Musk once again fell into anxiety. While clamoring for the production of epidemic prevention equipment, we are saddened by the halving of the market value in 30 days.

A new type of coronary pneumonia is spreading in the United States. As of March 24th 15, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the United States has exceeded 50,000. Similar to China's strategic material transformation, Tesla is ready to produce epidemic prevention equipment, support 1000 ventilators and 250,000 N95 masks.

This is undoubtedly a drop in the bucket.

Faced with great uncertainty, the US stock index experienced four fuses in 10 days, which became a scene in history. Since the fuse mechanism was established in 1988, there have been only five fuses in the history of American stocks, the first one was when the financial crisis broke out in 1997. The listed companies in the US stock market are full of sorrow, and Buffett, the 89-year-old stock god, also called it "long time no see".

Tesla's market value doubled in two months, ranking the second largest car company in the world with a market value of more than $6543.8+080 billion, but it returned to its original shape within 30 days. The current valuation is only $99 billion.

Models? 3/ Tesla official website

In China, Musk is also struggling.

Not long ago, domestic Tesla was criticized by consumers because the car chip did not match the list, and Musk ignited on Twitter. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology interviewed and its reputation was greatly reduced.

People who are familiar with Musk describe him like this: "Ma Yilong (China name given to Musk by netizens) is a person you can't understand with normal thinking. He is a tech freak and a straight man. He just uses the thinking of a science man to do what he thinks is right, and there is no malice. " He even called Musk an "iron handyman" who can do things but can't tell the scene. Buffett, Bill Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc. They were all bluntly "attacked" by Musk on Twitter.

But there is no doubt that he is the most concerned person in the automobile field at present, and there is no one. Those who like him call him a genius, while those who don't like him call him a "madman".

Today, what remains unchanged is Musk's "madness".

0 1? Little bookworm comes to "land of opportunity"

"I am a little bookworm," Musk described himself as a child.

Musk was inarticulate, withdrawn and even a little clever when he was a child, which made him have almost no playmates except books. But he likes to immerse himself in books and explore the world.

Because he is addicted to reading, Little Musk often falls into thinking, which makes him insensitive to the outside world. His parents thought he had hearing problems and asked the doctor to remove his tonsils to help improve his hearing, but this did not improve Musk's condition.

Later, parents knew that he was thinking, because Musk always gave some unexpected answers to some questions at an early age. Once, my friend pointed to the moon and said that the moon is billions of miles away from us. Musk calmly replied: "In fact, the moon is less than 250,000 miles away from us."

Musk as a child/Iron Man in Silicon Valley

Even if he is afraid of darkness, Little Musk can use science to give himself a reasonable explanation that it is harmless to darkness: darkness is only because there are no photons with visible wavelengths of 400 to 700 nanometers. "What's terrible without photons?" On further consideration, he is not afraid of the dark.

Usually bored, he even makes gunpowder and rockets at home. Later, he got scared and said, "I'm glad my ten fingers and my house are intact."

At the age of 9, Musk had his first computer. Besides reading, the study of computers has become his main interest. 10 years old, an IBM test showed that he had a high programming talent. Musk has a strong self-study ability, and many computer courses are completed by himself. "I have listened to some computer courses and found that the teacher is not as good as me." 12-year-old Musk found video games very popular, so he spontaneously designed a video game called "Blaster" and sold it for $500.

Musk and his mother/Musk Twitter

At that time, Musk had the idea of starting a business.

He wanted to open a game hall next to the school. Even the business model and process were planned together with his younger brother kimble, but when he applied to the government, the plan failed because he was not old enough. But this did not stop Musk's footsteps.

Musk, who loves science since childhood, wants to be closer to the United States. He thinks it is the closest place to the birthplace of science and technology, and it is a land of opportunity.

17-year-old Musk successfully left his hometown of South Africa with the help of his Canadian-born mother and started a trip to Canada. Young Musk was not lost when he was alone in a foreign land. The first thing he did after arriving in Canada by plane was to call his mother and ask him, "What should I do now?"

Then Musk took a bus to Vancouver, moved around and worked, and finally settled in Queen's University in Toronto. During his college years, Musk insisted on his previous self-study habits. Although he seldom goes to class, his exam results are always good.

Later, Musk seized an opportunity to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania and chose two majors, physics and business, one to study how to change the world and the other to study how to make money. During his college years, he wrote three papers, namely, Electronic Scanning Methods for Documents and Books, Importance of Solar Energy and Supercapacitors.

The success of the first paper helped him win the first bucket of gold.

Musk 18 Birthday/Twitter

02? Grab the first bucket of gold

Musk knows what he wants.

1995 coincides with the rise of the Internet. Musk, who just got a chance to study at Stanford University, didn't want to miss the opportunity of the times, so he chose to drop out of school and join the wave of Internet technology entrepreneurship.

At the age of 23, Musk wanted to push newspapers into the digital age, so he joined in with his younger brother kimble, who was far away from Canada, and turned the Yellow Pages into an information website, Global? Link is mainly used to provide location information such as merchants. Musk is in charge of technology and his brother is in charge of sales.

At that time, many people thought that the idea of online yellow pages information was unrealistic, and some even threw them a yellow page and asked disdainfully: Do you really think it can be eliminated? The Musk brothers don't agree. They think this is an irreversible trend.

The rise of information technology has accelerated the internet process, and the global? Link is sought after by some newspaper companies. A year later, the company was spotted by a Silicon Valley investor and received an investment of $3 million. The company was renamed Zip2, so the company was not controlled by Musk.

Under the control of investors, professional managers replaced Musk, and the company's business object changed from the C-end that Musk wanted to develop to the B-end that was more profitable at that time, which ran counter to Musk's idea.

1999, Zip2 was taken by Alta of Compaq? Vista was acquired with $307 million in cash and 34 million shares. Although Musk was surprised that someone bought Zip2 at a high price, he was willing to hand over the company to someone who knew its value better.

Musk made a personal profit of $22 million and became his first bucket of gold.

Musk/Musk Twitter is at work

Ma Hua Teng and Ding Lei, born in 197 1, have just started their business in China, and Musk has become a hot entrepreneurial star in Silicon Valley.

In the same year that Zip2 was sold, Musk founded X.com, a company dedicated to online payment. At that time, the transaction was mainly based on checks, and the cycle of offline mailing was too long. He wanted to use technology to change the links of financial transactions.

Due to the encounter with PayPal, Musk and its founder peter thiel chose to give up the competition, shake hands and merge into a company-X.com. Later, because Musk advocated transferring PayPal's Unix server technology architecture to Windows, which offended the company's technical faction, they organized the board of directors during Musk's vacation and voted him out of the management. The company officially changed its name to PayPal.

Musk, who came back from vacation, found that the company changed the world and he became a company consultant. Musk, who has a hot temper, is surprisingly quiet. Instead of internal friction in this matter, he chose to support the company's decision to add $6 million to become the largest shareholder of PayPal.

In order to quickly explore new users, PayPal conducts viral marketing in the form of bonus incentives, and everyone who successfully registers will receive a reward of $20. Later, due to financial problems, the reward had to be reduced to 10. Although PayPal paid a price of $64 million, it became a classic case of early Internet marketing. It is worth mentioning that Tesla has also extended the way to bring new customers with old customers.

At the beginning of 2002, the company was acquired by Yi Bei for1500 million dollars, and Musk, who held 1 1.7% of the shares, received a return of about1800 million dollars. At this point, Musk has completed the first stage of wealth accumulation.

"I could have retired, bought an island, had some cocktails and enjoyed a comfortable life, but I was not interested." Musk chose to continue his career. He has enough money.

Musk/Twitter

03? It's time to land on Mars.

"When can we land on Mars?" One day, this question suddenly popped up in Musk's mind.

So he checked the website of NASA and was disappointed to find that NASA had no plans to land on Mars, and the pace of American space exploration seemed to have stopped.

He remembered isaac asimov's "Base Series" which he liked since childhood. It was a vast universe, which seemed to change the fate of mankind more than the Internet at that time, that is, exploring space.

He has a bold idea: to bring life to Mars and make mankind an inter-planetary species.

"One day, human civilization can stay away from the earth, but it needs huge sums of money. When I have money, I will do it. " Musk, who has money in his pocket, took the lead in trying. In 2002, Space Exploration Technology Company was born.

Source/space exploration technology company official

Musk's first step was to build a manned rocket.

At that time, rocket space technology was mostly a state secret. Musk visited Russia three times and wanted to spend money to buy a retired rocket for research. Later, Musk found that the cost of rockets was too high, because of the manufacturing and material costs of rockets, and they were all one-time launches.

What disappoints Musk even more is that "rocket technology has not developed at all since the 1960s".

The real way to achieve the goal lies in how to strictly control the cost.

For anything beyond the budget, Musk refused mercilessly, but asked everyone to complete the seemingly impossible task. This led many people to resign because of dissatisfaction, and Musk did not stay, and immediately took on the job of employees resigning.

Musk has never been in contact with the rocket field, but personally participated in the research, development, design and manufacture of rocket design. "Because I can always get what I want from books."

Based on the technology of the United States 50 years ago and the fact that the company manufactured about 90% of rocket parts, the R&D cost of Space Exploration Technology Company was effectively controlled, but the launch was not smooth.

In 2006, the Falcon 1 rocket developed by Space Exploration Technology Company made its first flight and lost control after 25 seconds. After a year, the second launch of Falcon 1 rocket failed. In 2008, after the third failed launch, Musk fell into extreme pain and anxiety.

Released by Space Exploration Technology Company/Official by Space Exploration Technology Company

"After three failed launches, Space Exploration Technology Company closed its doors." Musk's investment has also been exhausted. Now he has only two choices, either continue to invest or go bankrupt.

Musk is not going to give up. He will put all his money into the fourth launch of Space Exploration Technology Company. This is only 1 month from the third launch. He said he knew where the launch failed. "If these problems are solved, the launch will be successful again."

On the day of the launch, even though he knew that the problem had been successfully solved, Musk still didn't have the courage to go to the scene. Instead, he took his children to Disney and didn't enter the launch room until two minutes before the launch.

In September 2008, "Falcon-1" was successfully launched, and its cost was only nearly one quarter of that of other rockets. And this is the research and development result of 1500 employees for six years. Space exploration technology company has also become the first private enterprise in the world to develop recyclable rockets. On June 7, 2020, at 65438, Space Exploration Technology Company completed its first flight in the first year, which was the 48th successful recovery of booster. ?

Space exploration technology company's space work map/space exploration technology company official

04? The second thing of "saving mankind"

In order to continue human civilization, apart from the possibility of 1% migrating to Mars, 99% depends on the sustainability of the earth, which has also become Musk's new thinking.

He believes that the first thing to change is people's dependence on fuel vehicles, and the best way is to replace fuel vehicles with electric vehicles.

In 2003, Musk met martin eberhard, an R&D engineer of electric vehicles in Silicon Valley, and met Tesla for the first time. At that time, it took the team about five years to build an electric sports car Roadster, which accelerated to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds, which moved Musk.

He believes that people cannot refuse cars with better performance and more beautiful appearance. In 2004, Musk invested $6.3 million in Tesla and became the actual controller of the company.

Tesla is on the right path.

For the first time in decades, someone dares to enter the automobile industry. In Silicon Valley, where the manufacturing industry is underdeveloped, it is tantamount to a newborn calf challenging authority. Detroit's auto giants are dismissive of this. The world of fuel cars is impregnable, and electric cars are like a mantis.

Musk's strategy is very clear, starting with high-end electric sports cars, gradually exploring and launching affordable models to increase sales.

Sports car/Tesla official

In 2006, Schwarzenegger, then governor of California, drove Roadster to the Tesla conference. Musk, who has always been the darling of the media, has stirred up the concept of electric vehicles in Silicon Valley, although it has attracted stars such as Leonardo and George Clooney. Favor, but the outside world is full of doubts about electric vehicles.

Under the external pressure, there are serious management problems inside Tesla.

In 2008, the founder martin eberhard was expelled from Musk and the board of directors because Tesla was beyond its management capacity. Eberhard sued Tesla for libel. Finally, Musk settled the matter through arbitration, and the company fell into a serious financial crisis.

Tesla is not recognized everywhere in the United States, so Musk had to go to Europe and choose to form an alliance with German car companies to win the confidence of the American market. Daimler, the inventor of internal combustion engine and undergoing electrical transformation, is undoubtedly the best choice, but Musk and his party did not leave a deep impression on Daimler in Europe. A technical report is far less vivid than a modified electric car.

In order to win orders from Daimler to survive the financial crisis, Musk promised to replace a smart with an electric car driven by Tesla technology within four weeks. Because smart was not sold in America, they had to buy a car from Mexico for modification. They set up a temporary workshop in the factory and hardly ever left. The team that fought everywhere finally waited for the visiting Daimler executives.

After the test drive experience, Daimler was very satisfied with the transformed smart and finally finalized a cooperation of 70 million US dollars. Tesla became a supplier of battery systems for smart.

With funds, Tesla has accelerated the construction of mid-priced models? S, he hired Aston Martin designers as models? S optimized the body shape, but the designer secretly built his own electric car company. Not only does the design fail to meet the requirements of Musk, Model? Some important parameters of S have also been taken away by the designer.

Musk was furious and took the designer to court, but eventually lost the case.

Models? S/ Tesla official

In 2008, a sudden financial crisis struck, leaving Tesla in financial trouble in a desperate situation.

"Who will spend $65.438 billion on a sports car?" What's more, Tesla is just a small car company. Compared with GM and Chrysler, which went bankrupt at that time, it was not worth mentioning. Tesla is teetering. Even a special column set up by a group of former employees is in full swing to discuss when Tesla will close down.

At that time, the money in Tesla's account was only enough for one week at most.

"I have to make a choice, either invest the money I got from selling PayPal in Tesla or let Tesla close down." But Tesla is too important to give up.

So Musk personally borrowed $40 million to support Tesla's continued operation. At the same time, he also needs to pay his ex-wife a divorce pension of10 million US dollars, and subsidize 20 million US dollars to pay for the fourth launch of Space Exploration Technology Company.

Musk's actual actions touched Tesla employees, and employees tried to raise funds to help Tesla, making most employees become Tesla shareholders.

Musk called it the darkest period of his life, "the brain cells are exhausted."

Fortunately, Tesla's fundraising is progressing smoothly, Model? S was released as scheduled, and the fourth rocket launch was also the first success. Space exploration technology company got NASA? 65.438+0.6 billion USD contract.

Watchmaker/Yiou Automobile Business Analyst? Rui Wang

The dark ages are over.

At present, Tesla has rolled off the assembly line with a total of 6,543,800 vehicles, and its sales in 2065,438+2009 reached 368,000 vehicles, making it a hot leader in electric vehicles. The commissioning of China Super Factory has made Tesla's development prospects clear.

Tesla's first 1 10,000 cars off the assembly line/Tesla official

05? The world is so boring.

Musk's unconstrained thinking has had too many technological fantasies, and he can't stand the existence of too many boring things in the world. Like traffic jams.

20 16 musk was blocked on the road. He had a whim to build a tunnel traffic system underground, and set up a banner on Twitter to build a tunnel excavator one day. It took only two hours from the idea to the formal project, and the company was named "boring". Now boring's first landing project has been progressing steadily. Recently, foreign media revealed that boring has completed the excavation of the first tunnel of the Las Vegas underground tunnel project.

Musk's crazy ideas don't stop there.

Star chain project STARLINK/ space exploration technology company official

Supersonic electric plane, super high-speed rail, reusable rocket, commercial space port, opening Tesla store in Texas, vehicle vision, automatic navigation technology, national charging network, robot replacing battery, solving traffic problems in Los Angeles, building Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and colonizing Mars by 80,000 people are all called Musk's 12 vision.

Watchmaker/Yiou Automobile Business Analyst? Okay, Qiu Hui.

Now part of the vision is being realized. In Musk's eyes, the world is boring, but it is fun because of unlimited creativity.

Someone asked him, do you really want to change the world? He calmly replied, "I just want to make the future more hopeful."

When he was busy with the business of rockets and cars, renewable energy became the focus of Musk's consideration.

At a family gathering, Musk told his cousin about the idea of Sun City. Solar energy in the United States is mostly a couple's shop, lacking large companies, and solar energy will be the main direction of world development. Musk is willing to contribute to support this project, but the requirement is to be the chairman himself. So he hit it off with his cousin and started the Sun City project, which was also one of the earliest enterprises to start the solar direct rent model.

By then, consumers can rent solar roofs with zero down payment. When the lease expires, consumers can choose to buy or return it, which lowers the threshold of solar roofs and is very popular. Now Sun City is one of the largest solar energy companies in America.

In addition to Musk's vision, he also runs many novel scientific and technological projects, such as the controversial brain-computer interface project, and uses 1.2 million low-orbit satellites to establish low-cost Internet connection services around the world. According to the latest news, the brain-computer interface project will be tested on humans as soon as this year. On March 18, US time, Musk's space exploration technology company launched the sixth batch of satellite chains using the Falcon 9 rocket, and now there are 360 satellite chains in operation.

Just like the title of "technology fanatic", many technology projects have become possible in Musk's hands.

He worked crazily, practiced boldly, and practiced his scientific and technological values in repeated failures: "I don't want to be anyone's savior, just want to make things better and I won't let myself down in the future."

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.