Archive for the ‘Elon Musk’ Category

Elon Musk reveals F1 interest to Christian Horner with Miami meeting – Planet F1

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has spoken about details of his garage meeting with one of the worlds richest people, Elon Musk, at the Miami Grand Prix last weekend.

Musks early investment into all-electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla helped propel him to becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as put him at the forefront of electrification in road cars.

Musk was spotted speaking to the Red Bull team boss across the weekend in Miami as he visited the Formula 1 paddock, and Horner explained that he even challenged the reigning World Champions to a race in one of his electric cars, though there was something of a stumbling block to that being able to take place.

Well, it was great to see him coming to a Formula 1 race and embracing the combustion engine again, Horner quipped while in conversation with the Financial Times.

I think he was very impressed with the technology. Obviously, an incredibly bright guy, wanted to know all about the battery and so on, and the power and the output of the car, and then threw down the gauntlet of wanting to race us with one of his electrical vehicles but then realised that they could only do half the race.

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Musk was not the only billionaire present in the paddock last weekend, with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos also spotted on the McLaren pit wall in Miami.

But while Formula 1 has grown exponentially in recent seasons under the ownership of Liberty Media, Musk and Bezos would count themselves among the very few people who would be able to bid for an outright takeover of the sport if they should ever wish to.

While that is not on the cards at this moment in time, Horner explained the connection the Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter boss had with the sport, and believes attracting some kind of investment from him in future would only be of benefit to the sport.

Well, hes a partner with Larry Ellison from Oracle, who is our title partner, and its always great to meet people like that, Horner said. Theyre so involved in the tech and so forward thinking as well.

Formula 1 has a big regulation change in 2026 where the battery becomes ever more pertinent, and so it would obviously be great to attract talent like that to come and invest in Formula 1.

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Elon Musk reveals F1 interest to Christian Horner with Miami meeting - Planet F1

A reckoning awaits Elon Musk’s renegade rocketmen (and they are … – The Telegraph

Among them is Max Polyakov, a Ukrainian whose parents worked in the Soviet space programme.

Polyakov made his money from online businesses in the early 2000s, including a dating website that was accused by the BBC of using fake profiles to lure subscribers. (An investigation found no systematic use of fake profiles but the company admitted it had not clearly labelled staff accounts).

Polyakov went on to spend around $150 million on his passion: space. He acquired the assets of Texas-based rocket company Firefly out of bankruptcy and gave American engineers a Russian-designed turbopump, a key piece of rocketry equipment.

For his troubles, he was pressured by the US government to sell his shares in 2022 on national security grounds.Polykov has since acquired Dragonfly, a South African satellite operation, and hes now a British citizen hopefully we havent heard the last of him.

When Vance began researching his book a decade ago, there were about a thousand satellites in orbit.

Today, thanks to the collapsing cost of rocketry and cheap new mini-satellites, almost 9,000 are circling the earth. By the end of the decade, it will be around 30,000.

We are in the early days of the next great infrastructure buildout, Vance says.

Companies such as Starlink, another Musk venture, and OneWeb are creating a fabric of data connectivity that reaches every corner of the world.

They plan to give the entire planet reliable and fast internet access. If realised, farmers in Africa could view live photos of their fields on their phones, for example.

While Nasa led the space revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, today it is private sector concerns that are on the bleeding edge of progress.

Over the decades, the US space agency grew very cumbersome with bureaucracy.

Nasa failed to take advantage of the rise of modern consumer electronics, which offered low cost parts off the shelf.

In the latter half of the 20th century, if you wanted plucky scientists chasing the final frontier, you wouldnt look to Nasa, says Vance.

By contrast, the new breed of renegade engineer-entrepreneurs such as Musk and Beck took ready advantage of cheap consumer electronics parts. What's more, they junked the outdated methods and materials still being used by Nasa.

Strip away layers of bureaucracy dating back to the 1960s, and the staid thinking and you ended up in a place where the construction of rockets could be modernised and made more efficient, Vance says. New things were possible.

Their daring in attempting to build new rockets shouldnt be underestimated, as Vance points out: Its a barely controlled bomb, that you then have to manoeuvre with great precision. Almost anything can go wrong.

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A reckoning awaits Elon Musk's renegade rocketmen (and they are ... - The Telegraph

There’s 1 Hidden Joke From Elon Musk Behind Tesla’s Car Names – MotorBiscuit

In America, one in every 10 vehicles is likely to be an EV. Electric cars are preferred by many since they run entirely on batteries and are more friendly to the environment when compared to vehicles that use gasoline. Tesla is the most popular EV brand and was co-founded by Elon Musk.

Currently, Musk is the CEO of Tesla and the face behind its many achievements. He is controversially known for his sense of humor, which manifests in some ways that consumers might not even know about. Few people usually understand Musks humor, with most of Musks followers left in the dark. Heres one hidden joke behind even the naming of Teslas current lineup of cars:

Teslas current lineup consists of several models. The showcase sedan is the Model S. Initially, two trim options were available for the Tesla Model S: the Plaid and the Plaid +. The Plaid trim is able to go for up to 390 miles on a single charge, while the Plaid+ trim can go for up to 520 miles on a single charge. Even so, Electrek reveals that the Plaid+ trim was discontinued since the Plaid trim already meets all the consumer needs.

One of Teslas goals has been to make an efficient EV priced at only $35,000, and it almost achieved this goal with the Model 3. The Model 3 was briefly sold at this price before it was raised to $41,990 for a newer version.

Teslas Model X comes in second to the Model S regarding how long they have both been in production. The Model Xs refresh will feature two new trims. The dual-motor AWD will have a range of 360 miles and a top speed of 155 mph, and the Model X Plaid trim will have a range of 340 miles and a top speed of 340 mph.

Last is the Tesla Model Y, a crossover electric SUV that is a smaller version of the larger Model X, a mid-size SUV. On a full charge, the current long-range trim can go for 326 miles and has a maximum speed of 135 mph. It takes only 4.8 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph. For the performance trim, 60 mph is reached using only 3.5s. Once charged, it can go up to 303 miles and has a maximum speed of 155 mph.

Elon Musk once made an immature joke about owning the SEXY car company. Believe it or not, the models were produced and named according to the acronym SEXY or S3XY, to be more accurate, and it stands for the models S, 3, X, and Y. These four models are currently Teslas greatest successes, with some of the longest ranges known in the market.

In the early production years, the Tesla Model 3 was registered as the Model E by Tesla. However, Ford had already claimed the name Model E, so they filed charges against Tesla in 2014 for using their model name. Therefore, Tesla had to change its name, and Musk found an impressive way to do it. He changed the brand name to Model 3, which became the second EV in his S3XY car collection.

According to CarLogos, the Model 3s original logo was identified by three horizontal lines arranged on top of each other. In addition to the claims that the logo still looked like the letter E, it was also difficult for people to type, so it had to be changed. Currently, the Model 3s logo is still the number 3, but in Arabic. So, for now, Tesla continues to reign by making high-performance electric vehicles, and there are still more to come.

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There's 1 Hidden Joke From Elon Musk Behind Tesla's Car Names - MotorBiscuit

Elon Musk joins long list of billionaires who say giving away money is hard – MarketWatch

When youve got more money than you know what to do with, giving some of it away to help other people seems like a no-brainer.

Elon Musk would beg to differ. It is very hard to donate money, Musk said in a May 7 tweet. The full quote, which appeared to be missing a couple of words, was, It is very hard to donate money if you [care] about it doing actual good [and] not merely the appearance of it.

Musks wealth has taken some hits recently, but hes still the second richest man in the world, with an estimated $179.5 billion net worth. Hes far from the first extremely wealthy person to complain about how hard it is to give money away. Amazon AMZN founder Jeff Bezos made a similar lament when he announced his intention to give most of his fortune to charity in 2022.

Wealthy people have made this observation dating back at least to the Gilded Age steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who said in 1895 that the path of the philanthropist is difficult and how to do genuine good and not mischief by the giving of money is one of the most difficult problems with which man has to deal,according to philanthropy scholar Ben Soskis of the Urban Institute. (Adjusting for inflation, Carnegie was worth more than $300 billion at the peak of his wealth.)

Wealthy donors sometimes talk about the burden of giving away money because, they say, they feel a responsibility not to waste their money on ineffective solutions to societys problems. Critics say that wealthy people use the difficulty excuse to justify being too slow, and overly methodical when they give out money.

Musk also wrote in the same tweet, Im always looking [for] ways to donate money that are actually good.

Musk has publicly promised to give away most of his money either in his lifetime or in his will, but his charitable giving appears to have taken a backseat to priorities like running the electric vehicle company Tesla TSLA ,

While some billionaires announce their charitable giving on social media or in other public forums, Musk is comparativelyquiet about his charity, though he occasionallytweets abouthis donations.

He donated nearly 12 million shares of Tesla stock to charity in 2022 (worth $2.42 billion at the time he disclosed it), but didnt say where exactly the money went. In 2021, he gave $5.7 billion worth of Tesla stock to his personal foundation. The foundation supports renewable-energy research and advocacy; human space exploration research and advocacy; pediatric research; science and engineering education; and development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity, according to its bare-bones website.The foundation made $23 million in grants in 2020, according to its latest tax filing.

Musk has said that he considers his businesses to be a form of philanthropy, because, according to him, they exist to help humanity. SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company are philanthropy, Musk said in an interview with Chris Anderson, head of TED Talks. If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is philanthropy. SpaceX is trying to ensure the long-term survival of humanity with multi-planet species. This is love of humanity.

Another reason wealthy people sometimes struggle to give away their money: their fortunes often grow faster than they can give it away. Many of the billionaires who signed the Giving Pledge, and pledged to give away most of their wealth found themselves even richer in the years that followed, thanks to the breakneck pace of wealth creation.

Tesla shares are up 39% since the start of this year, compared to a 1.4% gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA , a 17% gain for the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP and a 7.7% increase for the S&P 500 SPX during the same period.

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Elon Musk joins long list of billionaires who say giving away money is hard - MarketWatch

A fake Elon Musk angered Chinese fans who wanted to meet the real deal – Insider

Elon Musk is CEO of Twitter. Carina Johansen/Getty Images

A group of Chinese Elon Musk fans thought they would meet him at an event in New York. They were massively disappointed when a Musk impersonator showed up instead.

The event's organizer, Gary Kong, had promised that the Twitter and Tesla CEO would be at the launch event for Kong's new publication, the Wall St Magazine, per a report by the South China Morning Post. Kong is the president of the Sino-American Commerce Association, a non-profit organization in Flushing, New York.

Over 120 Chinese fans of the tech mogul headed down to The James Hotel in Manhattan on April 27 at 7 p.m. to catch a glimpse of Musk, per Chinese media outlet The Paper. They waited for more than an hour and a half before a man who only slightly resembled Musk showed up.

The Paper reported that the man was surrounded by several bodyguards when he arrived. He then posed for a few photos and participated in an awards ceremony before leaving quickly.

According to The Paper, people only realized after the event that the man's voice and appearance did not match Musk's.

Gao Weiwei, who attended the event in New York and took a photo with the fake Musk,posted a video about the event on the Chinese social media site Weibo.

"Never in our wildest dreams did we think it was a fake Musk," Gao said.

"When I saw him in person, I thought: 'Hey, that doesn't look like Musk,'" Gao added. "I just thought that maybe he looks a little different in real life."

Gao also posted a video of herself and other event attendees posing with the fake Musk who was being shepherded into the event hall, through a dense crowd of people snapping photos and taking videos.The video has been viewed more than 33,000 times as of press time.

Speaking to the SCMP, Kong said he had never promised that Musk would attend the event. Kong also told the SCMP that the wording on the event's press release suggested that Musk would just be on the cover of the magazine and not at the party itself.

However, The Paper published what appeared to be a copy of the invitation to the event. The invitation read: "The main committee has invited many entrepreneurs, & Elon Musk. Mr. Elon Musk is the CEO and CTO of Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX), CEO of Tesla (TESLA), and the chairman of the board of directors of SolarCity."

Insider was also unable to immediately verify the identity of the Musk impersonator.

Kong's representatives at the Sino-American Commerce Association did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular business hours. Musk and Gao also did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

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A fake Elon Musk angered Chinese fans who wanted to meet the real deal - Insider