I don't disagree with anything in your post specifically, but we are playing a bit of semantics here. I do not believe the person you are replying to believes that Elon was designing the actual product, however he has an argument for Elon being a great mind. I'm not ready to slob his knob and say he is smarter in many areas than even the people in this thread, but it's impossible to be a genius in all areas. The captain of the ship is not going to run the engineering room nor is the electrical engineer going to design the aerodynamics of a vehicle. We all do different areas, I think you realize that. With regards to the Joe Rogan interview, no I wasn't impressed either, Elon wasn't making particularly great points but he was also not within his area of expertise. Joe doesn't lead people to deep conversation either, it isn't his style, he acts like he is impressed with Neil DeGrasse when that person made no interesting points at all. If Musk was to make deep nuanced commentary he would need half a day and a team to help prepare his talking points and it would be in a very specific area, and it wouldn't appeal to the Joe Rogan audience. Reality is that few of us will get to see Elon Musk in his natural environment behind the scenes, but his results are very impressive. Is it because he's great at sales, securing financing, or leading teams? Probably all of the above, but since I don't work with him I'll likely never know.