The mystery of Elon Musk

From tunnels to Tesla to taking humanity to Mars, Elon Musk is changing our future. Sean O'Grady takes a look at the man who doesn’t understand limits

The eccentric Tesla founder's net worth is close to $100bn (Reuters)

The other day, at the “Tesla Battery Day”, company boss Elon Musk, supported by his head of Powertrain development, Drew Baglino, made some typically bold, visionary announcements. Standing on the open air platform at Tesla HQ in Fremont, California, in black jeans and black T-shirt, every inch the modern tech boss, Musk addressed an audience of Tesla fans parked in their (Tesla) cars, plus another 270,000 devotees watching online. Musk enthralled them with his plans to revolutionise not just the automobile but battery technology and indeed the whole business of making things: “Tesla is aiming to be the best at manufacturing of any company on Earth”. He promised that, soon, Tesla would be building 20 million electric vehicles a year, roughly double what Volkswagen or General Motors or Toyota produce today. His new “tabless” cylindrical shaped batteries, nicknamed “biscuit tins”, will be six times as powerful as the current equivalents, far cheaper and deliver another 16 per cent in range for his cars. His “terrawatt” factory will make more battery power than any other plant in the world. By 2023, there will be an “affordable” ($25,000) new Tesla model for the masses – “in three years we can do a $25,000 [£19,600] car that will be basically on a par, maybe slightly better than, a comparable gasoline car”. He also announced a new high performance of his Model S saloon, the “Plaid” capable of 200mph, and getting from zero to 60mph in 2.3 seconds, all for $150,000 (a competitive price tag at that end of the market). Naturally the new cars will drive themselves. (The Plaid badge, like its sibling the Model S “Ludicrous” are jokey references to Mel Brooks’s 1987 sci-fi spoof Spaceballs).  

Not since Jesus Christ delivered the sermon on the mount, or, perhaps, Boris Johnson last addressed a Brexit rally has a more fantastical, if not impossible manifesto been presented. All around the Tesla parking lot the faithful tooted their horns at each electrifying announcement; but a sceptical Wall Street promptly lopped $50bn of the value of the company, about a tenth. Musk, they recognised, had promised much already, with a mixed record of delivery. The analysts were waiting for even more outlandish vistas, or just evidence of improved profitability, things that might help lift the world out of its Covid malaise.  

As Jim Cramer, legendary American stock pundit, commented, buying shares in Tesla is buying shares in Musk’s dreams; it is what it is. This time, Musk, even in his pomp, let the investors down. Well, sort of; the shares are still worth ten times what they were last year, and it remains the world’s most valuable car company.  

Musk’s 22 per cent stake in Tesla represents a sizeable slice of his total net worth of nearly $100bn. Which means he’s maybe a bit poorer than Bill Gates, a tad better off than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but 40 times what Donald Trump’s worth, and 200 times greater than Elizabeth II’s old money fortune. In proportionate terms, to get some grip on these sums, to Elon Musk a bill or price tag of, say, $150,000 “feels like” what an item costing $1 would to the average American household. That matters when you read that, for example, Musk has tossed $1m to some charity – it’s like an American family giving six bucks away. The multi-multi billionaire Musk will be 50 next year, by the way.  

Such dizzying wealth (and inequality) associated with these modern tech giants recalls Edwardian-era disparities, and names such as JP Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Getty and, most compellingly in the case of Musk, Henry Ford, who was also ambitious for his car business more than a century ago.

Like Ford, Musk sees economies of scale and new manufacturing techniques as the key to success in revolutionising personal transportation (in Ford’s day, copying the production of precisely standardised parts that the gun makers pioneered, and of course the assembly line). Like Ford, Musk prefers “vertical integration”, making his own components,  just as Ford owned his own rubber plantation and iron foundry for his “tin Lizzies”. Like Ford, Musk is impatient of bureaucrats – hence the trouble he got into when he idly tweeted about taking Tesla private, in serious violation of US Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Like Ford, some of Musk’s views can be problematic; he says “pronouns suck”, “public transport sucks” and “coronavirus panic is dumb”. Maybe he agrees with Henry that history is bunk, or maybe it too “sucks”. Mind you, Ford never publicly called anyone “pedo guy”, the term used by Musk when his offer to help rescue some Thai schoolboys trapped in a cave was rejected.  

Like Ford, too, Musk’s similar vision has a touch of arrogance about it, and last year he explicitly and admiringly invoked his predecessor: “When Henry Ford made cheap reliable cars, people said ‘nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’” To Musk, the petrol-powered Ford Mondeo is the horse of today, economically obsolete.

Of course the Ford Motor Company (est 1903) is still going, and, Musk’s critics argue, the old firm knows a bit more about assembly and quality control than Tesla. Tesla-sceptics also point to its growing band of electric car competitors, which range from established players such as VW group (now greening itself after the dieselgate scandal) and Hyundai-Kia, to the likes of China-based Geely (owners of Polestar) and Shanghai Automotive (who make electric vehicles bearing the otherwise defunct MG badge). Tesla’s critics claim it is burning cash, and in any case battery technology will be overtaken by the hydrogen fuel cell or even new synthetic fuels for the tried and tested internal combustion engine. At any rate they wonder why the tiny loss-making Tesla is worth more than Toyota.

The answer of course is that whiff of Musk and the magic (black or otherwise) of that name.

For Musk has made a pretty good job of owning the future. As a kid growing up and getting educated in South Africa (his father’s nationality) and Canada (his mother’s homeland), Musk was a huge fan of sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov, and much of his commercial activities seem to be about living out those dreams, now that technological fact has almost caught up with fiction. Musk is basically launching a takeover bid for our near future – autonomous electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, space travel, the lot – and many, many people believe in him.

Going from PayPal, I thought ‘what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective ‘what’s the best way to make money?’

Elon Musk

His prospective 20 million-a-year electric car factory came just a few days after Musk had introduced his latest (literally) pet project, Gertrude the pig, complete with a coin-sized computer chip in her brain. Her Porkiness is the flagship/flagpig of Musk’s Neuralink Company, As the world’s first brain-to-machine interface she was filmed snuggling around her pen, the signals from her snout bleeping away on a laptop. There was talk of a treatment for Parkinson’s and other neurological conditions: “Fitbit in your skull” he calls it, with his usual flair, evoking The Matrix. Machine minds? Again... in the future... perhaps...

Much the same goes for his ironically named The Boring Company. The admittedly highly exciting objective of this enterprise would have people being transported across the continental United States rapidly and cleanly in their private cars via a vast system of underground electrically-powered conveyor belts – the “hyperloop”. His interplanetary spaceflight business, Space X, is probably closer to establishing a human colony on Mars than it was when it was founded in 2002, and it has enjoyed successful launches and docking at the International Space Station, but it has tilted its orbit towards practical satellites. It’s also had its share of failures and the Musk space odyssey is far from fulfilled.  

There are obvious solid foundations to Musk’s success; he is more than an elaborate PR exercise. He did not become the fifth richest person on Earth by tweeting. Whatever Elon Reeve Musk has achieved he has done himself – with little inherited advantage. His family background was solidly upper middle class. His father, Errol, who he has called “evil” was a pilot, engineer and property developer. Mother Maye was a model and dietician. They divorced when Musk was nine. Reports say Musk was bullied at school, so it can hardly have been an idyllic start in life. Musk was bright and educationally accomplished, however, and started programming on a Commodore at around the age of 10. In due course he got to Stanford, but, like some other tech entrepreneurs, dropped out to devote himself to his hobby/business career. He believes in the 100-hour working week.

He has partnered in some of his enterprises with his brother Kimbal, and it was their early success with software start up Zip2 (founded in 1995) that got things rolling. Compaq bought the Musks’ share out for $37m during the dot.com boom. Elon Musk then went on to make more money from X.com, which morphed into what we now know and commonly use as PayPal – nothing fanciful about that, or the $180m Musk got out of it.

Musk is the ultimate new age neophile of our time, and it is sometimes hard to tell where vision ends and self-parody begins. So mesmerised is he by his Asimov-esque view of the world, or just plain wacky, or publicity hungry, that this year he attracted huge global attention for the name given to his son with his partner Grimes (Claire Boucher): “X AE A-12 Musk”. This, according to Grimes, comprises: X, the unknown variable; AE, “my elvin spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial Intelligence)”; and “A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favourite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent”. The register office made them tone it down to “X AE A-XII Musk”, but he’ll still face some challenges in the playground when he gets older. At least Henry Ford only called his lad Edsel. X is Musk’s seventh child. With his first wife (2000 -2008) Jennifer Justine Wilson he had a son who died of sudden infant death syndrome, and then twins and triplets through IVF. He was then twice married to actress Talulah Riley (2010-12, 2013-16).  

Riley and Grimes are rather younger than Musk. Justine Musk, more of a contemporary, wrote an article for Marie Claire entitled “I Was a Starter Wife”, which was uncomplimentary to Musk.  His private life has often attracted attention, but appears to have made little difference to Elon Musk’s fortunes, in any sense. Apart from Grimes’s output, he enjoys what you might call (if you were stretching for a pun) “Musk Rap” music. He has some compositions of his own,  including a tribute to deceased celebrity gorilla Harambe. “RIP Harambe” was released on Soundcloud last year, and features the lyric “RIP Harambe/Sipping on some Bombay/We on our way to heaven/Amen, amen.”  

Not that he’s ever openly admitted it as an ambition, Musk still has time to become the richest person on Earth (overtaking Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’  $113bn, according to Forbes). He might possibly even overtake his historical precursor Henry Ford (estimated worth at its peak of around $200bn at today’s prices). Musk himself doesn’t talk much about money. He once said that “going from PayPal, I thought ‘what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity? Not from the perspective ‘what’s the best way to make money?’”. It sounds plausible, but then again the problems facing humanity are what Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders fret about, and they’re not billionaires four hundred times over. There must be more to it than turning intriguing ideas from sci-fi into business? No one is going to get rich (surely) from trying to invent time travel or the sonic screwdriver? Yet Musk has succeeded by building things on the very edges of reality, the high-hanging fruit, only just beyond grasp. Maybe that solves a little bit of the mystery of Musk.