The Revenge Of The Electric Car

Being an automobile enthusiast how one can forget Tesla and its innovation in automobile sector
and several other fields. The name Tesla it self is a head turner because of its continuous efforts to
give something back to environment as well as people and I should also like to mention that Tesla
is also famous for its CEO Elon Musk, known for his controversies and criticisms but even more
known for his achievements in greater heights. Some characters of Elon Musk like working
hundred hours a week shows his dedication towards his role and it seems that he lived for his
company. In 1960’s and 1970’s fuel cost were going up, fear of exhausting fuel supplies and a
growing concern for air pollution led to the invention of Tesla motors in 2003, it was set up in the
heart of Silicon Valley in Palo Alto.

Elon Musk started the Tesla motors in order to manufacture fully electric cars which is
environment friendly. Tesla unveiled the ultra sporty Tesla Roadster in the SF international moto
show in Nov 2006. Even though the model design was not so unique but because of its unique
electric drive train technology and the vehicle can travel more than 200 to 300 miles in one single
charge was very revolutionary at that point of time and people all over the country appreciated for
that achievement, but Tesla didn’t sit quite and started innovating new things in that by giving
competition to the sports car segment by proving that the electric engines can be extremely
powerful and can provide acceleration well in excess of their petrol powered rivals. Some where
in the middle of 2012 tesla bought its new model named Tesla Model S sedan this all-electric
luxury vehicle could reach 60 miles per hour in 4.2 seconds. It could seat seven people, if
you used a couple of optional rear-facing seats in the back for kids. It also had two trunks.
There was the standard one and then what tesla calls a “frunk” up front, where the bulky
engine would usually be. The model s ran on an electric battery pack that makes up the base
of the car and a watermelon-sized electric motor located between the rear tires. Getting rid of
the engine and its din of clanging machinery also meant that the model s ran silently. The
model s outclassed most other luxury sedans in terms of raw speed, mileage, handling, and
storage space. By putting lot of efforts Elon Musk and his team invented new mechanisms
that no automobile company has never thought of like a cutesy thing with the door handles,
which were flush with the car’s body until the driver got close to the Model S. Then the silver
handles would pop out, the driver would open the door and get in, and the handles would
retract flush with the car’s body again. Once inside, the driver encountered a seventeen-inch
touch-screen that controlled the vast majority of the car’s functions, be it raising the volume
on the stereo* or opening the sunroof with a slide of the finger. Whereas most cars have a
large dashboard to accommodate various displays and buttons and to protect people from the
noise of the engine, the Model S offered up vast amounts of space. The Model S had an ever-
present Internet connection, allowing the driver to stream music through the touch console
and to display massive Google maps for navigation. The driver didn’t need to turn a key or
even push an ignition button to start the car. His weight in the seat coupled with a sensor in
the key fob, which is shaped like a tiny Model S, was enough to activate the vehicle. Because
of all these inventions and car being 60% efficient when compared to other cars people
started liking it and it lead to increase in sales figures. Elon musk and his team after
succeeded by providing a quality car for their consumers they also thought of improvising the
buying experience by allowing the feature of booking the car through online. Just because
this whole car run with lot of software Tesla took advantage of it by providing service
through internet i.e While the owner slept, Tesla’s engineers tapped into the car via the
Internet connection and downloaded software updates. When the customer took the car out
for a spin in the morning and found it working right, he was left feeling as if magical elves
had done the work. In November 2012, just a few months after it started shipping, the Model
S was named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year in the first unanimous vote that anyone at the
magazine could remember. The Model S beat out eleven other vehicles from companies such
as Porsche, BMW, Lexus, and Subaru and was heralded as “proof positive that America can
still make great things.” Motor Trend celebrated the Model S as the first non–internal
combustion engine car ever to win its top award and wrote that the vehicle handled like a
sports car, drove as smoothly as a Rolls-Royce, held as much as a Chevy Equinox, and was
more efficient than a Toyota Prius. Several months later, Consumer Reports gave the Model
S its highest car rating in history—99 out of 100—while proclaiming that it was likely the
best car ever built. The Model S was not just the best electric car; it was best car, period, and
the car people desired. By this I can say that the product will not only succeed because of its
quality but how fast you are moving in this changing era and how vast features that you will
offer for consumers to make their task easy in daily life.

Link for the video : https://youtu.be/pQiT2U5E9tl

It is the journey of Space X and how it started. In 2002, Musk and friends traveled to Russia to
buy a refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile. The Silicon Valley prodigy who made millions
off internet startups wasn't looking to start a business at the time. He wanted to spend a big chunk,
or maybe all of his fortune, on a stunt he hoped would reinvigorate interest in funding NASA and
space exploration. The idea was to buy a Russian rocket on the cheap and use it to send plants or
mice to Mars -- and hopefully bring them back, too. Ideally, the spectacle would get the world
excited about space again. But Musk's Moscow meeting didn't go well and he decided he could
build rockets himself, calculating that he could undercut existing launch contractors in the
process. SpaceX was founded just a few months later. The main aim of this Space X is to reduce
space transportation cost to enable the colonization of Mars. Musk initially hoped to make it to
Mars by 2010, but just getting one rocket into orbit took six years. A SpaceX Falcon 1 orbited
Earth for the first time on Sept. 28, 2008. This paved the way for a nine-engine version of the
rocket, the Falcon 9, the company's workhorse since its first launch in 2010. Falcon 9 is a two-
stage orbital rocket that's been used to launch satellites for companies and governments, resupply
the International Space Station and even send the US Air Force's super-secret space plane on its
mysterious long missions. Over the past nine years the company has flown more than 70 Falcon 9
missions.

What really sets Falcon 9 apart from the competition is its unprecedented ability to send a payload
into orbit and then have its first stage return to Earth, landing either on solid ground or on a
floating droneship landing pad at sea, another SpaceX innovation. After a few explosive failed
attempts, a Falcon 9 finally landed safely on Dec. 22, 2015, and a few months later another
touched down on a droneship for the first time. Several recovered Falcon 9 rockets have since
flown and landed again. On November 11, 2019, a single Falcon 9 successfully launched and
landed for the fourth time -- a first for orbital rockets -- and flew using a recycled nose cone for
the first time. The Most significant thing is that , he’s been testing rockets that can push their
payload to space and then return to Earth and land with supreme accuracy on a pad floating at sea
or even their original launchpad. Instead of having its rockets break apart after crashing into the
sea, SpaceX will use reverse thrusters to lower them down softly and reuse them. Within the next
few years, SpaceX expects to cut its price to at least one-tenth that of its rivals. Reusing its rockets
will drive the bulk of this reduction and SpaceX’s competitive advantage. From the 1960s into
space, SpaceX has made a point of doing just the opposite. Its reusable rockets and reusable
spaceships look like true twenty-first-century machines. His reusable rockets reflects SpaceX’s
constant push to advance its technology and change the economics of the industry. Musk does not
simply want to lower the cost of deploying satellites and resupplying the space station. He wants
to lower the cost of launches to the point that it becomes economical and practical to fly thousands
upon thousands of supply trips to Mars and start a colony. After this Space X started working on
Space X’s dragon craft has been used to carry cargo to the International Space Station. Dragon
was the first commercial spacecraft to be recovered after a trip from orbit. SpaceX is working on a
second version called Crew Dragon that it intends to use to send humans to space and the ISS.
Because of all this efforts and achievements it paid Space X well by getting awarded a $1.6 billion
NASA contract on 23 december 2008, for 12 flights of their Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft to the
international space station. All these achievements made Space X to gain world wide attention for
a series of historic milestone and at present Space x values $33.33 billion which is huge for
privately owned company.

Link for the Video : https://youtu.be/Crc8re8WKBw

My learnings :

By reading this book I learnt to set a powerful vision, because a powerful vision is what which
makes you to invent more and extract more from you. We don’t know from where and when ideas
can come so making our ideas open source and work in teams and gather the ideas, collective
effort of the group of people can give results that a single person couldn’t not have achieved.
Think big and achieve big is another lesson that I learnt while reading this book, if we want to
think big let us question our self what we want to achieve and what dreams that we want to
conquer in life, then half of the problem is over, only thing that we want to do is to concentrate on
our dreams and put in lot of efforts, hard work has no substitute like wise with out hard work one
can’t achieve anything but if u work hard there is possibilities of ruling the whole world like a
king.