That’s easily forgotten in the internet fawning over Musk, and his willingness to take all the credit. Working on that part-time, Musk’s other job is at Tesla – the first successful automotive start-up in America since Chrysler all the way back in 1925. They use off-the-shelf components and the latest Tintin-inspired prototype is made out of steel instead of carbon fibre, dramatically reducing costs and launching a new space age.
SpaceX has revolutionised space by creating reusable rockets. The book is as much about the companies and the technology they have pioneered as it is about Musk, which is important. He came within a whisker of losing everything on both of them before they became the multi-billion dollar propositions they are today. Musk then sank the entirety of his personal fortune into a space company, at a time when only governments could afford to go to space – and then an electric car company when nobody was sure such a thing would ever be viable. It traces early successes with the Zip2 internet start-up, to that first big fortune with PayPal. This biography, which he cooperated with but did not control, follows Musk from his troubled childhood in South Africa to his student days in Canada. But he certainly gets things done – often things that are broadly considered impossible. His work rate is ridiculous and the pressure he piles on his employees is, to my mind at least, on the wrong side of the ethical borderline.
He is intensely logical and blunt to the point of being obnoxious.
He has a brain the size of a planet and an ego to match. He has the ability to learn, recall and calculate on the fly in ways that very few people can keep up with. There’s no question in my mind that he’s a genius. But if he is anything at all, Musk is his own man. Journalist Ashlee Vance has spoken to what feels like hundreds of people about the man, and descriptions vary from a PT Barnum style huckster, Tony Stark from the Iron Man comics, Thomas Edison, to the somewhat lazy ‘new Steve Jobs’. It’s likely that you have an opinion about Elon Musk. It’s a detailed, entertaining and inspiring biography. Among the various books that people bought me for Christmas is this one: Elon Musk – How the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our future.
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