“This will become a world of abundance, where everyone can afford whatever products and services they want.”
Such a vision Elon Musk painted In an interview with Ted Talk just a couple of weeks ago.
His belief in a great future is based on the scientific optimism familiar from sci-fi literature. Musk is confident that the climate catastrophe threatening humanity can be resolved by breaking away from fossil fuels. And even if the borders of the earth were to come up against, our alternative would be to escape to Mars.
In Musk’s thinking, the decisive industries for the future are renewable energy sources, the conquest of space and the Internet. The companies he leads have made revolutionary innovations in all these areas.
Next, he plans to shake up our perceptions of freedom of speech on the messaging service Twitter, which he said he bought on Monday.
In this story, we tell you who is the richest person in the world who has revolutionized the industry one after another, and where his visions come from.
Musk began sleeping in the office as early as the 1990s
Musk is known for its extreme dedication to work. He has said that by working 120 hours a week, he can achieve in four months what it takes from others a year.
The results speak for themselves.
Musk’s first actual attempt was Zip2, which was a kind of online version of the advertising section of the phone book, i.e. the yellow pages. He founded it with his brother Kimbalin with in 1995.
Musk lived in the office and went washing across the road at the YMCA premises. Disputes in the company were resolved by wrestling.
Hard work was rewarded when search engine company Altavista acquired Zip2 just four years after its inception $ 340 million.
With the sale, Musk founded X.com, which later became Paypal, which revolutionized internet payment. When Ebay bought Paypal in 2002, Musk net traded in person 165 million.
He invested in companies he is now known for: Tesla and SpaceX.
We were hanging out with a gang at Hard Rock Cafe, and Elon was reading some vague and moldy Soviet-era book about space rockets that looked all over eBay. Kevin Hartz, who invested in Paypal, describes the mood from the early 2000s.
Tesla intends to end humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels
Tesla is known for its electric cars, but its goals are much higher.
According to the company’s mission, decoupling motor vehicles from fossil fuels is just the beginning. The purpose of the company is to lead the worldwide transition to renewable energy sources.
At least in the automotive sector, development has been undeniably rapid.
In the first decade of the 21st century, electric cars were not yet considered very practical, let alone sexy.
To remember another thing he crocheted for me was that his thoughts revolved a lot around electric cars. Then he turned to me and asked if I was thinking of electric cars too. Christie Nicholson, daughter of Musk Advisor, recalled her first encounter with Elon Musk.
Tesla silenced at least some of the skeptics by launching the Roadster in 2008. This sports car accelerated from zero to one hundred in four seconds and could drive up to 400 miles on a single charge.
Next, the company made an electric-powered premium passenger car (Model S) and eventually a mid-priced public electric car (Model 3).
According to Musk, there have been numerous companies in the United States that have been able to develop similar electric cars. He considers it an achievement of Tesla that the company managed to increase its production to such an extent that electric cars have become quite common.
It wasn’t easy. Over the years, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy many times.
The company tried to automate car manufacturing as much as possible, but Musk himself has said that everything in the production line was wrong in the last decade.
He says he slept on the factory floor in 2017-2019. He wanted not only to show his support to the workers but also to learn to understand how every part of the car should be done.
Now he says he knows exactly how all Tesla nuts or circuits are made.
With Tesla selling around 60,000 cars by 2014, Elon Musk predicted that by 2020, half a million cars would have been sold.
The forecast was quite accurate.
There are currently Tesla the world’s most valuable car brand. In addition, the company is now one of the world’s leading developers of solar energy and battery technology.
When Tesla’s new battery plant Gigafactory is fully finished, it will be the largest building in the world. Nevertheless Musk according to his own calculation in a few years, the plant will be able to produce only a hundredth of the battery capacity it will need to decouple humanity from fossil fuels in the next few years.
So Tesla alone will not get very far.
He’s a bit like homeless, which is pretty funny. He might put in an email that he doesn’t have a place to sleep and if he could come for the night. However, I haven’t given him the key yet. Larry Page, founding partner of Google
SpaceX wants to take us to Mars
The goals of Musk’s other company, SpaceX, are at least as high: its official mission is to enable humanity to live on other planets. The next step is According to Musk, sending a manned ship to Mars in 2026.
Musk founded the company in 2002 in part because Nasa’s plans to conquer Mars are progressing slowly.
Not only is traveling into space teasingly exciting, Musk sees the occupation of Mars as a much more important purpose for the future of humanity. The settlement of Mars is a fallback option if life on Earth becomes impossible due to climate change, for example.
I learned through my heel that vacationing can kill me. Elon Musk commented on his honeymoon in 2000, which caused severe malaria.
Musk’s plans have been kept as elitist. Muskin even in the wildest visions Mars could be inhabited by up to a million people by 2050. Rich or, according to Musk, “adventurous” rats would leave a sinking ship.
According to Martin Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge the plan is a mere hint, and insofar as it diverts attention away from solving real problems.
Even in the most pessimistic predictions, the planet will hardly become as hostile to man as a planet with little atmosphere and gravity or little water.
Despite the relevance of the critique, SpaceX has already achieved a lot in the field of private space travel. Among other things, a private company has taken over the transportation of NASA supplies to the International Space Station. The company has also released plans for a ship that could carry a hundred passengers to Mars.
However, Musk himself has not yet entered space, but the company’s rocket called Falcon Heavy carried this red Tesla Roadster there. The car was released into the orbit of the sun while its stereo was playing David Bowien pieces of Space Oddity. Musk himself says he did it for fun.
Next, Musk wants to revolutionize freedom of speech
Space travel, information technology and electrical engineering have been important to Musk since he was a child, but freedom of speech is a slightly fresher passion for him.
Musk has called himself an absolutist for free speech, and he has said he bought Twitter in the name of promoting free speech.
He intends to allow all speech in the messaging service that is possible under the law.
Many experts fear that with Musk’s reforms, false news, hate speech and conspiracy theories will increase on Twitter.
He himself is an avid tweeter and has 83 million followers in the service. He has said he spends a quarter of an hour a day on Twitter and, on a whim, shares updates that he finds fun.
Musk’s most famous tweet is probably from 2018, when he said he had raised funding to buy Tesla privately owned. Musk was accused at the time of trying to manipulate the company’s share price.
It was widely quoted in Finland when Musk was distributed by the Prime Minister last year Sanna Marinin celebration. In March, Musk sued the Russian president on Twitter Vladimir Putin a duel involving Ukraine.
Uninterrupted speech has received admiration but also criticism.
Where does the homeless benefactor sleep next?
Elon Musk regards his own business as charity because, he says, its purpose is to solve problems that threaten the future of humanity.
As a by-product of all good, he has earned about $ 270 billion in assets.
It’s impossible to predict what he’s going to do next, but he’ll probably at least spend time sleeping on his friends ’couches or on the floor of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.
The richest person in the world has said that he has sold most of his movable property and being homeless at the moment.
Timeline images: All Over Press. Ashlee Vance’s book about Elon Musk has also been used as a source in the story, from which the citations in the article are taken.
Fixed April 30, 2022 at 10:54 am: Elon Musk did not establish Tesla, but invested in the company in its early stages.
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