Elon Musk as a person, is a person. A single person. You say that he "seems to be simply the lucky combination of right perspective on the world and enough money to make it happen." According to whom? Interplanetary travel's possibility and practicality is questionable, let alone human chance of extraterrestrial survival. Some may well think that this is a waste of resources. Sustainable transport is nice -- and I love Tesla cars for being seemingly practical non-fossil cars -- but self-driving cars are a big change and actually requires moral adaptations. Would being killed by a self-operating machine equal to being killed by a manual car? Who is to blame if an accident happens? What do I do if my spouse goes under a self-driving car and it is not her fault? Do I sue the car? What happens if it is found guilty (i.e. it's AI is mistaken)? Do we jail the car? Is Tesla to pay me in indemnity? If my self-driving car hits another car's rear bumper, am I liable? Do I recompensate the other driver? Who is liable if an automatic vehicle breaks some traffic rule? What if it passes when it's red?
If all cars are electric, how we'll be affected by increased electric demand? This will mean increased CO2 production with geothermal production, and increased nuclear waste to be disposed off with nuclear production. Will we have to build more dams? Will we instead use the same dinosaur oil to to produce electricity, canceling out the gain?
We should think on these, and Musk being a SV angel figure is not an answer to these questions. We did not question anything till the end of the past century, and we are at the edge of a climate disaster. This tech (self-driving) means a great, big change to our daily lives, and it cannot happen because someone who "seems to be simply the lucky combination of right perspective on the world and enough money" wanted it to.
