money, particularly at SpaceX, his reusable- rocket company.

The automobile industry wishes that Musk had stayed in his native South Africa rather than beginning a student odyssey, which saw him studying in Canada and at Stanford University before making his first fortune with PayPal.

It is true that Musk has used some debatable numbers. Three years ago, he told the Edison Electric Institute annual meeting that more electricity from solar panels could be generated from a nuclear power plant site than from the solar plant. That was a huge blooper: the equivalent of saying the economy of Liechtenstein is larger than that of the United States.

One expects people whose whole life is tied up in math, from rockets to electric cars, to get their sums right. Yet Musk glides on, like some blithe spirit, changing things as he goes. Changing them in fundamental ways.

And we should applaud his progress.

The arguments over Musk's creations end up as a battle between technological incrementalists and a disruptor. His critics are incrementalists, moving forward slowly and steadily.

Incremental change is the compound interest of technology. Look no further than today’s automobile to see how it has improved and changed incrementally over the years.

Then look to Musk and his Tesla: It is standing the automobile industry on its ear. So much so, The Economist magazine has heralded the death of the internal-combustion engine.

Change agents can be unsung heroes. James Watt was when he was creating the condenser that made steam power viable, and Bill Gates when he was helping to write the original Windows operating system, and Mark Zuckerberg when he was playing around with Facebook.

But by and large, hero inventors get the job done faster and with more ease. All the cited inventors found hero status later, but they might have gotten there faster with the public cheering them on — and loosening the financial strings — if they were known names with which to to begin.

Wall Street is cool to unsung inventors and cannot control itself when a name inventor goes to market. That is why Tesla has a larger market cap than General Motors, why Apple is the largest company in the world by some measures, and why Elon Musk and other celebrity inventors will shape our future faster and more dramatically than a lot of quiet evolvements.

Woe betide the technology-based industry that lacks a celebrity, a Pied Piper, to conquer the public imagination. Exhibit A might be the nuclear industry, which  has achieved incredible things in making clean electricity through high science, but languishes today. Its last hero was Adm. Hyman Rickover, in the 1950s.

The book on celebrity invention could be said to have been written by one of the greatest American inventors: Thomas Edison.

He knew the power of a headline. His rival Nikola Tesla, less so.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His e-mail is llewellynking1@gmail.com. This first appeared in Inside Sources..

Llewellyn King: Alternative energy threatens electric grid

On Feb. 3, 1960 in Cape Town, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan shook up what was still the British Empire in Africa by telling the Parliament of South Africa that “the wind of change is blowing through this continent.”

His remarks weren’t well received by those who that thought that it was premature, and that Britain would rule much of Africa for generations. The British ruling class in Africa – the established order — was shaken.

But Macmillan’s speech was, in fact, a tacit recognition of the inevitable. It was the signaling of a brave new world in which Britain would grant independence to countries from Nigeria to Botswana and Kenya to Malawi. Britain would not attempt to hold the Empire together. His speech was seminal, in that Britain had signaled that things would never ever be the same.

To me, the appearance of investor and entrepreneur Elon Musk at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual convention in New Orleans was a “wind of change” moment for the august electric utility. It was a signal that the industry was coming to terms, or trying to come to terms, with new forces that are challenging it as a business proposition in a way that it hasn’t been challenged in a history of more than 100 years.

But whereas Britain could swallow its pride and start a withdrawal from its former possessions, the electric industry faces quite a different challenge: How can it serve its customers and honor its compact with them when people like Musk, who is the non-executive chairman of the aggressive company SolarCity, and a passionate advocate of solar electricity, and Google are moving into the electric space?

At EEI’s annual convention, Musk didn’t tell his audience what he thought would happen to the utilities as their best customers opted to leave the grid, or to rely on it only in emergencies, while insisting that they should be allowed to sell their own excess generation back to the grid. Musk also didn’t venture an opinion on the future of the grid — and his interlocutor, Ted Craver, chairman and CEO of Rosemead, Calif.-based Edison International, didn’t press him.

Instead Musk talked glowingly about the electrification of transportation, implying — but not saying outright — that the electric pie would grow with new technologies like his Tesla Motors’ electric car.

The CEOs of EEI’s board were ready for the press by the time they held a briefing a day after Musk’s opening appearance. They spoke of “meeting the challenges as we have always met the challenges” and of “evolving” with the new realities. Gone from recent EEI annual meetings was CEO talk of their business model being “broken.”

The great dark cloud hanging over the industry is that of social justice. As the move to renewables becomes a flood, enthusiastically endorsed by such disparate groups as the Tea Party and environmentalists, the Christian right and morally superior homeowners, and companies like SolarCity and First Solar, the poor may have difficulty keeping their heads above water.

The grid, a lifeline of U.S. social cohesion, remains at threat. Utilities are jumping into the solar business, but they have yet to reveal how selling or leasing rooftop units — as the Southern Company is about to do in Georgia — is going to save the grid, or how the poor and city dwellers are going to be saved from having to pay more and more for the grid while suburban fat cats enjoy their sense that they’re saving the planet.

My sense is that in 10 years, things will look worse than they do today; that an ill wind of change will have reduced some utilities to the pitiful state of Amtrak — a transportation necessity that has gobbled up public money but hasn’t restored the glory days of rail travel.

People like myself — I live in an apartment building — have reason to fear the coming solar electric world, for we will be left out in the cold. The sun will not be shining on those of us who still need the grid. It needs to be defended.

Llewellyn King (lking@kingpublishing.com) is host of  White House Chronicle, on PBS, and a longtime publisher, editor, writer and international business consultant. This column was previously published in Public Utilities Fortnightly.