Elon Musk (originally Elon Reeve Musk) is a South African-born, Canadian-American entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and investor. He is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors, and chairman of SolarCity. He is the founder of SpaceX and a co-founder of Paypal, Inc., Tesla Motors, and Zip2. He has also envisioned a conceptual high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop.
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa, to a Canadian-English mother and prominent model Maye Musk and a South African-born British father and electrical/mechanical engineer Errol Musk. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived mostly with his father in locations in South Africa. He taught himself computer programming, and at age 12 sold the computer code for a video game called Blastar for $500.
Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School before graduating from Pretoria Boys High School and moving to Canada in 1988 at age 17, after obtaining Canadian citizenship through his mother. He did so before his South African military service, reasoning that it would be easier to migrate to the United States from Canada than from South Africa.
At age 19, Elon Musk was accepted into Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario for undergraduate study, and in 1992, after spending two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he eventually received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Wharton School. Musk stayed on a year to finish his second bachelor’s degree. In 1995, age 24, Musk moved to California to begin a PhD in Applied physics at Stanford, but left the program after two days to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations in the areas of the Internet, renewable energy and outer space. In 2002, he became an American citizen.
On Tesla; Elon Musk co-founded the company with Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel, and Ian Wright. Following the financial crisis in 2008, Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect, positions he still holds today. Tesla Motors first built an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, with sales of about 2,500 vehicles to 31 countries. Tesla began delivery of its four-door Model S sedan on June 22, 2012 and unveiled its third product, the Model X, aimed at the SUV/minivan market, on February 9, 2012. Model X is scheduled to begin production in early 2015. In addition to its own cars, Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler for the Smart EV, Mercedes B-Class Electric Drive and Mercedes A Class and to Toyota for the RAV4 EV. Musk was able to bring in both companies as long-term investors in Tesla.
Musk has favored building a sub-$30,000 subcompact and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in house. Several mainstream publications have compared him with Henry Ford for his work on advanced vehicle powertrains.
To overcome the range limitations of electric cars, Musk said in an interview with All Things D in May 2013 that Tesla is “dramatically accelerating” their network of supercharger stations, tripling the number on the East and West coasts of the U.S. that June, with plans for more expansion across North America, including Canada, throughout the year. He is reported to have a 32% stake in Tesla, which is valued at US$18 billion, as of November 2013. His annual salary at Tesla is one dollar, and similar to Steve Jobs and others, the remainder of his compensation is in the form of stock and performance-based bonuses.
Elon Musk is also chairman of the Musk Foundation, which focuses its philanthropic efforts on science education, pediatric health, and clean energy. In 2010, the foundation created a program focused on donating solar-power systems for critical needs in disaster areas. The first such solar-power installation was donated to a hurricane response center in Alabama that had been neglected by state and federal aid. To make it clear that this program was not serving Musk’s own commercial interests, SolarCity noted that it had no presence or planned business activity in that state. In a 2011 visit to Soma City in Fukushima, Japan, which had been devastated by tsunami, Elon Musk donated a solar power project valued at $250,000 to the city.
Musk had plans for a “Mars Oasis” project in 2001, which would land a miniature experimental greenhouse on Mars, containing food crops growing on Martian regolith. Ultimately Musk ended up founding SpaceX with the long-term goal of creating a true spacefaring civilization. Musk’s philosophy and description of what is needed to solve the problem are provided in the IEEE podcast “Elon Musk: a founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX” and article “Risky Business.”
In April 2012, Musk joined The Giving Pledge, committing to donate the bulk of his fortune to philanthropic causes. Elon Musk became a member of the campaign first popularised by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates with a class of 12 of America’s wealthiest families and individuals.
In January 2015 Musk donated $10M to the Future of Life Institute to run a global research program aimed at keeping artificial intelligence beneficial to humanity.
Car blog Jalopnik reported on August 16, 2012 that Musk was supporting an effort by Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal to preserve the site of Nikola Tesla’s lab on Long Island, New York and turn it into a museum, the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe. After further discussion with Inman, Elon Musk agreed to donate $1 million toward the construction of a museum on the Wardenclyffe property. As well, Musk pledged to build a Tesla Supercharger station for use in the museum’s parking lot.
Musk is a trustee of the X Prize Foundation, promoting renewable-energy technologies. He also sits on the boards of The Space Foundation, The National Academies Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Stanford Engineering Advisory Board and on the board of trustees of Caltech.
Musk owns a McLaren F1 sports car. He crashed and ‘wrecked’ the car while it was uninsured. He also previously owned a Czech-made jet trainer aircraft Aero L-39. The 1994 model Dassault Falcon 900 aircraft used in the 2005 film Thank You for Smoking is registered to Musk (N900SX), and Musk had a cameo as the pilot of his plane, opening the door for Robert Duvall and escorting Aaron Eckhart aboard. Musk owns Wet Nellie, the Lotus Esprit from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. He plans to convert it into the functional car-submarine from the film. Musk attended the Burning Man festival in 2004 and has said he first thought up the idea for SolarCity at the festival.
Musk has been married three times, twice to the same woman. He met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Musk (née Wilson) while both were students at Ontario’s Queen’s University, Kingston. They married in 2000 and separated eight years later after having six sons, five of whom they share custody. Their first son, Nevada Alexander, died of SIDS when he was 10 weeks old. Following the divorce, Justine Musk gave an interview describing her marriage with Musk in Marie Claire magazine. Musk announced in January 2012 that he had recently ended a four-year relationship with his second wife, British actress Talulah Riley. On January 18, 2012, he tweeted to Riley, “It was an amazing four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day.” In July 2013, he decided to remarry Riley. On February 11, 2014, Musk was invited to attend a state dinner at the White House; the guest list included Musk and Riley. In a 60 Minutes interview on March 30, 2014 with CBS journalist Scott Pelley, Elon and Riley were shown together with Elon’s five children. In December 2014, Musk filed for a second divorce from Riley. Tosca Musk, Elon’s sister, is the founder of Musk Entertainment and has produced various movies.
Elon Musk has won a couple of awards and has achieved quite a lot so let’s take a look to but a few;
- In February 2011, Forbes listed Musk as one of “America’s 20 Most Powerful CEOs 40 And Under”.
- Recognized as a Living Legend of Aviation in 2010 by the Kitty Hawk Foundation for creating the successor to the Space Shuttle (Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft). Other recipients include Buzz Aldrin and Richard Branson.
- Inc Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year award for 2007 for his work on Tesla and SpaceX.
- 2007 Index Design award for his design of the Tesla Roadster. Global Green 2006 product design award for his design of the Tesla Roadster, presented by Mikhail Gorbachev.
- Listed as one of Time’s 100 people who most affected the world in 2010. In the review, Jon Favreau mentions that Elon Musk also helped him make the character of Tony Stark seem real.
- In 2012, Musk was awarded with the Royal Aeronautical Society’s highest award – a Gold Medal.
- Musk was the 2012 recipient of Smithsonian magazine’s American Ingenuity Award in the Technology category.
- In 2013, Musk was named the Fortune Businessperson of the year for SpaceX, SolarCity, and Tesla Motors.
- In 2014, Musk was awarded the World Technology Award in the categories of Energy and Space, winning two of the twenty awards given by the World Technology Network.
- In 2015 he was awarded IEEE Honorary Membership.
- On January 25, 2015, Musk made a guest appearance on The Simpsons episode titled “The Musk Who Fell to Earth” playing himself. The episode poked fun at many of the inventor’s ideas.
Elon Musk is a Trustee of The X-Prize Foundation and a member of the Stanford University Engineering Advisory Board. He has previously served as a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, he was ranked as the No. 10 (tied with rocketry pioneer and scientist Wernher von Braun) most popular space hero.
His current net worth (2015) is 11.9 billion US dollars. An innovative inventor and man to emulate, Elon Musk is our very own real life Tony Stark.
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