Power Play
Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
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4.4 • 65 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLER • The riveting inside story of Elon Musk and Tesla's bid to build the world's greatest car—from award-winning Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter Tim Higgins.
“A deeply reported and business-savvy chronicle of Tesla's wild ride.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times Book Review
Tesla is the envy of the automotive world. Born at the start of the millennium, it was the first car company to be valued at $1 trillion. Its CEO, the mercurial, charismatic Elon Musk has become not just a celebrity but the richest man in the world.
But Tesla’s success was far from guaranteed. Founded in the 2000s, the company was built on an audacious vision. Musk and a small band of Silicon Valley engineers set out to make a car that was quicker, sexier, smoother, and cleaner than any gas-guzzler on the road. Tesla would undergo a hellish fifteen years, beset by rivals—pressured by investors, hobbled by whistleblowers. Musk often found himself in the public’s crosshairs, threatening to bring down the company he had helped build.
Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter Tim Higgins had a front-row seat for the drama: the pileups, breakdowns, and the unlikeliest outcome of all, success. A story of impossible wagers and unlikely triumphs, Power Play is an exhilarating look at how a team of innovators beat the odds—and changed the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The hidebound auto industry collides with the spirit of Silicon Valley in journalist Higgins's colorful debut, a history of Tesla. Higgins recounts the company's rise from shoestring start-up to the world's most valuable automaker through many rounds of near-bankruptcy, last-minute funding miracles, and breakthroughs in the manufacture of electric vehicles. The company was founded in 2003 by engineer Martin Eberhard and his friend Marc Tarpenning, with Elon Musk as an early investor; power shifted hands multiple times before Musk became CEO in 2008. Billionaire Musk dominates the narrative: the irrepressible industrialist set visionary goals with impossible deadlines, improvised engineering fixes, raged at underlings, set managers to "clawing at each other in front of him," headbutted a car on a stalled assembly line, and tweeted so many overly optimistic corporate predictions that the SEC came after him. Behind the shenanigans, Higgins takes an in-depth and well-balanced look at the interplay between Musk's swashbuckling mindset of "building the airplane as was heading down the runway" and the hardheadedness of Tesla's veteran engineers and leaders, who understood the rigors of making cars that could kill people if they malfunctioned. The result is a sometimes appalling, occasionally inspiring, and always entertaining saga.
Customer Reviews
Well done
Highly recommend
Great Read
Well written page turner.
Wow
Truly an unbelievable story and a must read for any fans of EV’s