HOW ELON MUSK IS CHANGING THE WORLD?
He grew up in South Africa, then immigrated to Canada at age 17. He landed in the U.S. as a transfer student to the University of Pennsylvania.Elon Musk is working to revolutionize transportation both on Earth, through electric car maker Tesla – and in space, via rocket producer SpaceX.He owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans; Forbes has discounted his stake to take the loans into account.He stepped down as chairman in 2018, after making alleged “false statements” about a plan to take Tesla private, triggering an SEC probe.SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, is now valued at $74 billion.
Top projects of Elon Musk are given below:
-
SpaceX – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed several launch vehicles and rocket engines, as well as the Dragon cargo spacecraft and the Starlink satellite constellation (providing internet access), and has flown humans and cargo to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Dragon 2.
-
Tesla – Tesla, Inc. is an American electric vehicle and clean energy company based in Palo Alto, California. It was founded by Elon Musk in July 2003. Tesla’s current products include electric cars, battery energy storage from home to grid scale, solar panels and solar roof tiles, as well as other related products and services. Tesla is ranked as the world’s best-selling plug-in and battery electric passenger car manufacturer, with a market share of 16% of the plug-in segment and 23% of the battery electric segment 2020 sales.
-
SolarCity – SolarCity Corporation is a subsidiary of Tesla, Inc. that develops and sells solar panels and solar roof tiles. It is headquartered in Fremont, California. After its acquisition in 2016, effectively all products and services are sold through Tesla’s website. The company, in partnership with Panasonic, manufactures solar module components in Tesla Giga New York, a factory in Buffalo, New York. In August 2019, Tesla announced they would begin renting solar systems to customers in six states starting at $50 a month, in a plan to boost residential solar deployments. In July 2020, Tesla claimed “Tesla Solar is the lowest-cost solar in the United States” with a price of $1.49 per watt for solar panels when including federal tax credits.
-
Hyperloop – Hyperloop is a concept developed by Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk for ultra-fast inter-city travel. Using travel pods inside metallic tubes, he calls it as a “fifth mode” of transport in addition to cars, planes, boats, and trains. The Hyperloop is a high-speed commuter and freight transport system that could reach speeds of around 750 mph (1,210 kph). Musk’s initial design was to take people from downtown Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes – a distance of around 380 miles (610 km).It works by propelling specially designed pressurized pods or capsules using electromagnetic force inside a near-vacuum tube to reduce air friction and drag. The pods travel on a cushion of air inside the tube using specially designed rails in a similar fashion to maglev trains (short for magnetic levitation) that are repelled away from the tracks and forward using electromagnets. An electric compressor on the front of the pod pushes air to the rear.
-
The Boring Company – The Boring Company (also known as TBC) is an American infrastructure and tunnel construction services company founded by Elon Musk. Its current and proposed projects are designed for loop intra-city transit systems, although the company has stated that the Hawthorne test tunnel can support Hyperloop R&D and that current tunnels are being built so they could support eventual transition to Hyperloop-based transportation on longer inter-city routes.
-
Paypal – PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company which was founded by Elon Musk and his teem operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites, and many other commercial users. It charges a fee in exchange for benefits such as one-click transactions and password memory. Established in 1998 as PayPal had its initial public offering in 2002. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay later that year, valued at $1.5 billion. In 2015, eBay spun off PayPal to eBay’s shareholders. The company ranked 204th on the 2019 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue.
-
OpenAI – OpenAI is an artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company, considered a competitor to Deep-Mind, conducts research in the field of AI with the stated goal of promoting and developing friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. The organization was founded in San Francisco in late 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others, who collectively pledged US$1 billion. Musk resigned from the board in February 2018 but remained a donor. In 2019, OpenAI LP received a US$1 billion investment from Microsoft.
