Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

The New York Times columnist, Randall Stross, wanted to rename the loan program to “The Bailout of Very, Very High-Net-Worth Individuals Who Invested in Tesla Motors Act.” The reason why everyone thought this loan would become yet another bailout of the rich was that the government announced it at the same time as they announced the bailout of the other companies. But in reality, the loan was initialized in 2007, before the financial crisis had begun sweeping in. 54The goal of the loan program was to accelerate the production of fuel-efficient vehicles for mainstream Americans and reduce the nation’s dependency on oil. 275

While Ford got a $5.9 billion loan from DOE, Tesla got a $465 million loan. Tesla used the money to accelerate the progress of Model S and to build a production facility for electric powertrains. Each company applying for the loan had to prove it had a viable business, thus General Motors failed to get it. Tesla, Ford, and Nissan were the only companies that got it. 54But Tesla didn’t need the loan from DOE to survive. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” Elon said. “We’ll be profitable in July, and we’re already cash-flow positive. We would not need the loan to survive. Randy Stross is a huge douche bag and an idiot. What is he doing picking on an electric car company? Why would he pick on the little guy who is trying to do good when you’ve got egregious waste of money in the tens of billions occurring in Detroit?” 223,231

“Douche bag” is a common word in Elon’s vocabulary. Elon prepared himself before an interview with the television host David Letterman from the Late Show , who was one of the first owners of the Roadster. “If you call Dan Neil a douche bag on national television, I’m going to come out and kick your ass,” Elon’s assistant told him. “But he is a douche bag,” Elon replied. He had become upset when Neil, who worked as a car columnist at the Los Angeles Times , gave Model S the nickname glorified golf cart. 59

Another journalist who made Elon upset was Owen Thomas from the blog Valleywag . “The single most tediously mean-spirited person I have ever encountered,” Elon said of him. 223Thomas wrote the following in an article, “That’s Musk’s version, anyway. I’m skeptical, if only from experience with Musk; when he was running PayPal, I remember him making statements that company insiders told me didn’t match the facts.” 454

But if someone calls you a thief in public, you have to respond. The problem wasn’t that Elon couldn’t accept criticism. “Don’t tell me what you like, tell me what you don’t like,” Elon always asked when a friend used one of his products. 324He added that you should always weigh it up since negative feedback isn’t always correct feedback. But there’s a difference between being a critic and being a liar. “There have been hundreds of negative articles, and yet I’ve only spoken out a few times,” Elon said. “I don’t have a problem with critical reviews; I have a problem with false reviews.” 362

Elon came close to the point where he was about to snap and go crazy. “I’d never seen him so sad,” his mother Maye said. “Everything was collapsing around him.” 54“For a while there, it looked like I had lost my marriage and all three companies [also SolarCity had problems] were going to die,” Elon said. “At that point, every day was like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” 55,210

Working as the CEO of two companies and taking care of five kids, Elon didn’t have any time to sleep. “I was like, I’m fucked. What am I going to do?” he said. “I never thought I was someone who was capable of a nervous breakdown, but I think I came as close as I ever come on December 22. I think once you snapped, you probably don’t realize it because you have gone insane, and your ability to look in the mirror psychologically is substantially impaired.” 51,331

When Elon had decided to invest the last pieces from his past fortune in Tesla, he had a few million dollars to cover living expenses. “This should have been fine, as, relative to others with a similar net worth, I don’t spend much money on personal matters,” Elon said. “I own no homes (not even my residence at this point), yachts or expensive artwork. My clothes are mostly jeans and t-shirts and I almost never take vacations, apart from kid related travel.” 440

But after the divorce with Justine, his expenses increased. In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse has to pay both sides of the battle. The legal and accounting bills for the divorce grew to $170 000 per month. “Journalists were quick to mock the poor ‘broke’ guy that had $200k a month expenses, failing to note that legal fees constituted the majority,” Elon said. 440

Elon sought comfort in the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where he found the quote “Don’t panic.” He thought that if you let your emotions take over, they could cloud your decision-making process and cause you to make decisions you’ll regret later. 125

As the troubles with SpaceX and Tesla began at the same time, Elon wondered if he should save either Tesla or SpaceX. In the end, Elon decided not to give up any of the companies. He compared it with having two children in trouble. Would you save just one kid or would you try to save both? “You should not give up unless you are forced to give up,” Elon said. “But there are times when you should give up because you are doing something in error, if you are trying to penetrate a brick-wall with your head. If you are convinced that what you are doing is correct, then you should never give up.” 360

What is certain is that Elon never called for higher powers during these years. Elon has only returned to South Africa four times since he immigrated to Canada, and he has never considered himself a South African. 4But one of the few trips back to his birth country came close to becoming one of his last trips ever.

In 2000, Elon and Justine traveled to South Africa where they visited Pretoria and the Londolozi Game Reserve. During Elon’s seventeen years in the country, he never took a malaria pill. On this trip, they took some pills even though they didn’t take the pills seriously. Why would they? They were going to spend their time in a low-risk malaria area. What they didn’t know was that a recent flooding turned the low-risk area to a high-risk area. 169

When they came back to California, Elon felt ill and went to the hospital. But the tests for malaria were negative, so he returned home again. But he didn’t get better. He returned to the hospital, where the doctors began treating him for malaria. He was less than two days away from being irrecoverable – when the disease would have caused so much damage in his body that all the doctors could have done was nothing. 169“Man, that experience was no fun at all, but it does tend to sharpen your goal-setting,” Elon said. 56

Elon never prayed when he almost died of Malaria and he is not a religious man. 341He once got the question if he thought there’s some master intelligence. “I think probably not because then you have to say: Where does the master intelligence come from?” Elon replied. “So it sort of begs the question. So I think really you can explain this with the fundamental laws of physics. You know its complex phenomenon from simple elements.” 354

Henry Ford had a saying, “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” After the credit crisis of 2008 hit the world economy, Elon realized how he could use the recession to his advantage. “The economy is shit,” he said. “Do you realize what that’s going to do to the value of secondhand machines? They’ll be in the toilet. We can get an EB welder on-site.” 49