24 Fascinating Facts About Elon Musk
Elon Musk is trying his best to change the world. With SpaceX he is trying to change the space industry with the hope of someday sending people to Mars. With Tesla he is making electric cars sexy, while at the same time working towards making them available for the masses without compromising on quality. And the team he is a part of at Solar City is trying to make solar happen on a grand scale.
Some people think he is brilliant, others think he is a madman, and some believe that he is a snake oil salesman whose companies survive on government subsidies. No matter what one believes about what he is doing, it is difficult not to concede that he is at least a fascinating individual.
With that said, here are 24 fascinating facts about Elon Musk. All of the facts were acquired while reading Elon Musk’s biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance.
The numbers in parentheses are estimated page locations for where the quote or general information on the topic is located. I say “estimated” because I read this on Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader, so the page numbers are most likely not aligned with the page numbers in the printed book.
**Please note that we are assuming that the author of the biography is correct in their research.
1. His mother was a finalist for Miss South Africa. (30)
2. He read through two whole encyclopedias as a kid.
He “churned through two sets of encyclopedias — a feat that did little to help him make friends. The boy had a photographic memory, and the encyclopedias turned him into a fact factory.” (33)
3. As a kid, and sometimes as an adult, he would drift off into his mind, ignoring the outside world like Ben Stiller does in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
“‘He goes into his brain, and then you just see he is in another world,’ Maye said. ‘He still does that. Now I just leave him be because I know he is designing a new rocket or something.’” (31)
Can’t you picture Elon standing somewhere in public, staring off into space, imagining he is on Mars trying to figure out how to design a space colony? I know I can.
4. His classmates from high school didn’t think he was all that special and were surprised by his success. (41)
5. He was severely bullied growing up.
“They went so far as to beat up a boy that Musk considered his best friend until the child agreed to stop hanging out with Musk. ‘Moreover, they got him — they got my best fucking friend — to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up,’ Musk said. ‘And that fucking hurt.’ While telling this part of the story, Musk’s eyes welled up and his voice quivered.” (41)
The above fact is sad. He was beaten up multiple times throughout his childhood, and it had such a negative impact on his physical body that he had to have the below fact done.
6. Had a nose job done because of “lingering effects” from a beating he took from bullies. (39)
7. Dropped out of his first college (the University of Pretoria in South Africa) after five months because he put little effort forth in his studies. (43)
8. After he left South Africa for Canada, he decided to go back to college. He chose Queen’s University “over the University of Waterloo because he felt there were more good-looking women at Queen’s.” (45)
9. Him and his college roommates (after he had transferred to the University of Pennsylvania) would turn their large rented house into a nightclub on weekends. (51)
10. Musk once said to a venture capitalist, (64)
11. Elon and his brother Kimbal would get into fistfights while working on their first startup Zip2. (65)
12. At the wedding reception of his first marriage (to Justine Wilson), he “pulled Justine close while they danced, and informed her, ‘I am the alpha in this relationship.’”(93)
13. He almost died in January 2001 after returning from vacation in South Africa because he had contracted malaria while there. (93)
14. During the early stages of his exploration of the space industry, he tried to buy three ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missile) from Russia. (107)
15. He is known for graphic rants when he is angry where he will “talk of people’s balls being chopped off and other violent or sexual acts.” (178) It is also mentioned at the start of the book that he is a fan of the word “fuck.”
16. He was not part of the founding of the original startup that was called Tesla Motors when it was incorporated (151)
A short time after it was incorporated, he did come on as an investor and immediately became “the largest shareholder of Tesla and the chairman of the company.” (154)
Elon is now known as a co-founder of Tesla. The reason is because after one of the original founders, Martin Eberhard, sued him in 2009 over things that occurred at Tesla, a settlement was reached, and part of the settlement was that Eberhard had to say in a statement, “As co-founder of the company, Elon’s contributions to Tesla have been extraordinary.” (270)
17. Was a producer on the movie Thank You For Smoking
18. Was part of the “inspiration for Downey’s interpretation of Tony Stark” (182)
Robert Downey, Jr. visited with Elon Musk in Hawthorne, CA at his SpaceX facilities and was given a tour. After the movie came out, the director Jon Favreau talked up Musk’s role as the “inspiration for Downey’s interpretation of Tony Stark.” There is even a Tesla Roadster on display in the first Iron Man movie in Tony Stark’s workshop, something that Downey asked Favreau to put in. (182)
19. He almost lost his companies and all of his wealth in 2008.
Elon Musk, in his own words, felt “like a pile of shit,” during this time. The year 2008 was during the height of the economic downturn, and Tesla and SpaceX were already struggling, so the downturn made things worse. On top of that, Musk was going through a divorce.
He didn’t think his companies would make it through and “thought things were probably fucking doomed.” He was so stressed out during this period that he would scream in his sleep while having nightmares. (205)
At one point, near the end of 2008, Tesla was a few hours away from going bankrupt. (208)
20. SpaceX has been a profitable company since it almost died in 2008 and Tesla reported its first profit of $11 million in May 2013. (218 & 305)
One fascinating fact about Tesla becoming profitable is that, a few weeks earlier before the report, things had been dire and Musk had talked with Larry Page and Google about buying the company. A few weeks of stellar Tesla sales saved him from having to sell. (305)
It is also interesting that another car company, Daimler (company that builds Mercedes Benz), acquired a ten percent stake in Tesla in 2009.
21. The story of Elon firing Mary Beth Brown.
Mary Beth Brown was Musk’s executive assistant for over a decade. She was his right hand, who traveled with him often between Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. She worked many long nights and weekends, handling “scheduling across two companies, doing public relations work and often making business decisions.” Because of this she asked to be “compensated on par with SpaceX’s top executives.” (341)
“Musk replied that Brown should take a couple of weeks off, and he would take on her duties and gauge how hard they were.” He fired her when she came back because he didn’t think her job was that difficult and that “he didn’t need her anymore.” (341)
There are other stories about Musk’s, one may say callous, way of handling people. One employee said about him, “Elon’s worst trait by far, in my opinion, is a complete lack of loyalty or human connection.” (339) From what I’ve read, it seems he does not put up with bullshit in any form.
22. Tesla’s patents are open-source because he thinks electric cars are good for mankind, and that “ideas should be free.” (344)
23. Elon Musk has gone to Burning Man
Burning man is an annual multi-day gathering that happens in the desert in Nevada. It is all about community, art, and expression. According to its Wikipedia page, over 70,000 people went in 2015. You can read more about it here. I have personally wanted to go for years, so I find it fascinating that he goes and is a fan of it.
24. Musk wanted to name the next vehicle after the Model X, the Model E, so Tesla would have a Model S, Model E, Model X, aka SEX, but Ford’s CEO at the time prevented Tesla from using the name. (311)
I hope you enjoyed reading these fascinating facts about Elon Musk that were acquired while reading his biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance.
Whether you like what he is doing or not, it is hard not to applaud him for trying to achieve his ultimate goal of making humans an “interplanetary species.”(330)
As a small bonus, here are a few snippets of Elon Musk’s funniest moments.
Before watching the video below please take a moment to follow The NonFiction Zone here on Medium so you can receive more awesome information in the future. If you don’t have a Medium Account then sign up for our newsletter, and you will receive an email each time we post something new.
Enjoy the amusing video.
- *Note the links that lead to Amazon are part of the Amazon Associates Program. The NonFiction Zone is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites and blogs to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com
