'Truth Is The Apex Of Everything That’s Good' But Some Can Just Say 'So Many Lies'

Steve Wozniak
Co-Founder of Apple Inc.

Successful entrepreneurs and businessmen should have great attention to details, outstanding communication and marketing skills, creativity, and critical thinking.

Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and some other companies, has all that.

With his charm and ingenuity, he managed to lead some of his companies to become the pioneer in their respective industries, surpassing many competitors that have been in the business for decades.

Along the way, Musk has also gained a lot of fans.

But what Musk sometimes lacks, is the ability to work towards deadlines.

Musk may be creative and through his companies, can create some of the world's best products. But he tended to fail to deliver many of his promises.

And this doesn't please Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976.

Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak.

Wozniak, who affectionately referred to as "the Woz," said at the Nordic Business Forum in Sweden, that he has stopped believing what Musk or Tesla promises.

"They came out with some sensors that Elon Musk said would [allow the car to] drive itself across the country to where you were by the end of 2016 [...] Oh, I had to have that!"

"[T]hen they discovered those sensors would never drive across the country, so they got rid of their sensor company. They put in new sensors — instead of one camera, eight cameras — and that one will drive itself across the country by 2017. I believed that stuff."

And when Tesla finally delivered, Wozniak still considered Tesla to fall short from its promises:

"Man, you have got to be ready — it makes mistakes, it loses track of the lane lines. You have to be on your toes all the time. All Tesla did is say, 'It is beta so we are not responsible. It doesn't necessarily work, so you have to be in control.'"

"Well you that is kinda a cheap way out of it."

"I will tell you, that car does so little," says Wozniak. "Everything I read told me every other car manufacturer in the world — the Audi's the BMW and all — were actually ahead of Tesla for self driving cars."

Because of that, Wozniak doesn't want to believe anything from Elon Musk anymore.

"Elon Musk – don’t use that word around me," he said, the first he heard his name during the interview.

"Truth is the apex of everything that’s good. I’ve grown up with that my whole life. You were truthful. You just don’t make up stories, and Elon Musk and Tesla has told so many lies."

Steve Wozniak and his wife Janet, with a 2016 Tesla Model S
Steve Wozniak and his wife Janet, with a 2016 Tesla Model S. (Credit: Steve Wozniak/Facebook)

But regardless, he still love his Tesla.

"But I still love the car, it's still beautiful," Wozniak added.

While Wozniak prefers his Chevrolet Bolt all day everyday, he rather use his Tesla for long road trips, simply because Tesla has more battery charging stations, and this makes long journeys in the Chevy Bolt challenging.

While the tech pioneer frowns upon Musk and Tesla's promises, the same doesn't apply to Musk and SpaceX.

Every time humanity tries to lift something up out of Earth, debris will accumulate from the various man-made satellites and rockets. These are the side-effect of human civilization trying to conquer space through reaction mass propellant.

And SpaceX the space agency, is one of the biggest polluters of space, and this is a problem for Earth. But becoming the big polluter means that SpaceX is developing very fast in helping humanity advance.

"Our lives depend on things that come from satellites, our navigation systems, a lot of our television, a lot of our internet, our phone calls from country to country, go through satellites," he said at one moment during the `Global Entrepreneurship Congress` (GEC) event, praising Elon Musk.

Wozniak even referred to Musk as "one of the outstanding experts in the world" on space who is providing cheaper internet via his Starlink internet services.

To help clean up the polluted space, Wozniak has a space venture called the Privateer, which maps space junk.

"That means we got to track, to know the countries that have equipment up in space that can measure it, and spot it and detect it. They got to share their information. We need worldwide standards so that some of it can be understood," explained Wozniak.