The Elon Musk Mission: Making the Future Awesome: How Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink Are Changing the World

Great book on some very interesting technologies and the way that the future of these technologies is heading ... I really enjoyed the flavour of the book which spoke about the technology, the business, the financial side, and the relationship of Elon with the technology, engineering, hardware, software, his vision to help the world and get to mars , and his incredible contribution to mankind as a whole with diverse items as batteries solar, wind automation, AI, building a business from scratch, how-to be a market leader through the pace of innovation , hiring the best engineers , hard work , learning through trial and innovation and failure , inspiring people through vision to change the world, seeing electrification of the car and truck industries , cheap internet for everyone in Starlink, rocket propulsion, reusable space craft ... the list goes on and on ... Just read the book !!!

I’ve been following Elon and Tesla for several years now and thought I was fairly knowledgeable on the mission and technology behind it. TheDetail in this book takes it to the next level across all the different companies. Well done Randy, Lars and the rest of the team for this quality publication.

I already knew a lot of this because of all the website I visit. However, it is good to have it all in one place...

Absolutely brilliant book. I follow most of the author's on you tube and I j still learnt a awful lot about the businesses

Given to my husband who had requested it for his birthday. Got a thumbs up, he says it’s very interesting.

Should be read, or listened to, by everyone, young and old alike. Many thanks to the contributors and authors. A statement of facts and valid truths written in an exciting way.

The aim of this book is to provide information so readers can learn that Elon Musk's businesses are not just financially successful, but are also bringing about important changes in the world: changes profound enough that they are likely to be discussed in history books.That aim of the book is worthwhile but, unfortunately, the book is riddled with factual errors. I list 20 later in this review. There are probably many more, but I don't want to waste more of my time searching the internet for evidence to confirm/refute the other claims in the book that I thought were dubious.Before giving the list of 20 errors I confirmed in the book, let me summarise the book's problems.First, the book provides hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of pieces of information about Musk and his companies, and each of those pieces of information should have been backed up with a citation to the source of the information. Doing this would have provided interested readers with the ability to read more about whatever topics they might be interested in. More importantly, the citations would have enabled not just readers to check the accuracy of the authors' claims, but also would have enabled the authors to double-check their accuracy before committing those claims to paper. Unfortunately, those hundreds or thousands of citations are missing. I don't think the authors were deliberately telling lies. Rather, it seems more likely that they misremembered facts and didn't bother double-checking assumptions.Second, the book is self-published and, unfortunately, the authors did not bother to learn how to do some basic things in a word processor, such as preventing a page break between a sectional title and the first line of text in the section, or cross-referencing other chapters/sections. Instead, the book contains vague and useless phrases such as "in another chapter" or "discussed later".Third, dates of events are never given. Instead, phrases like "Last Christmas" and "a few weeks ago" are used to allude to dates. The authors indicate they might release updated versions of the book in the future, so somebody reading a future edition of the book will not be able to even guess which year "Last Christmas" or "a few weeks ago" refer to.Fourth, there were far too many places in the text where poor grammar or phrasing meant I had to re-read a sentence to figure out what it was trying to say. Put simply, the book was not proofread adequately.When combined, the above four types of problems indicate sloppiness in many stages of the book's development. That is a shame because the book is true in claiming that Elon Musk, via his companies, is having a major impact on the world. If it wasn't for the pervasive sloppiness, the book would be worth a 5-star rating. The only reason I am giving it 2 stars rather than 1 is because my knowledge of Elon Musk is limited mainly to Tesla, so I found some of the information on his other companies to be interesting (even if I am unsure about its accuracy).Here are 20 errors I was able to confirm in the book.Page 36: Musk's Zip2 company had an impressive product, the functionality of which predated Google Maps and Yelp. Sloppy wording wrongly incorrectly implies that Google Maps and Yelp are evolutions of the Zip2 product.Page 38: Musk's initial investment into Tesla was $6.5 million, not $10 million as stated (source: page 154 of Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk).Page 43: The claim is made that "Tesla's four auto plants are capable of producing at least three million cars per year now". Actually, production in 2022 was 1.35 million and Tesla is on track to make 1.8 million in 2023.Pages 45 (and 140): "For many years, iPhone made more than 100% of all the profits in the smart phone business. This was because all of the other makers were losing money." An internet search indicates this is an exaggeration: Apple's highest ever share of profits was 85%.Page 53: the claim is made that Tesla entered the electric car market with a blank slate. That is incorrect. Tesla's first car was made by modifying a petrol-powered car to be electric, and Tesla sought car parts from traditional supplier companies. Tesla's original (and unsuccessful) plan was to buy most parts from suppliers, make the remaining small minority of parts, and then assemble the parts to make a car, which is similar to how traditional auto makers operate.Page 57: The claim is made that Tesla's 4680 battery technology is already several years ahead of other companies making electric cars or energy storage products. That is incorrect. Tesla hopes that when its 4680 battery technology matures, it will (eventually) give the company a significant competitive advantage. However, today (1 year after the book was published), 4680 batteries are not yet being used in Tesla's energy storage batteries, and some other battery companies make batteries with a higher energy density than 4680 cells.On many pages (112, 114, 145, 217, 226 and 265), there are repeated claims that Tesla has access to (or even is making) more batteries than any other car company. That is incorrect. BYD makes both cars and batteries. The amount of batteries made by BYD is larger than what Tesla consumes.Page 65: the book claims that no other auto company takes vertical integration as seriously as Tesla. An internet search for "BYD vertical integration" shows that claim is untrue.Page 71: the claim is made that no other company in history has had such a passionate fan base as Tesla. The history of Apple, and its evangelical customers, indicates otherwise.Page 74: The claim is made that Tesla is "the fastest growing large manufacturer in history". If that claim was ever true, it no longer is, because BYD is growing faster than Tesla, both in terms of percentage growth and in units sold.Page 85: The claim is made that every other auto company has poor cash flow and hence "will need to raise massive amounts of money" to keep up with Tesla's growth. That claim is not true for BYD.Page 93: The claim is made that Tesla's use of "vegan leather" gives it a competitive moat. This is incorrect, because other car companies also use vegan leather.Page 98: the claim is made that Elon Musk "conceived of the concept of distributed energy production and storage". Elon Musk was not the first person to conceive of such an idea, and Tesla was not the first company to sell products for this purpose.Page 129: The book claims that 95% of Tesla recalls have been fixed using over-the-air updates. At the time of the book's launch, the figure was 37% (it has since risen a bit, but not up to 95%).Page 141: the claim is made that Tesla is the only company making a profit on electric cars, and this will remain the case until at least 2026. BYD's profits indicate otherwise.Page 143: The book states, "BYD is a traditional Asian company, meaning that there is little innovation in their cars." An internet search for "BYD innovation" shows that statement to be false.Page 156: the discussion about Full Self Driving (FSD) gives the impression that the system is fully reliable. It is not. FSD is still "beta" software, and drivers are required to pay attention in case FSD misbehaves, which it occasionally does.Page 226: The book states, "Other than CATL, no other battery company is close to Tesla in factory capacity." That is incorrect: Tesla is not even in the top-ten list of largest battery companies.Page 242: The book states, "to date no car has ever driven fully autonomously --- until Tesla that is!" That is incorrect. Tesla cars are not fully autonomous (yet). An internet search indicates that at least 2 months prior to the book's launch, Baidu had started offering a fully autonomous robotaxi service in some cities in China. Since the book's launch, Waymo has started providing a fully autonomous taxi service in San Francisco.Page 262: The book claims that it costs Tesla "almost nothing" to produce FSD. That is grossly misleading because Tesla invests hundreds of millions of dollars annually to build and extend a supercomputer for training FSD, and only about 10% of people who buy a Tesla car purchase FSD, so the high cost of building the training supercomputer accounts for a significant percentage of the revenue from selling FSD.

I've long been a fan of Elon Musk. It is amazing to me that one person can be so deeply involved in changing so many aspects of the lives of so many people in such a positive fashion. Like Musk, I'm an Engineer and I ran an Engineering company and so can appreciate some of the challenges he's faced and overcome. His ability to run multiple highly successful companies, make time for ten kids, and still keep a grand sense of humor is simply astounding.One of my favorite parts of the book is the detailed discussion of Tesla’s approach and implementation of software. It's fascinating to find out how much of Tesla's in-house software such as machine tracking in their factories, CRM (Client Relationship Management), AI controls in the factory paint shops, and other areas of business are all written in-house by Tesla staff. The customization and process control this entails is a crazy advantage I had no idea about until reading this book. It looks like every other car company buys off the shelf software or software custom designed out-of-house to get what they need, resulting in tools that are non-optimized and "frozen" in their capabilities.It's difficult to pick just one part of this book to be my favorite as I thoroughly enjoyed the entire read. The writing style flows smoothly, and I simply could not put it down! If you're already interested in Elon or Tesla, then this book is a must read. If you aren't interested in Elon or if you have a negative opinion of him, I recommend reading this book even more to find out what an amazing human being he is and how his drive and achievements (both past and future) are helping to make this a better world.

From an unknown man in 2008 to one of the best people alive on the earth in 2022. Some may see his autism as an impediment, as he must be impossible to live with and his focus and drive may drive people round the bend. Undoubtedly though, he is at least a possible saviour to our climate catastrophe. Certainly, we can't rely on the politicians who have been in bed with big oil for many years. This book gives a new and refreshing insight into the life of Elon Musk.Whether you are interested in his work ethic, his background, his Aspergers or his seeming inability to lie, you are going to get to know this man far better and see what his dreams for our planet are. The authors have looked at his life in a new light and have gone into the financial aspect of his businesses to a far greater degree than any other previous book.This book was so enjoyable, that I couldn't put it down and spent 8 hours reading it from cover to cover. Spend the time and you will get insight into the life of someone and a company that is so rarely seen on this planet. He is good for humanity.

A must read for everyone currently alive on planet earth!

In diesem umfassenden Buch verraten Dir vier Experten die Gründe für den Erfolg von Elons Firmen.Seit den Berichten über den 1. Tesla Roadster hat mich Tesla fasziniert. Seit mehr als drei Jahren bin ich sehr tief in die Tesla Materie eingetaucht und verfolge täglich mehrere YouTube Videos, die sich aus verschiedensten Blickwinkeln mit Tesla und Elon Musk beschäftigen. Meine Faszination hat sich dadurch nur noch gesteigert.Als ich erfuhr, dass Randy Kirk und Lars Strandridder mit Beiträge von Brian Wang und John Gibbs dieses Buch schreiben, musste ich es lesen. Schließlich gehören Lars und John zu meinen regelmäßigen und gern gesehen YouTubern.Ich wurde nicht enttäuscht. Das Buch ist sehr interessant geschrieben und führte mir noch einmal sehr deutlich vor Augen, warum Tesla zum Beispiel so einen rasanten Aufstieg hatte und auch weiter haben wird.Und es zeigt unter anderem an den vielen "Burggräben" , die Tesla durch seine besondere Art um sich herum gebaut hat, warum es die Wettbewerber verflucht schwer haben werden, diese Firma einzuholen.Eine absolute Leseempfehlung und ein riesiges Dankeschön an die vier Autoren, sehr gut gemacht!In this comprehensive book, four experts reveal the reasons behind Elon's success.Ever since the reports about the 1st Tesla Roadster, Tesla has fascinated me. For more than three years, I have been very deeply immersed in Tesla and follow several YouTube videos every day that deal with Tesla and Elon Musk from various angles. My fascination has only increased as a result.When I learned that Randy Kirk and Lars Strandridder were writing this book with contributions from Brian Wang and John Gibbs, I had to read it. After all, Lars and John are among my regular and favorite YouTubers.I was not disappointed. The book is written in a very interesting way and once again made it very clear to me why Tesla, for example, has had such a rapid rise and will continue to do so.And it shows, among other things, the many "moats" that Tesla has built around itself through its special way of doing things, why competitors will have a hell of a hard time catching up with this company.An absolute reading recommendation and a huge thank you to the four authors, very well done!

This is a book that focuses on Elon Musk's mission to create a better future for humanity and how he has used his unique talents to produce companies and products to progress this mission. I have long been interested in innovation and how companies innovate both their processes and products. Elon's companies are unique in their ability to develop, produce and continuously improve the most complex of products. The authors cover much of the background to what makes Elon so unique, but their primary focus is on how Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink etc. are actually doing this and why they believe that Tesla will become the world's most profitable company in the near future. They cover in depth Tesla's ability to make improvements in "the company as a product" at a pace that legacy automakers appear unable to even comprehend. Disclosure: I drive a Tesla M3 LR which is certainly the best car I have driven and made me very interested in this book. After reading the book I have a much better understanding of how Tesla has been able to produce our car and how and why it keeps improving the vehicle on a monthly basis. They also provide insight into the truly disruptive nature of Tesla's technology and its pace of innovation and the many powerful interests that are currently being disrupted. After reading this book I have gained a greater understanding of Elon Musk's unique talents and how he is applying them to make the Elon Musk Mission a reality (and it is an entertaining book as well!)