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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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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