The Engineer: Follow Elon Musk on a journey from South Africa to Mars was the world's first biography on Elon Musk.This is a book about the beginning of a journey. Elon Musk is the main person in the journey through a roller-coaster life. His journey includes everything from Winston Churchill’s adventures in British colonies to demolished sports cars. From failed marriages to German scientists escaping from the Red Army. From the oil industry to the Burning Man festival.Elon has been described as the Steve Jobs of heavy industry, as a modern version of the scientist Nikola Tesla, and as the Henry Ford of rockets. There’s a high probability that the British Secret Intelligence Service has a file on him. As the files of other James Bond villains, it describes secret rocket launches in the Pacific Ocean. But Elon doesn’t own a white cat - he’s more of a dog person. Maybe the most comparable persons are the great explorers who voyaged across the globe. They had an entrepreneurial spirit, were a little crazy, tried what no one else had tried, and thought what no one else had thought.If you want to describe the companies Elon has founded with one theme, you can say that they improve the world with the help of innovative technologies. This is exactly what our world needs.
To avoid a similar experience, Tesla created their own design studio in a small, white tent carved out of a corner in the back of the SpaceX factory. Now they needed a designer. Despite the German-sounding name, Franz von Holzhausen was born in 1968 in Simsbury, Connecticut. After graduating from the Art Center College of Design, he worked for various car companies. He spent eight years at Volkswagen and Audi where he learned the German way to combine design with quality. Then he brought his knowledge to General Motors where he worked with the cars Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky. After leaving General Motors, the next challenge was working with Mazdas Kabura concept. So what I learned from all these positions was how to
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Teslas Macintosh develop a brand, von Holzhausen said. I learned discipline from the Germans while in America it is about the free spirit, the message is what a brand can do. Sometimes, when Im driving on the freeway, I see people in cars that Ive designed or helped design. I look closely, because I want to see what kinds of people are driving those cars.239,241
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A friend of a friend called von Holzhausen and told him he should consider working for Tesla. Von Holzhausen had earlier read about Tesla and he thought their solution was too complicated. But it turned out von Holzhausen planned to leave his current job because he had become sick of Mazdas priorities. We had just come off a car that was all about being green in the racing environment, he said. We had done a lot of work with sustainable materials. We were the only ones to have non-vinyl interiors in the industry, but the company was not really embracing it.240 Because von Holzhausen wasnt happy at Mazda, he decided to meet Elon. I came up to Tesla and did a tour of the facilities and we talked about opportunities, he said. Here was a company that was putting all its marbles behind what it believed in. Until that time I had worked for companies that talked a good line, but their core values were in a different direction. Elon gave von Holzhausen an offer he couldnt refuse. If he joined
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Tesla, Elon would give him the opportunity to design a new car from a clean sheet. Its a dream job for all designers, so von Holzhausen accepted the offer and became Teslas chief designer.240
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