His success also occurred at the perfect time. It also enabled Musk to dominate the current electric car market. And he was right! With theability to accelerate in one second and a battery life that allows it to run 300 miles, the Model S is every car fanatic’s dream. Musk knew that if he could make electric cars look cooler than the options, people would be more likely to buy them, even if those customers weren’t especially interested in the environment. The Model S is a luxury sedan that was designed with one purpose in mind: to be faster, cooler, smarter, and sleeker than any traditional vehicle on the market. Building on the success of his first, exclusive design, Musk set out to design something that would be more commercially available: the Model S. It was marketed primarily towards America’s super-rich and its success fueled Musk’s future projects. Having received start-up money from the United States government, Tesla’s first electric car did very well indeed.

So, it’s no surprise that Elon Musk and Tesla are the United States’ poster children for sustainable automotives. That’s right - electric cars are kind of his whole thing now. Tesla is a revolutionary electric car company. And he worries that a decided lack of adversity may have a negative impact on the lives of his own children in the future.īut once again, he wasn’t content to stop there, and that’s when he created Tesla. Without the pain of his early years, he argues that he might not have been driven to escape, to create, or to prove himself. And by the time he was twelve years old, he had invented and sold his very first video game! These early experiences influenced the man Musk later became and he frequently says that he is grateful for the adversity he experienced. He numbed the pain with his love for reading and his budding interest in computers. The pain of his reality drove him deeper into his own head and encouraged him to imagine better, happier worlds.

But he also credits his torment as being a driving factor in his success. Musk later went on to describe his life as “non-stop horrible” both at home and at school. And life with his father was certainly not easy! On more than one occasion, his father demanded that young Elon and his brother sit perfectly quiet and still for four hours or more while he yelled at them.

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