Elon Musk: I Gave Tesla The “Last Of My Remaining Cash” In Its Darkest Hour
Tesla’s valuation remains bigger than all other automakers. It’s hard to believe that, at one point (or several points), the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. As Sissi Cao points out in Observer, “Tesla struggled for most of its life, especially during the early years.” Looking back, it’s important to remember just how far Elon Musk has come.
Elon reflected on some dark times in a Twitter conversation with biographer Ashlee Vance recently. According to Vance, “Both Tesla and SpaceX were close to going under. Fast forward to the 2020/2021 global plague, and Tesla is the most valuable car company and SpaceX is the largest rocket and satellite company and flies people too.”
“Tesla financing round closed at 6pm Dec. 24th, 2008, [the] last hour of [the] last day possible or payroll would’ve bounced two days later,” Musk replied. “I gave Tesla last of my remaining cash from PayPal. Didn’t even own a house or anything sellable.”
Tesla financing round closed at 6pm Dec 24th 2008 – last hour of last day possible or payroll would’ve bounced 2 days later. I gave Tesla last of my remaining cash from PayPal. Didn’t even own a house or anything sellable.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2021
Regardless, Musk has always had skin in the game when it comes to his companies. “I thought the probability of success was so low that I provided all of the money,” he said at an event in Paris in 2015. “All of the money just came from me personally. I didn’t want to ask people, other investors, for money if I thought we were going to die because I thought we were. I invested entirely the money that I got from PayPal, all of that got invested into Tesla, SolarCity, and SpaceX.”
And it turns out Tesla continued struggling in the years following the 2008 financial meltdown. “Even as recently as early 2013, we were operating with maybe one to two weeks of money,” Musk said at the Paris event.
.@elonmusk discussing electric vehicles in 2008 as tesla was nearly out of cash. pic.twitter.com/q41Tw9bfx9
— Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) February 22, 2021
“It takes time to optimize a new technology. … The critical point is that you can’t get to low-cost cars unless you start with expensive cars,” Musk said on-camera in 2008, when both his company and himself were drowning in debt. This video clip of a younger Elon Musk (see above) went viral on Twitter earlier this year.
In the end, it all paid off. But it took time. As Cao reports, “Tesla’s real turnaround didn’t come until 2019 when sales of Model 3, its first mass-market EV, allowed the company to post a quarterly profit for the first time. Tesla has been on a meteoric rise since then, seeing its market cap growing over 700 percent in the past 18 months.”
Originally published on EVANNEX.
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When the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit expired September 30th, a number of carmakers leaped into action, offering rebates, price cuts, and promos of their own in a bid to keep the good times rolling. Now, it seems like even Rolls-Royce is getting in on the act with a fresh $5,000 rebate of its own for November.
CarScoops is reporting a rare lease incentive offering on the ultra-luxe Rolls-Royce Spectre electric coupe that it says, “replaces the expired $7,500 Federal EV tax credit.”
Granted, with the price of the base Spectre starting at $397,750 and climbing quickly to $467,750 for the Spectre Black Badge model, the big coupe is well above the old $80K cap and its buyers likely make far too much to qualify anyway — but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my few brushes with Real Wealth™, it’s this: those hate paying taxes.
As such, it’s not that hard to imagine a Rolls-Royce salesperson explaining this in those terms. “This isn’t a discount or a sale or anything so gaudy,” he’d explain, dismissing any concern as petty as price. “We’re simply honoring the tax credit that you deserve.”
Rolling deep
The Rolls-Royce Spectre first rolled (Ha!) into showrooms in 2023 with a perfect sufficient 430 kW (577 hp) electric motor drawing energy from a stout, 120 kWh battery pack good for up to 265 miles (~425 km) of range. The Black Badge version bumps the horsepower to 650 (485 kW), but the purists will tell you that either number is enough.
You can find out more about Rolls-Royce’ EV leas deals, below, then let us know what you think about this sordid business of “discount dash” in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
SOURCE: CarScoops; images via Rolls-Royce.
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Germany is about to become home to Europe’s largest battery storage system – a massive 1 gigawatt (GW) / 4 gigawatt-hour (GWh) project in Jänschwalde, Brandenburg.
LEAG Clean Power GmbH and Fluence Energy GmbH, a subsidiary of US-based Fluence Energy (NASDAQ: FLNC), are teaming up to build the “GigaBattery Jänschwalde 1000.” The four-hour system will use Fluence’s Smartstack technology, its latest large-scale energy storage solution.
Once complete, Europe’s largest battery storage project will play a key role in stabilizing Germany’s grid and storing renewable power for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. It’s designed to deliver essential grid services, support energy trading, and boost energy security as the country phases out fossil fuels.
LEAG’s broader “GigawattFactory” plan combines solar and wind farms with flexible power plants and large-scale batteries across Germany’s Lusatian energy region. “By constructing gigascale storage facilities, we’re addressing one of the biggest challenges of the energy transition: ensuring constant power regardless of the availability of renewable energies,” said Adi Roesch, CEO of the LEAG Group.
Fluence CEO Julian Nebreda described the project as a “milestone for the energy future of Germany and Europe,” adding that it demonstrates how collaboration and cutting-edge technology can “transform the foundation of our economy and our everyday lives.”
The German government recently reaffirmed the importance of storage in building a secure and affordable clean power system. With this 4 GWh giant, LEAG and Fluence are implementing that priority in one of Europe’s most coal-heavy regions.
Read more: Battery boom: 5.6 GW of US energy storage added in Q2
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