Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2021.
“This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P.T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars,” Time says.
“His start-up rocket company SpaceX has leapfrogged Boeing and others to own America’s spacefaring future. His car company Tesla controls two-thirds of the multibillion-dollar electric-vehicle market it pioneered and is valued at a cool US$1 trillion. That has made Musk, with a net worth of more than US$250 billion (NZ$370b) the richest private citizen in history, at least on paper,” Time explains.
“He’s a player in robots and solar, cryptocurrency and climate, brain-computer implants to stave off the menace of artificial intelligence and underground tunnels to move people and freight at super speeds. He dominates Wall Street.”
The 50-year-old “zillionaire” has about 66 million Twitter followers and regularly posts Tweets which can cause happiness or angst.
The richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune, Time adds.
“He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance,” it explains.
“A few short years ago, Musk was roundly mocked as a crazy con artist on the verge of going broke. Now this shy South African with Asperger’s syndrome, who escaped a brutal childhood and overcame personal tragedy, bends governments and industry to the force of his ambition.”
Time says that Musk’s vast fortune is a mere side effect of his ability not just to see but to do things others cannot, suggesting he uses money to achieve those things.
