The Enigma That Is Elon Musk
Summary
Elon Musk, the world’s (former) richest person has been hugely successful in creating or acquiring 8 radically different technology companies. He is now reforming Twitter. It will take time to determine if renamed X company he calls the world’s ‘town square’ fails or is substantially better.
He has a form of Autism (Aspergers) which seems to be a large factor in his success and unusual behaviour. Elon is the product of a harsh upbringing, probably making him battle hardened and determined to succeed. His companies are altruistic, designed to overcome problems facing the world.
He seems to understand the technology involved in all his companies better than his employees. They are tasked with almost impossible deadlines with meetings held at all hours. Elon tells them he is available 24/7. Those who stay are usually exceptionally bright and capable. They are like disciples and will follow him anywhere. Others are fired or leave voluntarily.
What Elon says publicly always seems to be controversial and there are countless examples. However, leaders such as Biden, Sunak, Macron, Netanyahu and Zelensky have sought his advice on technolgy.
This latest video below shows why the public is mystified by his attitude and takeover of Twitter:
2nd Video
New York Times Interviewing Elon This video is very recent, is long, but exposes Elon’s personality – worth watching. He is altruistic and has open sourced all Tesla patents to help other automotive companies promote EVs. Interestingly, his speech is so staccato that the immediate AI generated subtitles are almost worse than his verbal delivery.
Childhood
Born 1971, Elon’s form of Autism made his behaviour at school in South Africa strange, so he was bullied often and badly. So badly, a 16 year old boy was sent to prison for relentlessly beating him up. He lived with his father, Errol in his teens, whose behaviour towards him was verbally abusive. Errol Musk was a successful engineer and pilot in South Africa, so the family enjoyed a relatively comfortable lifestyle.
His mother separated from his father in 1980, but her family were adventurers. Particularly her father who took risks and flew small planes to remote parts of Africa.
Elon could code by the age of 5 and topped his class in maths every year. He is tall, 6 feet 3 inches (1.9 metres).
Migrating to North America
At 17 Elon implored his father to fund his migration to Canada to join his mother. While telling Elon he would fail, he did help finance his departure. Elon also secured scholarships and worked odd jobs to support himself after arriving in North America. His brother Kimbal joined him later.
He studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States and then transferred to Stanford University but ultimately dropped out to found and eventually sell PayPal.
His Companies
Elon was a brilliant ‘gamer’ and could have easily made a success of building computer games. But he wants to build companies that improve and ‘save humans from themselves’. Hence Tesla, to help mitigate climate change and Space X, to maintain mankind on another planet. He takes huge risks and seems to thrive on chaos. He sleeps fitfully but seems to have endless energy. His outspokenness has often affected share prices.
The companies below are either founded or partly owned by Elon.
- Tesla: Its share value was until recently higher than all the other US auto manufacturers put together. Tesla almost went bankrupt several times, but somehow Elon got additional funding just in time.
- SpaceX: Elon had enough funding for 4 attempts to put rockets into orbit. Success came on the 4th. SpaceX eventually received funding from NASA. By recovering the hardware after each launch, SpaceX funds rocket launches for about 10% of NASA’s cost. SpaceX is now successfully transferring many astronauts to orbiting satellites.
- The Boring Company: Elon decided to build tunnels beneath cities after becoming impatient driving in Los Angeles’s traffic jams.
- Starlink: This low earth orbiting multiple satellite system can provide internet availability to all parts of the planet, where access has previously been none or poor.
- Tesla Solar Roof: A solar tile system uses solar panels that look like normal roof tiles. His cousins founded it, but it is now owned by Tesla.
- X: Formerly Twitter, owned by X.com Corp, it remains to be seen if this becomes a fair forum for serious online discussions.
- Neuralink: Cofounded in 2016, it develops brain computer interfaces (BCIs) for potential medical and communication applications. He wants to make humans smart enough to counter rogue AI.
- X.com (formerly OpenAI): Elon originally cofounded OpenAI in 2015 as a non profit AI research company.
Comments are especially welcome. Please make them below.
References
space X
6 Responses
As a Tesla car owner and TSLA share investor I follow Musk’s public comments carefully and note the impact on Tesla the company, TSLA the share price, and his other companies because, for example, the X/Twitter drama has affected the TSLA share price in the past. X now appears to be growing strongly and increasingly disrupting old media with a radical free speech bias, effective error correction tools and a direction away from advertising dependency. Unvarnished truth will appeal to more and more users once it is trusted to be just that.
I prefer government filings from the SEC, verified registration, insurance and shipping data and expert engineering and investment opinion on blogs and X rather than the mainstream media which tends to be superficially general, compromised by advertiser influence and click dependent. This is to be expected because Musk’s companies represent an existential threat to fossil fuel extraction, energy generation and distribution, legacy vehicle manufacturers, car dealerships, service stations, telecoms, legacy media and aerospace.
Musk is a historically significant person with a set of achievements comparable with Leonardo da Vinci (first principles thinking in multiple fields), Thomas Edison (continuous, prolific invention) and Henry Ford (industry changing manufacturing innovation). Tesla factories run on custom made ERP systems and giant AI models fed by real-time data from 5 million vehicles that generate, implement, test and approve around 30 design and manufacturing innovations per week. Legacy car makers typically iterate their designs every 4 years. The recent 2023 Tesla account filings (https://last10k.com/sec-filings/tsla) showed a continuing reduction in COGS of ~2% per month. Tesla generates $~5k profit per vehicle, while Ford loses $~30k per EV vehicle.
Musk’s idiosyncratic public comments probably spring from a hurt reaction to concerted media and government attacks despite his herculean efforts to benefit humanity, physical stress and the unfiltered and attention seeking nature of an autistic personality. We hardy TSLA investors see Musk as a package. A neutered, filtered, airbrushed Musk would likely not generate the same stream of innovations and achievements.
David
Delighted to have your comments, with which I agree, especially the comparison with the world’s past luminaries.
Regarding X, Musk has improved anything he has taken on and contrary to public doomsday comments, I am sure he will succeed in reforming Twitter. Once that happens, the Tesla share price will probably rebound. X was top heavy with staff, particularly coders and as usual he got rid of around 75%, but gave everyone the option of resigning or staying and working under his all in work ethic.
While his remarks about advertisers was very offensive, the total revenue from advertising in X is US$27M, which is negligible compared to the purchase price and what he is devising, i.e., a subscription platform for serious contributors.
Having ridden in your and my son’s Tesla Y, I am confident about the future of EVs. Critics expect new technology to be perfect from day one. It takes time and ICEs are a good example. They took 100 years to be perfected to the reliable vehicles they are today. In a prior blog, I dealt with EVs. A slowdown in uptake is predicted. Improvements, particularly in longer range, safer batteries, charge time and lower costs are coming. This will surely increase uptake markedly.
Michael Wilkinson told me about your scepticism of the Toyota new EV battery which I have confirmed with some delving. They seem to be unconvinced about EVs powered by batteries and are concentrating on hydrogen powered cars and hybrids. It would be good to have another type of pollution free vehicle, but there are so far many unknowns about them and production costs of hydrogen. For me, a wait and see scenario.
Hi Campbell
Thanks for another interesting blog and great to catch up on Australia Day and celebrate our fantastic Country.
Elon Musk a true entrepreneur with unbelievable energy and vision. He is certainly wired differently to most of us with a huge risk tolerance. He will have successes & failures (probably more successes than failures),but in the process leave his mark on the Planet. Outspoken, yes, but can afford to be and we can only be thankful that he and we live in countries that allow free speech. I love his response to the advertisers that have “tried to blackmail him”.
His Starlink satellite communications is fantastic we have kids in rural NSW and all use it for personal & business. It has eliminated all the internet connection, spread problems previously experienced. It will be interesting to see where he goes next.
Keep up the good work.
Foulsh
Thanks John
Hope you now get my blogs and they are not going through to Spam!
Couldn’t agree more with what you say. The public generally don’t understand his outspokeness, but at least he has the courage to say what he thinks and inevitably he finishes up succeeding. I hope this is the case with X. The ‘World’s Town Square’, properly controlled would be a good thing.
Another belated response to your blog on Elon Musk.
He is definitely a man ahead of his time who has demonstrated that risk with a seemingly never-sleeping mind is fascinating to follow. The only criticism of his achievements is that he does not have the entrepreneurs engaged to keep up the pace on his advances. As you know I’m 100% involved in the emissions offset world and worry about the lack of infrastructural rollout to support his EV. In particular my concerns relate to recharging stations (numbers, locations, time and costs).
Finally, as a keen aviator, I am fascinated on his SpaceX developments.
Peter
Always good to have your comments.
Yes, there always seems to be a lag in setting up the required infrastructure to meet future demand, but I think it will be done if the demand requires it.
A blog I am writing now is the place of hydrogen as a fuel. Toyota in particular are going the hydrogen route and this will require further infrastructure. So in the interim, existing petrol stations will have to cater for all 3 fuels which will be a further deterrent.
New technologies are fraught with teething problems, but eventually get sorted. I hope it is in time to thwart serious climate change.