The controversial Tesla founder Elon Musk had a turbulent year in 2020.
However, it was not only crowned with successes.
A review of the year in tweets.
The controversial
Tesla founder Elon Musk
has had an eventful year.
All was not well.
During Corona, the
head of Tesla had
a dispute with the US state of
California
.
Economically,
Elon Musk
is hardly ever doing well.
Almeda County - January 2020. The rocket rises upright in the starting position towards the cloudless sky.
The countdown is running.
Three, two, one, start.
The 55 meter high
Falcon 9
rocket is lifted
into the air with a tail of fire.
The speed indicator climbs steadily.
After a minute and a half, the missile suddenly detonated at over 1,600 kilometers per hour high above the heads of numerous spectators.
A gigantic fireball turns into a cloud of dust as the tip of the rocket shoots out of it like a projectile.
Thunderous applause.
Dragon trunk from in-flight abort test is in surprisingly good shape!
pic.twitter.com/IGeffiNh9A
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 20, 2020
Tesla founder Elon Musk seems increasingly indifferent to what people think of him
The successful test for an escape capsule from the space company SpaceX could symbolize the turbulent year of the technology giant
Elon Musk
.
Hardly any other figure polarizes with their eccentric demeanor like the billionaire entrepreneur.
In particular, his verbal derailments on
cause horror in the media world and drop the price of listed companies by millions overnight.
But it seems that the founders of
Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla and Starlink are
becoming less
and
less interested in this.
In this country
Elon Musk
made a name for himself
above all with his giant Tesla factory in Grünheide, Brandenburg, near Berlin.
It is scheduled to go into operation in July 2021 and produce 500,000 vehicles per year with the help of 12,000 employees.
The construction of the factory is progressing at breakneck speed - although the final approvals have not yet been received at all.
For
Elon Musk
this means
in the worst case that everything has to be torn down in the end.
Despite the rapid pace of construction, things did not always go smoothly this year and so an embarrassment happened in October: The water was turned off when the Tesla factory was being built because the bills were not paid.
Recruiting ace engineers for Giga Berlin!
Will interview in person tomorrow on site.
Send resume to 25Guns@Tesla.com.
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2020
Elon Musk invites you to an interview for the Tesla factory in Brandenburg
And although the final approvals have not yet been received, Musk personally invited for an interview.
In
typical Silicon Valley style, he used
unconventional methods for his application criteria.
For example, no university degree, not even a high school diploma, is required to work as an engineer there.
Rather, it is about answers to questions like "Tell me about the problems you worked on and how you solved them."
Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules.
I will be on the line with everyone else.
If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2020
One of the biggest low points of the year was certainly his statement on the
corona pandemic in
terms of his public perception
.
The restrictive
Corona measures in California
,
USA
, where he operates a production facility, had been a thorn in Elon Musk's side for a long time.
He repeatedly called the corona measures "fascist", which brought him closer to the statements of
US President Donald Trump
in public
.
In March, for example, he claimed that the number of
infections
would be zero by April.
In the further course he threatened the
California state
with the withdrawal of his factory, should he not be allowed to continue producing unhindered.
Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately.
The unelected & ignorant “Interim Health Officer” of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2020
During Corona, Tesla boss Elon Musk has a dispute with the US state of California
In the end, he let production continue without a permit and, in
the event of a police operation,
offered on
that he should be arrested.
In the end there was an agreement and
Tesla
was allowed to produce.
On
, he used his rhetoric to approach corona skeptics, about whom a lot was talked about in Germany.
But this comparison does not really work, because with Curevac he financed a Tübingen company that is involved in the development of a vaccine.
Elon Musk's Twitter tirades have consequences
Elon Musk
proved
how momentous his wild
Twitter tirades
can be
when he announced on the network that he was selling all physical possessions, including his houses. * This was probably interpreted as if he were broke;
the next day, Tesla shares fell a full ten percent.
The suspicion that
Elon Musk
was broke turned out to be bogus insofar as he was
named the fourth richest person in the world
according to the
Bloomberg Billionaires Index
in August
.
In May,
Elon Musk
gained
access to a block of Tesla shares valued at $ 775 million.
Elon Musk
does not allow himself to be paid out by his company, but receives certain shares in his company when it is fulfilled.
I am selling almost all physical possessions.
Will own no house.
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2020
Elon Musk makes $ 775 million with Tesla this year
Elon Musk also made a name for
himself this year with all sorts of curiosities from his everyday life.
The name of his son, whom he got with the
Canadian singer Claire Elise Boucher alias Grimes
,
made headlines
.
This should originally be
"X Æ A-12"
.
However, since California law does not allow Arabic numerals in the name, he simply renamed it "X Æ A-Xii", which ultimately worked.
Check out this post on Instagram
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It is also curious that the founder of the currently most valuable company for the production of electric cars called on Twitter to smash Amazon *, because "Monopolies are wrong." The background is probably that
Elon Musk
suspects that Amazon would suppress the sale of a book, that deals critically with
corona measures
.
He sent his tweet directly to
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
Time to break up Amazon.
Monopolies are wrong!
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2020
Elon Musk's fateful
design of our night sky
is also controversial
.
At the beginning of January, his company Starlink put 60 satellites into orbit for the third time.
Bright fairy lights that formed them in the starry sky called numerous UFO viewers: inside on the scene.
Astronomers warned that this made observing celestial bodies much more difficult.
Target of
StarLink
is to provide global Internet from space.
Just a few days ago, Elon Musk announced that he would be opening a Starlink location in the Main metropolis of Frankfurt this year.
Tesla founder Elon Musk wants to reach for the stars from California
One would think that
Elon Musk
would have chosen the song line “It's better to burn out than to fade away” from Neil Young's “Hey hey, my my” as his life motto.
His self-stylization as a megalomaniac tech genius on Twitter is both a curse and a blessing for him, as it accelerates his success on the one hand, and causes the stock market prices of his companies to plummet on the other and permanently damages his reputation.
So far, however, it has done him more good than harm.
The next few years will have to show
whether
Elon Musk will
eventually rise into the eternal expanse of space or
whether he will
burn
up in the sky like his Falcon 9 rocket.
But no matter which end comes, it is already clear: It will be a spectacle.
(Joshua Schößler)
* fr.de is part of the nationwide Ippen editorial network.
List of rubric lists: © Patrick Pleul / dpa