I consider him a visionary in a sense of innovation but he is insecure and immoral one.
Needles to say his investors made money on his over promises.
Does he also deliver on some mind-boggling timelines? Well Tesla went from delivering its first cars in 2008 to having the best selling car in the world in 2023, and SpaceX went from not having successfully launched a rocket to delivering about 80% of the world's space payload in roughly the same timeframe. So I'd say that's clearly a 'yes', too.
Elon made some political positions (which he has always hinted at in any case) publicly clear, and the divisive nature of politics in the US which has made a rather vocal minority of people just freak out with regards to him. But the reality is that if he died tomorrow, he would already go down as the Thomas Edison of modern times. And he as of yet still has some years to deliver on Mars which could cement a far greater legacy.
SpaceX Falcon 9 has a launch cost of 74 M$ with a payload to LEO of 22,800 kg for a launch cost of ~3,200 $/kg to LEO.
So you are incorrectly claiming that space launch costs were 320,000 $/kg. Elon Musk is a habitual liar, but you should try not to be one as well as it demonstrates your argument to be based in ignorance and deception.
A small but important correction - he would be similar to Henry Ford, with capitalistic approach to humans that would make Marx shiver and write second Capital book. Also aligns better with his nazi sympathies.
There isn't a single thing he personally invented AFAIK, but he is a good manager from certain angles and can recognize future value in ways entrenched ivy league managers seemingly cannot. Also a textbook sociopath and few other mental issues, and horrible father for those who care (most should, future of mankind and all that).
As for Musk, he completely revolutionized the space industry. In modern times no single person just invents everything around something akin to e.g. the telegraph, but I don't think that really diminishes his impact. It's just a consequence of the fact that a reusable rocket is much more complex than a telegraph machine. But he's quite infamously involved and directing essentially every single step of the process. This is quite different from the detached and profit/metric motivated focus of typical management, but in many ways it's much closer to how things were 'back in the day' rather than a novel discovery. It should go without saying that people running businesses building 'x' should be deeply knowledgeable about 'x'. "Business", as a specialization in and of itself, in modern times is the disease that's killing America.
Xiaomi Auto reaching a quarter of Tesla's annual output after four years is much more impressive, given it took Tesla until 2019/2020 (8 years, twice as long) to reach that level.
SpaceX is rather more impressive. Unfortunately for everyone, only someone like Musk could have pulled that off: not just the visionary, but also arrogant and litigious enough to sue the US government to reconsider when the government decided against buying from SpaceX. I'm reminded of the phrase "only Nixon could go to China".
