 "Photo: Alyssa Benedetto")
The first domain was virtual reality. The second involved the stars, and the third is now focusing on cars. These three domains are the workplace of innovator and entrepreneur Elon Musk, who believes the Internet, space exploration and sustainable energy hold the key to changing the world.
As the current CEO of Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Musk delivered a lecture on Thursday as part of the University of Delaware Presidential Lecture series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
University president Patrick Harker said such talks are important to encourage and inspire university community members to improve the quality of their lives.
“What we need is a network that encourages entrepreneurial thinking across the university and supports inventors, scholars and innovators, all the way from the enterprise idea, through its launch and well beyond,” Harker said.
Musk said he did not have such a support system growing up. At the age of 17, against his parents wishes, he left his homeland of South Africa to study at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a pair of undergraduate degrees in business and physics.
He said he noticed the expansion and effect the Internet was having on the world. In similar fashion to Bill Gates, he dropped out of a graduate program at Stanford to start a software company with his brother Kimbal. Their venture, zip2, provided online publishing software to media and news organizations.
Four years later, in 1999, the brothers company to Compaq for $307 million in cashand another $34 million in stock options.
Musk said his business was formed to improve on an already existing market model. In the late 1990s, the Internet was in need of an online financial system. The new system was designed to transfer funds between customers via e-mail. Several companies offered such systems, but none had managed to gain popularity.
Musk formed a new company called X.com which would go on to create the electronic payment system called PayPal. It became highly popular, and in 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion. The company currently has 200 million customers in over 190 countries.
“The newly-acquired funds gave me the capital to work in some of the other areas that I thought would really make a difference,” Musk said. “Since I already had two Internet companies, I wanted to work on sustainable energy and space exploration.”
His next business venture was SpaceX. The company was created from scratch and immediately began tackling the complexities of designing and manufacturing space launch vehicles.
“We developed everything, from the main engine and the upstage engine and the control systems to the launch pad,” he said.
The work was the most challenging he had ever participated in. Not only did the company have to replicate in its labs the extreme conditions of liftoff and outer space, they also had to design everything perfectly.
“Rockets are hard, and there is a reason why you have those idiomatic expressions about why we can't all be rocket scientists,” Musk said.
He said the newest launch vehicle, Falcon 9, will begin its maiden voyage from Cape Canaveral, Fla. sometime around March 2010. The company’s progress and successful static firings of the first stage engines led NASA to announce in September that SpaceX had won a contract for 12 of the next 20 missions. The eight other missions were awarded to another small startup company.
This announcement is significant because Falcon 9 was completed in only six and a half years. The two main industrial giants, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, were unable to win any contract. According to Musk, this proves small companies like SpaceX can effectively compete and impact already existing markets.
Presently, he has turned his attention to sustainable energy. He founded Tesla Motors, a company which designs and produces all electric cars.
“Even though the space thing was more than enough to keep me busy, I felt there really was a need for [an] electric car,” Musk said. “Developing the Tesla is a catalyst to the idea of transferring to a sustainable energy future, and I felt it was something that had to be done.”
The company’s first and only model is the Tesla Roadster, a sports car with zero-to-60 mph acceleration in 3.9 seconds and a driving range of 244 miles, on a three and a half hour charge.
Musk said the high cost of the initial models, which currently start at $109,000, forced the company to actually design a sports car that wealthy individuals would be interested in buying. The company does have plans to release a sedan version in 2011 for approximately $49,000.
Two of the Tesla roadsters were provided for examination on The Green outside the Roselle Center for the Arts by two Delaware owners.
John Reader, a 1983 electrical and computer engineering alumnus, said the car has been great to own and drive so far. He is also proud of lessening his impact on the environment.
A main area of research at the university has been the development of the Vehicle-to-Grid system, which would enable electric vehicles to store and provide power for local electric grids. Musk said he did not allow for a similar system to be implemented in his current cars because the V2G system would lower the current battery pack’s life.
The exchange for a new battery would prove to be more expensive than the recycled grid energy.
“Charging at night and discharging during the daytime would be sort of like buying low and selling high, which would not be as effective,” he said. “The implementation of the system does not make much sense right now, but it could be possible in the third generation of cars.”
Ajay Prasad, professor of mechanical engineering and member of the V2G research group, disagreed. While the economic model for the system is not yet ready for full scale implementation, he said the ‘day and night’ model is too simplistic.
“These are markets which are very lucrative and we have faculty here on our campus who have done extensive research and economic analysis to show that V2G today is, economically, completely viable,” Prasad said. “Without a doubt all future cars will have V2G.”
He said there is a Delaware company called AutoPort in New Castle, which is already building electric cars with enabled V2G technology.
Musk said the transition from gasoline to electric transportation will happen regardless of government intervention. The only difference may be in the timeline.
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