On the 28th of this month (June 2022), Elon Musk will celebrate his 51st birthday and with an estimated wealth of around $US44 billion or approximately $AUS64 billion he will be the world’s richest individual; all be it on paper etc.
Whichever way you look at things, it’s not bad for a guy who rather than pursuing a university degree, started a software company ‘Zip2’ with his brother Kimbal and sold it to Compaq for $US 307 million in 1999, then co-founded online bank ‘X.com’ which merged with online payment company ‘Confinity’ to form PayPal which was bought by eBay in 2002 for $US1.5billion and the rest is history.
On the car front, he rose to fame in 2004 when he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors as Chairman/Product Architect and then in 2008 assumed the role of CEO of what is now known as Tesla Inc.
Although Musk has had his critics, no one can dispute the fact that Tesla fast tracked the rise of electric vehicles around the world. Up until Tesla, many companies were talking about making electric vehicles, some were making small numbers and the major international manufacturers were giving it lip service, but it wasn’t until Elon Musk rattled their cages that they moved into action in a very big way.
Firstly, here’s a great article and video from 2019 where Motortrend spoke with Elon Musk (Tesla CEO) and Franz van Holzhausen (Tesla Chief Designer), and it gives a great insight into the early days of Tesla Inc.
Tesla Model S 2019 – Motortrend.com
So fast forward three years, and I was intrigued to recently read that apart from his continuing ongoing feud with Bill Gates and making a play for Twitter, Elon Musk as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX delivered a live interview at the recent Financial Times Future of the Car summit in London.
The following article was written by Angus McKensie for Motortrend, it’s an edited version of an hour-long delivery where Musk talks about a whole range of topics from Tesla’s contribution to the motor industry, what he thinks the future of the car is and will we get to Mars!