Elon Musk is a man of many talents. He is a skilled businessman, technology innovator, a high stakes investor, an engineer and a very gifted inventor. Even though he is one of the most successful billionaires in the world, he continues to push the boundaries of technology to help create a better world. As of 2017, Musk is estimated to be worth $13.9 billion, which would make him the 94 richest person in the world. He is considered one of the most powerful and influential individuals in the world. Instead of resting on his current and past successes, he is continuing to invent and reinvent the world and the way humans approach and utilize technology. He is focused on creating technology that helps to reduce global warming and to help reduce the risk of human extinction. Most CEO’s and inventors focus on making money but Musk wants to make the world a better place.

Elon Musk’s early life was filled with encouragement to pursue his passions. He was born in South Africa on June 28th, 1971. He was born in Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa to Maye and Errol Musk. Maye was a model and dietician from Canada and Errol was a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot and a sailor. He is the oldest of three children and spent the first nine years of his life in South Africa. By the age of 10, Musk had started to develop an interest in computers. His first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. By the age of 12, he had taught himself computer programming and even sold the code for a video game he created called Blastar. He sold the game to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for only $500.

After Musk completed secondary school, he made the bold decision to immigrate to the United States. At least that was the original plan. In 1989, he immigrated to Canada and lived with relatives of his mother’s in Montreal. He worked at a few low paying jobs for about a year before he was accepted at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. He spent two years studying there but then was finally able to relocate to the United States. In 1992, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. There he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in physics. Later, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in economics from The Wharton School of Business. In 1995, Musk decided to then move to California to begin studying for a PhD in applied physics and material science at Stanford. In a surprise move, he quit after only two days because Musk was a visionary who recognized the amazing potential of the Internet. He decided to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions instead and his foresight proved to be spot-on.

His first business venture was a company he started with his brother Kimbal called Zip2 founded in Palo Alto with $28,000 of their father’s money. This web software company primary provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers. When Zip2 first began in 1995, it was originally named Global Link Information Network and initially provided local businesses with an internet presence by linking their services to searchers and providing directions. After about a year, Global Link received $3million in investments from Mohr Davidow Ventures and the name was then changed to Zip2. The strategy of Zip2 was changed to then providing back end software packages to newspapers nationally to build their own directories. Zip2 grew exponentially from that point and struck deals with major publications like the New York Times, Knight Ridder and the Hearst Corporation. In April 1998, Zip2 attempted to merge with its then competitor, CitySearch. Although Musk initially supported the merger, he then persuaded the Board of Directors to scrap the merger due to irreconcilable differences in cultures and technology. In 1999, Compaq Computers bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in securities.

After the sale of Zip2, Musk turned his focus on creating a new company. In 1999, his astute entrepreneurial intuition led him start working on an electronic financial services and email payment company which was named X.com. The following year, X.com merged with rival company Confinity. Confinity was founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin and specialized in software that allowed Palm Pilot and PDA owners to store encrypted information on their devices. When the companies merged, X.com was renamed PayPal and Musk became the chairman and CEO. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion and Musk received $180 million. Musk then left PayPal and the Internet all together and decided to focus on investing in sustainable solutions for both personal and mass transportation.

SpaceX has received quite a bit of press lately off their latest successful launch but little do people know that SpaceX has been around for almost two decades. It was created because Musk wants to someday colonize Mars. In 2001, Elon Musk saw the waning interest in the space exploration and came up with a publicity stunt to help drum up some excitement about space travel. His original idea was to send an experimental greenhouse to space to grow food from seeds. When looking for a rocket, Musk tried to buy one in the US and then traveled to Russia when he found out the price to purchase a rocket was astronomical. Russia was willing to sell him a rocket for cheaper but it still had a very high price tag. Frustrated, Musk came back empty handed with no rocket and no way to get his experiment to space. Musk then decided that if he couldn’t buy a rocket at a decent price, then he was going to make his own. SpaceX was founded with $100 million of his own money with the focus of creating cheaper, reusable rockets. The ultimate goal is to make interplanetary travel a reality in order to colonize Mars one day. Musk believes that SpaceX is very close to reaching their goal of sending a human to Mars and he believes that he can create a Mars colony by 2040. SpaceX continues to reinvent space travel and exploration and shows no sign of slowing down.

While SpaceX was gearing up, Musk decided to get involved with another company. A little known car company, Tesla, was making small waves in the electric car community in 2003. Tesla was co-founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpennin with the idea of creating an electric car that had mass appeal. A rocky start made it hard to get the company off the ground until Musk came in and invested a significant sum in the company. He then joined the board of directors as the chairman. The financial crisis of 2008 created issues within the company and Musk took over as CEO and product architect to help get the company back on track. Musk showed his true colors as an effective manager. He fired the individuals who were stalling product development and downsized where necessary to keep the company afloat. He was finally able to help Tesla get their Roadster model on the market and then began work on additional models to roll out in order to expand the company’s demographic. Electric cars overall have never been very popular and Musk wanted to change that. Additional large sum investments from other companies along with a successful IPO allowed Tesla to begin work on their Model S. Musk has the ultimate goal of creating an electric car with mass appeal that would help the world to become less dependent on oil. Since the unveiling of the Model S, Tesla’s popularity has skyrocketed along with their profits. Musk and Tesla are busy working on expanding their offerings and are hoping to put an SUV and a less expensive version of their electric car, the Model 3, on the market very soon.

Elon Musk has a passion for helping save the environment and his other company, SolarCity, is no exception. Two brothers, Peter and Lyndon Rive, founded SolarCity in 2003. These brothers also happen to be Elon Musk’s cousins. Musk came up with the original concept behind the company and he also helped to start the company. SolarCity is the leading provider of solar power systems for homes, businesses and governments. SolarCity has experienced very rapid growth in the last few years. The company has grown from 440 megawatts (MW) of solar panels installed in 2009 to 6,200 MW installed in 2014 and has also installed more solar energy systems than any other company in the United States. In August of 2016, Tesla announced in a joint statement with SolarCity it would be acquiring the company for $2.6 million. SolarCity operates in 20 jurisdictions in United States and employees about 15,000 people. SolarCity has a wide variety of services and products like solar leasing, commercial solar installations, electrical vehicle chargers, energy efficiency evaluations, energy storage and a solar roof.

Musk is only getting started. He is the modern day Edison and shows no sign of slowing down. His ambition is unmatched and he will continue to wow the world with his ideas, inventions, and new technology. Most people scoffed at Musk for his ideas early on in his career but over time he has proved that he can make those fantastical ideas a reality. Musk is admirable in the aspect that he is investing his own money in creating companies that will help to reduce our carbon footprint. He hopes to reduce dependence on fossil fuels by creating a reliable American-made electric car and by creating environmentally friendly energy solutions for homes and businesses. The world is waiting in anticipation to see what mind-blowing idea or invention he comes up with next.

Elon Musk is currently dating Amber Heard.

Methods of travel have been relatively unchanged for the last 30 years. The only difference is that it keeps getting more expensive to fly, buy a car, or to commute to work. Technology has advanced over the years in many forms. Americans rely greatly on these expensive forms of travel to get to where they need to go but this dependence on these forms of travel have been negatively affecting the environment for decades. Every form of transportation relies heavily on fossil fuels and ultimately these fossil fuels will run out someday. The environment has already taken a beating from the extraction process and currently outside of a small offering of electric cars, there are very little options when it comes to environmentally conscience forms of travel. There is one man however that is looking to change that.

Elon Musk has made it his life mission to create clean energy solutions for the planet. What started with the electric car company Tesla has now morphed into the search for a high-speed mode of mass transportation that is not dependent on fossil fuels. Musk first mentioned the concept of a “fifth mode of transportation” back in July of 2012. He was at a PandoDaily event in Santa Monica when he spoke about this proposed concept of travel and dubbed it the “Hyperloop”. Musk prophesized that the Hyperloop would be capable of reaching hypersonic speeds, immune to extreme weather and collisions, and most importantly would require low power consumption. This concept of transportation was named the Hyperloop because the transport system would run in a constant loop. His idea was met with enthusiasm but skepticism. There is a need for clean forms of transportation but the method that Musk proposed seemed so outlandish that people has a hard time believing that it could be achieved but that didn’t stop Elon Musk from pushing his invention forward.

Musk has never been one to shy away from a challenge. He has been referred to as the Thomas Edison of the 21st century and has been currently focusing on clean energy travel solutions for the planet that reduce waste and the dependence on fossil fuels. Tesla has been a huge hit and the Tesla Model S is consistently voted as the best electric car on the market. The future of Tesla Inc is looking good. The idea behind Tesla was to create a fast and sleek electric car that would appeal to a broad range of people. Most thought it was a fruitless endeavor but Musk managed to design a beautiful American made automobile. Elon Musk at Tesla stated that he believes that electric cars will take over the market in the next 20 years. Musk wanted to also apply the same thinking to mass transportation. The goal of the Hyperloop is create transportation that is faster than a plane, cheaper than most forms of travel, and will be energy efficient and will not depend on the ever shrinking supply of fossil fuels.

From late 2012 until August 2013, engineers from both Tesla and SpaceX worked on the initial design of the Hyperloop system and the design was published on the official blogs of both Tesla and SpaceX. In a surprising move, Musk invited feedback from people about the system and ways to potentially improve it. The design and functionality behind the Hyperloop will be an open source concept and feedback and design ideas from the public will be put into consideration.

The design behind the Hyperloop is not a new one. The idea of traveling in pods through a tunnel has been around for a long time but Musk was looking to make his own version that would be solar operated and would rely on linear induction motors and air compressors. Specially designed pods would carry people through a continuous steel tube where the pods would float on a thin layer of air. The concept is similar to how an air hockey table works when the pucks float on the table. The induction motors located along the steel tube would accelerate and decelerate the pod along the track at an immense speed. The system would be powered by solar panels along the track that would be provided by Musk’ company, Solar City. Musk’s other company Tesla would provide motors and electronics for the system.

Due to the open source design concept, there are many other companies that are working to help bring the Hyperloop to market. In June of 2014 a startup in Los Angeles called Hyperloop One was incorporated and has raised about $160 million. The company has amassed a team of 200 engineers and technicians to work on making this “fifth mode” of transportation a reality. Musk is not directly involved in the company but there are many connections that Musk has to the company. Hyperloop’s Executive Chairman and co-founder, Shervin Pishevar has very strong connections to Musk. Musk also has connections with the other co-founder, Josh Giegel, who is also a lead engineer for SpaceX. Hyperloop One has taken certain elements of Musk’s original design and have modified certain key technical elements. These changes include the addition of passive magnetic levitation and eliminating the compressor that Elon Musk first envisioned for the Hyperloop.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies was another company that was created to help construct the Hyperloop. This company operates a little differently than most start up companies. HTT is comprised of 500 part-time engineers located all throughout the United States who collaborate on a weekly basis through weekly teleconferences. Instead of a salary, the members work in exchange for stock options. They have stated that they believe that they are at least ten years away from creating a fully operational Hyperloop. They are currently working on creating a test track that will be located in California and would be about 5 miles long.

There have been a number of routes proposed for the Hyperloop. The first proposed route from Musk was from the Los Angeles area up to the San Francisco area. The proposed route would begin near Sylmar and follow I-5 and then end somewhere near Hayward. Currently, Hyperloop One is proposing routes in Europe with the first route being between Helsinki and Stockholm with the projected travel time of only 30 minutes. Hyperloop One is also currently conducting studies to see if it is feasible to create routes between Dubai and other parts of the United Arab Emirates.

SpaceX in June of 2015 announced that it would build a 1 mile-long test track near the Hawthorne facility. This track will be used to test out pods that will be designed by third parties in a competition. The Hyperloop Pod Competition is a SpaceX sponsored competition where student and non-students teams participate in the design and building of a pod prototype. It is open to teams from all over the world. The track was completed in 2016 and although it varies from the initial prototype that Musk unveiled, it is specifically designed so a wide variety of test pods can be tried out on the track. The announcement of the contest created a lot of buzz surrounding the Hyperloop and people from the around the world are looking to participate in this revolutionary contest.

Hyperloop is an amazing concept that would revolutionize the way we approach transportation and travel. The Hyperloop is also innovative in the aspect that it has become an open source concept that has now grown into a project that spans the globe and has multiple groups of people and companies working diligently to create the most sophisticated mode of travel that the world has ever seen. This energy efficient transport will be the next step in helping to create a better environment for future generations.