Elon Musk is not only a business expert, a talented inventor, he is also the most whimsical billionaire. As proof, 10 things that are out of the ordinary.
Soon Twitter owner, Elon Musk will add an unlikely string to his bow, which already has many, from electric cars to rockets and tunnel boring machines. Born in South Africa, American and Canadian citizen, leader of SpaceX and You’re here, the richest man in the world has become a central figure of American neo-capitalism with his extra-planetary ambitions and political ideals, which he shares with his 83 million followers on Twitter. The qualifier of exuberant is not usurped, far from it…
• He did not create Tesla
No, Elon Musk is not the founder of Tesla! The company was created in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who dream of inventing an automobile version of Apple. With a third partner, Ian Wright, they raised $7.5 million in 2004 from investors, including Elon Musk who decided to invest in the company. He piloted the creation of the Roadster, the brand’s first car. It was after a trial in 2009 that he was recognized as one of the co-founders of Tesla Motors.
• He almost kills himself at the wheel of a McLaren F1
In March 2000, Elon Musk is a young 28-year-old millionaire since the sale of his first startup. With his winnings, he buys a 627 horsepower McLaren F1 for a million dollars and offers his friend and partner Peter Thiel a ride.
To impress his passenger, Musk pressed hard on the accelerator, almost making the car take off, and it crashed into the background. The two men miraculously escaped unscathed.
• He inspired the director of Iron Man
Elon Musk is not an Avengers, but almost. Jon Favreau, the director, has revealed that he was inspired by the boss of Tesla to create the character of Tony Stark. The fictional character and Elon Musk even invented similar technologies like the interface to design 3D rockets with gestures. The billionaire even played himself in the second opus, during a scene where he offers Tony Stark to study “an electric jet”. Last detail, several scenes of the film were shot in the premises of Space X.
• His children have code names
Divorced three times, Elon Musk is the father of eight children, one of whom died at 10 weeks. His last born, whom he had with the singer Grimes, is called Exa Dark Sideræl Musk. His nickname is Y.
She is the little sister of “X Æ A-12”, the couple’s first child who is nicknamed X. On her Twitter account, the mother explained this name. “X, the unknown variable, Æ, which I pronounce “Ai” for love or artificial intelligence, A-12 which is the precursor to the SR-17 (our favorite plane), no weapons or defense, just speed. combat but not violent. The A also stands for “Archangel”, my favorite song”.
• He wants to connect the brain to computers
It is one of billionaire Elon Musk’s most ambitious and craziest projects. His company Neuralink wants to connect the human brain to computers. Its technology will allow “a paralyzed person to use a smartphone by thought faster than someone using their thumbs”.
It would be enough to think of a sentence to write it: the chip captures the electrical signals sent by the brain and transcribes them. Tests have already been carried out on a sow and on a monkey last year, which had been made to play a video game by the simple force of thought.
• He doesn’t want to do Hyperloop
We often hear that Elon Musk invented Hyperloop, this concept of a very high-speed train that circulates in vacuum tubes. This is not entirely true. In fact, he launched the idea based on a novel by Jules Verne. He officially announced it in 2012 by presenting it as a fifth mode of transport, in addition to boats, planes, cars and trains.
In 2013, he published the Alpha version of Hyperloop in “open source” mode on the Tesla and SpaceX sites with diagrams, plans, sketches, technical details on the mode of propulsion and the power supply and the cost of the project. But he specifies that he is too focused on Tesla to get started and offers anyone who wants to take up the idea. Moreover, he did not file any patent.
Several entrepreneurs took over the project: Hyperloop One, which became Virgin Hyperloop One since the takeover by Richard Branson and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies.
• He created a construction company
If he did not create Hyperloop, Elon Musk launched into the tubes that would be used to move there. After a buzz on Twitter where he repeated “Boring”, he launched The Boring Company, a public works company specializing in tunneling.
Coquetry as a gamer, he connected a Microsoft Xbox game console controller to control the gigantic industrial machines. The use of this tool is not only intended to create buzz. Musk explains that its ergonomics have proven themselves and that they are a cost-effective alternative in an industrial environment. He also specifies that Microsoft spent more than 100 million dollars to create it.
• He is homeless
The richest man in the world has neither an apartment nor a sumptuous villa. His eccentricity led him to have no fixed abode. He made this confidence during an interview with TED last April.
“I don’t own a house. I’m literally staying with friends. If I’m traveling to the San Francisco Bay Side, where most of Tesla’s engineering locations are, I alternate depending on what rooms are available at my homes. friends”.
Small detail, he sleeps in the Tesla factory if no one can receive him, but most often he is in his private jet, a Gulfstream 650 for which he paid 70 million dollars.
We can also follow this jet in real time, which has its own Twitter account (belonging to an anonymous person), followed by more than 40,000 people.
• He is even richer than Jeff Bezos
Last April, in the Forbes ranking of the richest billionaires in the world, the top three were identical to that of 2021 with one difference: Elon Musk stole first place from Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Since the beginning of the health crisis, the fortune of the boss of Tesla and SpaceX has soared, rising from $24.6 billion in 2020 to $219 billion. With only 171 billion dollars, Bezos is only in second place in front of Bernard Arnault who passed to him in front of Bill Gates.
• He even sold flamethrowers
In 2018, the billionaire was looking for funds to finance The Boring Company, the company responsible for digging the Hyperloop tunnels. He made $10 million by selling 20,000 flamethrowers online for $500 each.
• He dreams of creating a new civilization on Mars
Elon Musk does not dream of an ordinary political career by becoming President of the United States. He aims much higher. His ambition is to create a civilization on the planet Mars which is his end goal. He plans to create human colonies on Mars by 2024.
Some say every company he owns is helpful to this crazy project, from Tesla to SpaceX to Neuralink. He works on the migration of human beings with NASA, which takes very seriously the projects of the most exuberant billionaire on the planet.
