Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

General Motors argued that as Tesla grows, it would be difficult to act like small organizations. You can’t organize an entire army in the same way as you organize Navy Seals. “Inevitably, Tesla will discover that the only way to succeed on the scale we have is to be exactly like us,” they said. “The total of all Tesla cars ever produced since 2006 [to 2012], from the initial announcement of the electric Roadster to the current Model S sedan, amounts to a couple of hours of GM’s global production. The company’s earnings from that effort likely amount to a similarly minute fraction of GM’s business.” 59,376

Since the special forces are recruiting only the best, Elon’s companies are also recruiting only the best. “I have never worked for another aerospace company,” Elon said. “However, based on stories I’ve heard, some of them sound like a Dilbert cartoon in real life. My approach is simply to seek out very talented people, ensure that the environment at SpaceX [and Tesla] is as motivating and enjoyable as possible, and establish clear and measurable objectives.” 285

What Elon is looking for is the Michael Jordans of engineering. The employees need to have a positive attitude, they have to be easy to work with, and the other employees have to enjoy working with them. There’s a no-asshole-attitude, so C or D employees are not tolerated on a scale where A employees are the best. He will fire C or D players, but not without first giving a warning. What Elon want is happy employees. If an employee is not happy, then he or she can no longer work for the company. 354“If you are not happy, get a divorce,” Elon said, probably as a reference to his two failed marriages.

But A players within certain fields are not always easy to find. “There’s certain special skills, especially in advanced engineering, that are the limiting factor in creating new companies; we send these people home after training them in our graduate schools,” Elon said. “One of the toughest things I’ve found is to recruit top-notch manufacturing talent. That’s where I’ve had to go overseas. For a few decades, it just wasn’t where the smartest kids in the class in America went. We had far too many smart people in the US go into finance and law.” 316

Being the best doesn’t just mean that you were the best in school. What you need is real experience. Elon recalled how he interviewed fresh graduates without any experience. “So you get all the arrogance and attitude without any of the capability, or the willingness to admit mistakes, adapt and learn,” Elon said. “They need to go spend a few years at a Fortune 500 company, where everybody is like them, they have no status whatsoever and they’re treated like dirt. They get seasoned and humbled. Then you can work with them.” 167

The French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte met with his advisers who recommended him a new general to lead a new military campaign. The advisers told Napoleon that the prospective general was good with the men, he was smart, and he had excellent tactics. Napoleon looked at his advisers and asked “Yes, but is he lucky?” For entrepreneurs, luck is important, but so is good tactics, and you need to be good with the men and women in the organization.

Elon answered the question if you create a successful company it’s more about the external environment than any skill the entrepreneur has. “I’m just very lucky,” Elon replied. “Definitely luck plays a role in anything. I do think you’ve got to have perseverance. You’ve got to stick it out, and the team that you’re working with does, too. That allows you to get through a series of issues. It took us four flights to get to orbit at SpaceX. That was kind of grueling.” 57

Because all rocket launches after the first three flights have been successful, it looks like SpaceX might have passed the first stage where a new company has to fight for its survival. SolarCity had some minor troubles in the beginning, but has been fine since then. “Solar City is doing super well,” Elon said. “They’re growing at 50 percent to 100 percent a year with positive cash flow, which is pretty incredible. I just show up at the board meetings to hear the good news. It’s really great.” 351The third company, Tesla Motors, had as we now know a few ups and downs but is today also on the right track. “It feels good in retrospect, but it was extremely difficult and stressful at the time,” Elon said. “It’s really this year [2013] I’ve felt really secured about Tesla. Tesla is now ten years old, so the first nine years were quite insecure.” 445

When Elon co-founded Tesla, he had a vision: “I would like to be able to look back and say: Tesla accelerated the transition from hydrocarbons to sustainable electric transport by at least five to ten years.” This vision is now a reality. “We’re still very little, and so while the big automakers won’t be afraid of us, they should be afraid of their competitors imitating us,” Elon said. “Our success will make Toyota worry about what BMW will do, and GM worry about Honda – will create a concern about being late for the party. So our role is as a guiding light, helping bring these cars to market five or ten years faster than they would have otherwise – which could make an important difference for saving the species.” 59

The Model S won the 2013 Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award, which is a competition that began in 1949. “I did a double-overhead high-five with George Blankenship, who told me the news,” Elon said. “Hopefully, what it will mean to the public is something very powerful. It should symbolize the transition to electric. Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award is the top award, obviously, in the car industry and the most respected, so for Motor Trend to say that the Model S is, in fact, the best car is a huge vindication and, I think, what will be hopefully seen historically as a turning point in the transition from gasoline to electric.” 193The Toyota Prius won the competition in 2004 and Chevrolet Volt won it in 2011.

While the Chevrolet Volt is not a true electric car, it has a small combustion engine in reserve, it’s a first step. General Motors admitted they started the Volt program as a direct response to the Tesla Roadster. 355“All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is ten years away, and Toyota agrees with us – and, boom, along comes Tesla,” Bob Lutz of General Motors said. “So I said, ‘How come some teeny little California start-up run by guys who know nothing about the car business can do this, and we can’t?’ That was the crowbar that helped break up the logjam.” 59

Elon is not a fan of the Volt. The Volt’s battery pack is half as large as the Roadster’s, but has only one sixth of the electric range. “You’ll have a tiny engine pulling around a big car with a dead battery – you’ll be the worst car on the road,” Elon said of what will happen if the Volt’s battery runs out of juice. 59And Lutz is not yet a fan of Tesla. “This is a little bit like saying that a new, exclusive, high-end restaurant in New York, with a three week reservation list, is ‘doing a better job’ in the food business than McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and Pizza Hut combined,” he said. 376

One of the executives who was blamed for killing the EV1 was Lutz. He received e-mails like, “You sold out to the oil companies,” “You killed my grandchildren,” and “I hope you rot in hell.” He has now changed his mind, and he calls himself an environmentalist within reason. 331Elon is also an environmentalist within reason. “I’m not too hardcore about being green,” Elon said. “I think it leads to a very constrained life. Waste is not good, but we can’t conserve our way to a solution. If everyone were a super-green conservationist, it would just delay the inevitable. We have to find sustainable means of producing and consuming energy.” 373