Michael Graham Richard
READ MORE ABOUT:
Today is a big day for Tesla Motors, a small electric car company from California. They are having their initial public offering (IPO) to raise money for the development and manufacturing of a second electric car model (more details about it on TreeHugger: Tesla Motors Expands IPO to 13.3m shares, Could Raise $226m). I figured this was good timing to look at the man who runs Tesla Motors, is chairman of the solar energy provider Solarcity, and also co-founded Paypal and SpaceX. He is exactly the kind of forward-thinking and passionate person that we at Planet Green want to support. His name is Elon Musk.
Musk is so passionate and hands on with his businesses (he was lead designer for SpaceX's space rockets) that, according to Jon Favreau, the director of the Iron Man movies, Musk is the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.'s interpretation of Tony Stark. Not bad for a green entrepreneur.
Here's a photo I took when I met Musk in Detroit. Photo: Michael Graham Richard
It seems like Elon Musk has always had a plan to change the world. When he got out of school, he decided to make a difference in three important areas: "One was the Internet, one was clean energy, and one was space."
Changing the Internet
He already succeeded in changing the net with Paypal, one of the companies most responsible for e-commerce and making regular people feel safe in making purchases online. This had the effect of greatly boosting commecrial investments into the web and helped it grow as fast as it did.
Protecting the Environment
He's currently working on clean energy and the environment with Solarcity and Tesla Motors. The first is on the power generation side, using the sun's rays to make electricity, and the second wants to replace fossil-fuel powered cars with electric cars (charged with energy from the sun, of course!). We're still far from the finish line in that area, but Tesla Motors no doubt put pressure on the whole industry and is probably responsible for accelerating the pace of progress. Since the transportation and energy sectors have such a big environmental footprint, Musk's companies can make a big difference if they are successful.
Getting to Space
And when it comes to space, he is already changing the world with SpaceX. Just this month his company made history twice: On June 9th, the Falcon 9 rocket reached orbit, and on June 16 is inked a $492 million deal to launch Iridium satellites, the largest commercial launch deal ever. Musk's goal is to make humans a true space-faring species by lowering the cost of send people and equipment to space. In the long-term, colonizing space is the goal, but in the short term, having better access to space will help scientists better understand our planet. Satellites to study the oceans, the climate, etc, will be able to be launched more cheaply, and this will have big repercussions on what we know about Earth and what we do to protect it.
More on Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors Expands IPO to 13.3m shares, Could Raise $226m
Tesla Model S Electric Car: 300 Miles Range, Seats 5+2, 0-60 MPH in 5.6 Seconds (Slideshow)
