This past Wednesday night (4/29/09), Penn alumnus Elon Musk (W'95, C’95) appeared on a popular late night TV program and discussed his electric sports car company Tesla Motors.
Find out:
- how much this car costs now(!)
- how the Tesla is environmentally friendly
- more about the electric car movement
- a preview of his sleek new, affordable Model S car which will come out in 2 years
I emailed Elon and he told me that the "point was that the real comparison price for the Model S is under $35k, so it's comparable to a high end Ford Taurus, when you consider that gasoline costs a lot more than electricity."
- his motivation behind his interest in cars
- what other transportation related projects Elon is interested in (inlcuding an electric plane!)
- more about the 2 companies he co-founded: SpaceX (space transportation company) and PayPal and how he broke into these businesses
- his dislike for firing people
- other CEOs in the Technology space from who he draws inspiration
- how this current political administration will be helping Tesla
- how he manages his time between running SpaceX and Tesla
On a related note, if you haven't already seen this movie, check out Who Killed the Electric Car...it's a fascinating documentary on the whole destruction of the electric car movement in the mid 1990s!
Musk was featured in the Nov/Dec issue of The Gazette HERE
Wikipedia info on Musk HERE
Other ways Penn and our alumni are going green HERE
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I was so spot on about the important point that Elon was trying to make which Letterman did not allow him to complete. I even posted it as a comment on CNET couple of days ago: http://tiny.cc/9Qpvx
Roshan