Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

The third co-founder who decided to leave Tesla was Ian Wright; the other were Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard. Wright felt his vision was different from Tesla’s and wanted to build an electric vehicle based on a different technology, so he decided to leave the company after only a year. 384With the vision to build the fastest electric vehicle, he founded the company Wrightspeed. “I want to build an extreme performance electric sports car, faster than any production car you can buy for less than one million dollar,” Wright said. “This would be zero to 60 [100 km/h] in three seconds.” 207

Unfortunately, Wright couldn’t convince anyone to invest in his sports car. Instead, he decided to target the truck industry. He realized that when you operate a delivery truck, you replace the truck’s engine several times throughout its lifetime. When you replace the old gasoline engine, why can’t you replace it with a clean electric engine? This is what Wrightspeed set out to do when they developed a plug and play repower kit for trucks. 26

The designer who first designed the Model S, Henrik Fisker, has left Fisker Automotive and the company struggles for its survival. 75 percent of the workforce had to leave the company in April 2013, and they continue to negotiate with prospective investors. “Fisker thinks the most important thing in the world is design, so he outsourced the engineering and manufacturing,” Elon said. “But the fact is that’s the crux of the problem. And he’s outsourcing to people who don’t know how to solve the problem. So he came up with a product – it’s a mediocre product at a high price.” 190

Elon’s second ex-wife, Talulah Riley, has moved back to his house. She promised Elon to retire with him on Mars – but only if Elon has colonized the planet. After she came back, Elon designed an engagement ring. It has a diamond in the middle that symbolizes Elon and Riley, and the sapphires around it are the ten children, out of which five are not yet born. 129You can apparently save the world in more ways than with technology. “People have to make sure they have at least as many babies as people who die,” Elon said. “The death rate has to equal the birth rate. Otherwise you get a population inversion, which is what happened in Japan and is happening in Europe, where there are birth rates of 1.2, 1.3 children per woman. You need 2.2 to retain parity.” 301

Riley explained that her current job is to prevent Elon from going king-crazy. This is a British expression and it means that a person becomes the king, which Elon has become in a way, and then the king goes crazy. 278“I think I’m probably am a bit crazy, but maybe that’s sort of a healthy sign, because at the point which you conclude that you are not crazy at all, then you probably are,” Elon said. 328

Some say Elon has already gone king-crazy, and some say he’s using government money to enrich himself by creating companies that are hidden Ponzi schemes.

“Soon that company besmirching the name of one of the 20th century’s most important inventors, will be as dead as he is. The difference will be that the man [Nikola Tesla] accomplished much, and left us with mysteries researchers are still exploring. The company will just leave a bunch of empty pockets and a few cobbled-up cars.” 203

“He’s going to send somebody to Mars for $500 000? That’s just baloney. It’s just bullshit. Why do people allow him to say things like that?” 120

But Elon couldn’t care less about what others are saying about him, and insanity is after all more logical than sanity when you attack a problem. As Apple’s Think Different commercial said.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify and vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So someone like Elon has to endure more criticism because his ideas are changing the world. But if you care enough about your ideas then it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. “For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity,” Elon said. “If I was purely trying to optimize my net worth, I wouldn’t have picked these as ventures. I’d be in real estate or finance or, frankly, in the oil business. There’s nothing wrong with making money, provided it’s done in an ethical and legal manner, which it mostly is. The things we read about in the newspapers are the exception, not the norm. But we need to consider what it’s all about. What is the meaning of life? Are we doing things that extend the scope of collective human knowledge and understanding? We should do the things that lead us there. I’m not trying to paint myself as some sort of saint. I’m just making the point that the success of the company doesn’t change my life. These are the problems that I think are important and need to be solved, and I’m trying to help solve them.” 22,50,69

1971. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, June 28

1983. Designed a computer game and sold it for $500

1989. Moved to Canada, in part to avoid a compulsory military service in South Africa

1990. Began studying at the Queen’s University in Ontario

1992. Moved to the US to study at the University of Pennsylvania

1995. Began a graduate program in applied physics and materials science at the Stanford University. Left Stanford after two days and founded Zip2

1999. Compaq’s Altavista division acquired Zip2. Founded X.com

2000. X.com acquired Confinity in a 50/50 merger. Married Justine Wilson. Left X.com as CEO

2001. X.com changed its name to PayPal. Established the Musk Foundation to provide grants for renewable energy, space, and medical research and also science and engineering education

2002. eBay acquired PayPal. Founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)

2004. Invested in Tesla Motors. The twins Griffin and Xavier were born

2006. The triplets Kai, Damian, and Saxon were born. Co-founded SolarCity

2007. Sold the McLaren F1

2008. Became CEO of Tesla Motors. Divorced Justine Musk and met Talulah Riley

2010. Married Talulah Riley. Had a small role in the movie Iron Man 2

2012. Divorced Talulah Riley

1900. 38 percent of US automobiles are powered by electricity, but as Henry Ford designed the much cheaper T-Ford, the electric cars began to disappear

1970s. The price of gasoline hits record because of a series of energy crises, so the interest in electric cars increased again

1996–1999. General Motors produced an electric car called EV1 and leased it to customers

2002

• January. Martin Heberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors with the goal of reinventing the electric car and transforming traditional car manufacturing into a clean technology industry

2003

• General Motors canceled the lease program and removed the last EV1 from the streets. They said they couldn’t sell enough of the cars to make the EV1 profitable

• July. Martin Heberhard and Marc Tarpenning formally incorporated Tesla Motors. They had earlier made a feasibility study to see if they could make an electric car. They now made a feasibility study together with AC Propulsion to see if the batteries would work

• November. The 2 employees searched for a partner to build the rest of the car. Lotus became their choice