Near to the end of the book, Peter Thiel remark on Elon Musk summarizes Elon’s contribution to the world. He said – “Elon has gone so far as to give people hope and renewed their faith on what technology can do to their lives”. Musk, in more ways than one, is one of the makers of modern America, and the author Ashlee Vance does justice to this point with a free-flowing account of his exploits in making Tesla and SpaceX as a typical Silicon Valley Company – exciting, ambitious and far-fetching in its goals. Probably Elon Musk’s greatest contribution is bringing manufacturing back to America – SpaceX’s rockets are made mostly in America, and with the jumpstart of Gigafactory in Nevada – it does justice to this point. The book runs deep in Elon’s exploit of SpaceX and Tesla and with Paypal story playing a distant second fiddle. The author does well in keeping the reader engaged; he peppers the account with Musk’s remark on various issues. The reckless attitude to keep Tesla alive in the middle of the Financial Crisis well documented and it shows what Elon was willing to do to keep his vision alive. Like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk has shattered the cosy club of monopolies in big industries by introducing game changing products. The last successful American automobile company before Tesla was Chrysler – in 1928. By introducing electric cars, Musk is shaking every vertical of the automotive industry. Tesla’s success is a frightening prospect to the car industry – it turns the service of a car on its head. Tesla is rewriting the rules of the game and all the car industry is following it. The same can be said about SpaceX.
Somewhere as a reader you get the feeling that the author is idolatry in his approach. “SpaceX is Elon Musk” moots this point. One of his other ventures – Solarcity doesn’t find the space in the book to a good extent. By far the golden account is the birth and the struggle of SpaceX which brings the reader a lot closer to Elon Musk - the book is unputtdownable.
No comments:
Post a Comment