Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

The electric vehicles could now be powered with solar panels. Not a single drop of oil or a single brick of coal would be needed anymore. “With just a small 10 feet by 15 feet [3 m by 4.5 m] solar panel tucked away on the roof of your garage, you will generate enough electricity to travel about 400 miles [640 km] per week in the Tesla Roadster,” Elon said. “If you travel less than that, you will be energy positive with respect to transportation and the excess electricity will offset your home’s power usage.” 248

There have been suggestions that you can increase the range of an electric vehicle by installing solar panels on the vehicle itself. But it sounds better than it is. “That’s a little bit like fins on a Cadillac, they are decorative and it looks nice, but they don’t do very much,” Martin Eberhard said. “The amount of energy that hits the roof of your car isn’t enough to make a big difference. If you’ve got pretty good solar panels and cover the whole top surface it might increase the driving range by 10 miles [16 km]. Far better is to leave your solar panels at home where they can be at a perfect angle and they can store that energy in the perfect storage system called the grid.” 355

One of the first owners of the EV1 electric car from General Motors was Kris Trexler. You could only lease the EV1 in California and Arizona, so Trexler came up with an idea to market the EV1 to the rest of the country. He made a 3275 miles [5270 km] long journey called Charge Across America. “Thanks to the Walmart in Redlands, I charged the batteries up to 96 percent full using their free public charging station,” Trexler said. “I found another red EV1 parked in an adjacent charging space. Good company. Infrastructure is essential to the success of electric cars. Imagine gasoline powered cars with no gas stations.” The problem with this trip from Los Angeles to Detroit was that it took three weeks. When Trexler arrived to Detroit, he flew home while the car was shipped by truck back to Los Angeles. 211

Luckily, the electric car technology has improved since the days of the EV1. In September 2012, Tesla revealed that SolarCity would supply solar panels to Tesla’s own network of charging stations called Superchargers. These stations are similar to a traditional gas station, but for electric vehicles only. Because the stations will supply more energy than what will be used by the electric cars, the vision is that they will be like small power plants that supply electricity to the area around them.

The Supercharger network became the solution to the three problems that held back electric vehicles in favor of gasoline vehicles.

The first problem was that the driver of an electric vehicle should be able to drive long distances with the same ease as if the driver had a gasoline car. Tesla optimized the distance between the Superchargers so the drive-break cycle will be the same as if it was a gasoline car. Sooner or later, any driver has to take a break for 30 minutes. While taking this break, the driver can charge the electric vehicle. “We looked at the major population centers and said ‘Well, people don’t just drive at random across the whole area – they follow the main routes and corridors,’” JB Straubel said. “You can look at how many stations [Superchargers] you need and that’s a very small number. It’s not tens of thousands; it’s actually a few hundred stations if they are exactly in the right places between cities.” 426

The second problem was that the electric vehicle should be charged with clean energy. Charging with energy from a coal power plant is cleaner compared with using a gasoline car, but charging with clean energy is the best option.

The third problem was that an owner of an electric vehicle should be able to charge the batteries cheaper compared with filling the tank in a gasoline car. Tesla promised it would be free to charge Tesla cars at these stations. “We always want it to be the case that the Supercharger is free once you’ve bought the car,” Elon said. “So we don’t want to have this kind of pay every time you arrive thing. I think it’s just so much easier for you to just build it into the cost and you arrive and you just never have to deal with anything.” 250

In the history of Tesla, the Supercharger network became an important milestone. Elon thought it was a similar milestone as when SpaceX for the first time docked with the International Space Station. “Tesla’s Supercharger network is a game changer for electric vehicles, providing long distance travel that has a level of convenience equivalent to gasoline cars for all practical purposes,” Elon said. “However, by making electric long distance travel at no cost, an impossibility for gasoline cars, Tesla is demonstrating just how fundamentally better electric transport can be.” 387

It still takes longer time to charge a Tesla with electricity from a Supercharger compared with the time it takes to fill up the tank in a gasoline car. To tackle this problem, the engineers designed Model S’s battery in a way that the battery can be replaced with a charged battery. “You’ll head to a battery-swap station, drive your car onto rails that lock your car into position like at a car wash, and a customized forklift device will grab the pack from beneath the car, pull it out, and replace it with another pack,” Elon said. “It’ll take roughly five minutes – less time than filling your gas tank.” 373

Critics argued that installing Superchargers across the country would not be enough. Many car owners are living in apartments and can’t charge their vehicles in a garage. In a survey, 43 percent said they didn’t have the ability to charge an electric vehicle in home or at work. 388To build a complete network of charging stations, it was estimated that it will cost hundreds of billions. 59But the number of charging stations today can be compared with the number of gas stations when the gasoline car was new. Today there are 119 000 gas stations in the US that didn’t exist 100 years ago – and it was certainly not free to build them. 424

When there was a demand for gas stations, it didn’t take a long time to build thousands of them. The first public gas stations were called filling stations and they began to appear in 1907. Car owners had earlier purchased gasoline in shops that handled the gas as a sideline to other business activities. By 1920, the filling station was often a small building with gas pumps in front. They offered supplies like tires, batteries, and oil, and simple services like lube jobs and tire patching. As the number of gasoline cars grew, so did the number of gas stations. In 1920, US had 15 000 gas stations, and by 1930, the number of gas stations had grown to 100 000. 424

Elon established the Musk Foundation in 2001. The homepage doesn’t reveal much, the only text available is: “Grants are made in support of: Renewable energy research and advocacy, Human space exploration research and advocacy, Pediatric research, Science and engineering education.” It’s unclear why he established the foundation, but another event happened the same year that may have influenced the decision.

Elon’s mother Maye Musk worked as a dietician and became fluent in six languages. She also worked as a model. 4At age 63, she appeared naked and pregnant on the cover of the New York Magazine . “Is she just too old for this?” the headline next to the picture asked. But the picture was fake – she wasn’t naked nor pregnant at the time of the photograph. The actress Demi Moore appeared in a similar picture on the cover of Vanity Fair , and the magazine with Maye on the front page included a story about what age is too old to give birth. 76

In 2001, Maye lived in New York, and so did Elon’s brother Kimbal, who had moved there after Zip2 was sold. One day in September, Justine woke up when she heard Elon yelling in the phone. “No shit,” he shouted. “You’re kidding me. You’re fucking kidding me.” He went down to his computer and checked the news. “Wake up,” he shouted to Justine. “You have to wake up. The World Trade Tower’s on fire. It’s on fire.” Elon was worried since both his brother and mother lived in New York. Kimbal lived only a few blocks away from the burning buildings. 161