60 Minutes

60 minutes rewind comparing the Tesla Model S to other cars is like comparing an iPhone to a desk phone it is a technological marvel that scorches the pavement zero to 60 in four seconds Tesla is another revolutionary idea from the mind of Elon Musk a 42 year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who built an industrial empire from the stuff of little boy dreams fast cars and rocket ships musk is an idealist who told us he had to start his companies so that man could colonize Mars and save the earth his sister says it's like her brother traveled into the future and came back to tell us all about it so what is the future like apparently it's fast and smoke free the Tesla Model S is powered by 7,000 battery cells linked to an electric motor no engine no transmission

no tailpipe as this company video shows the dash is dominated by a computer that's constantly connected to the Internet it has a fanatical following there's a waiting list that Elon Musk is trying to shorten building 600 Model S's a week in this high-tech plant in Northern California I have heard a lot of people describe you okay okay good I mean hopefully unbalanced hopefully mostly good how do you describe yourself I usually describe myself as an engineer that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid I'm interested in things that that changed the world or that affect the future and wondrous new technology where you see it and you're like wow how that even happened how how's that possible how is it possible that Elon Musk could launch to impossible

businesses SpaceX a builder of rocket ships and Tesla which could be the first successful car company startup in America in 90 years how did you figure you were going to start a car company and be successfully well I didn't really think Tesla would be successful I thought we were most likely failed but I thought that we at least could address the false perception that people had that an electric car had to be ugly and slow and and boring like a golf cart but you say you didn't expect the company to be successful then why try if something is important enough used to try even if you probably outcome is failure what's important to musk is reducing greenhouse gases which he believes threaten the world the Tesla will go about 250 miles on a charge and musk

is building a network of charging stations where the driver pays nothing for a fill-up he hopes to make the stations largely solar-powered one day you can drive for free forever on pure sunlight that's the you know message we're trying to convey so even if like this is on the apocalypse and the grid breaks down you'll still be able to charge your car so there's a zombie apocalypse warranty yes and if you're running from zombies it's good to know the Model S one the highest quality rating in the history of Consumer Reports and has the government's highest safety rating musk maybe changing the car the way Steve Jobs changed the phone like jobs he's a perfectionist in the art of engineering his goal wasn't to show a profit but to reveal the possibilities

it is a desire to discover that's also behind Musk's other line of vehicles only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back the United States Russia China and Elon Musk this Buck Rogers dream started years ago when he had a nutty idea to fly an experimental greenhouse to Mars but he couldn't he discovered that the price of rockets was astronomical so now he builds his own I had so many people try to talk me out of starting her art company it was it was crazy what did they tell you one good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up and made me watch those just didn't want me to lose all my money he never did launch that greenhouse but now musk is lofting commercial satellites and

flying cargo to the space station for NASA at a fraction of the former cost Musk's fascination with technology dates to his childhood in South Africa he was just found everything interesting he wanted to explore everything you know and knocked his teeth out because he was just falling off stuff came book two actually we spoke with his mother may sister Tosca and brother Kimball he's a guy with unlimited ambition ambition to do what not a typical type of ambition it's it's more he just needs to be constantly his mind just needs to be constantly fulfilled and the problems problems that he takes on therefore need to be can become more and more complex over time in order to keep him interested he was interested in computers early at the age of 12 he wrote

the software for a videogame and sold it against his parents wishes he set his sights on the software capital of the world it seemed like the vast majority of such things came from the United States I also like read a lot of comic books and they will seem to be set in the United States it's like well this is a good place I was where I gotta go this place he earned degrees in business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania and asked his brother to join him in California when we moved to Silicon Valley we had nothing so we actually lived in the office and we would sleep on the floor in the evening and go shower at the YMCA the next morning and then we would be ready to go before thee before some of our employees would arrive so they wouldn't think

we were actually sleeping any others in that office musk invented a program that gave step-by-step directions between addresses that's common today in cars and phones but in 1995 it was magic in four years he made 22 million dollars only in America right only in America I agree absolutely next he started an online banking firm that he grew into PayPal a system for making purchases on the Internet and you sold PayPal to eBay for what I was about one billion dollars so that that was it was good outcome a good outcome yes his share was a hundred and eighty million and he bet it all on Tesla and SpaceX but at the age of 37 he hit rock bottom his first rockets failed to reach orbit and an early model Tesla Roadster had quality problems in 2008 the rocket company

is not going well you know had three failures great the car company is hemorrhaging money yeah and the American economy has tanked in the worst recession since the Great Depression right what was that you're like for you and I'm getting a boost by the way add to that that was that was definitely at the worst year of my life that terrible year was captured in a documentary called revenge of the electric car his plant was filled with flawed cars that couldn't be delivered holy mackerel Jesus we have like an army of cars here like Jesus this is frightening it's really pedal to the metal here I mean you know each month that passes is literally costs us tens of millions of dollars I mean we need to appreciate that to save Tesla must needed millions more from

investors his fortune was gone when we'd call people and say hey would you like to invest they'd be angry that we just called it's like no it's lonely no no and knowing you know various expletives he was essentially broke oh yeah in debt more than broke more than broke yep I remember waking up the Sunday before Christmas on in 2008 and thinking to myself and I never thought I was someone who could ever be capable of a nervous breakdown and but I felt this was the closest I've ever come because it seemed pretty pretty dark the story will continue after this mark toward the end of 2008 SpaceX prepared its fourth attempt we were running on fumes at that point we had virtually no money so a fourth failure the fourth failure would have been absolutely game

of a done done SpaceX bankrupt yes it's bad enough to have three strikes having four strikes it's really kaput but flight four was flawless in Musk's world it lit the darkness [Applause] then as often the week of Christmas became a time when little boy dreams are answered NASA called and told us that weird one a one and a half billion dollar contract and I couldn't even hold the components like I just look I just blurt it out I love you guys they saved you yeah they did financially and maybe even emotionally I'll tell you what that was that that was definitely helpful yeah two days later on Christmas Eve Tesla's investors decided to pour in more money so you were saved in the period of three days yeah by two completely unexpected events yeah Merry Christmas

yeah absolutely that's for sure the Rockets haven't failed since his cargo capsule has docked three times with the space station capture is confirmed and in the California plant they're fitting seats for what they hope will be eventual manned missions SpaceX is also testing a rocket that can be reused softly landing on a column of flame another step on a longer journey I'd love to have SpaceX be the company that brings humanity to Mars and I see it while I'm still alive he's at SpaceX three days a week two days at Tesla and weekends are at home with his five sons from his first marriage and his second wife to Lula whom he met in London it all happened very fast we were we were engaged after I think sort of two teen weeks and knowing each other and I was

22 and it was there were all these boys and it was which was the best part and it was it was fast and then we were in it you knew each other two weeks something before you got engaged what was so attractive he's very charming and definitely the most interesting and eccentric person I have ever met [Music] Tesla's stock has rocketed up nearly 500 percent but that's not based on the cars he's selling today that price is counting on the hope that Tesla will create an electric car at one-third the cost of the Model S which runs about a hundred thousand dollars this is what stands in the way this slab covered in plastic is the battery so this is essentially the bottom of the car the front wheels would be there the rear wheels would be right here it fills up

the entire bottom of the car that's right this is how it fits into the bottom of the chassis trouble is the batteries so expensive must can't build a $35,000 car with acceptable range to make Tesla successful he must reinvent battery manufacturing musk has just announced a five billion dollar factory to be built in the US which he says will make more lithium-ion batteries than all the other plants on earth combined Gamble's like that have led a lot of people on Wall Street to bet against it taking investment positions that count on Tesla's stock to fail but so far those pessimistic investors have lost a lot of money what is it about you that seems to invite skepticism well I think it's because we're doing these things that seem unlikely to succeed and

we've been fortunate and these thus far they have succeeded