Story telling has taken a newer route, it appears. To be precise, it has taken a crisper micro-blogging site Twitter. CEO Elon Musk took to this popular social media platform to reveal the tale of electric car-maker Tesla! In just a few tweets in quick succession, Mr. Musk has managed to reveal the story behind Tesla's birth.
``Few people know that we started Tesla when GM forcibly recalled all electric cars from customers in 2003 & then crushed them in a junkyard,'' he tweeted early Friday. He followed this up with yet another tweet that gave a clue or two to the inside happenings at GM. ``They (sic) was done against the will of their owners, who held a candlelight vigil all night to protest the death of their cars,'' he revealed. In his next tweet, he gave a glimpse of the thought-process at that point in time. ``Since big car companies were killing their EV (electric vehicle) programs, the only chance was to create an EV company, even though it was almost certain to fail ,'' he tweeted again. Mr. Musk was very candid when he tweeted: ``Nothing to do w govt. incentives or making money. Thought 90% prob of losing it all (almost did many times), but it was the only chance''. He appears convinced that the road ahead is long. ``Long way to go, but we've convinced most of the auto industry to start EV programs & gave them all our patents to help, so that's something,'' he tweeted yet again.
In hindsight, the decision of Tesla and Mr. Musk to make much of their patented technology available for others - even their competitors - appears a master strategy. When Mr. Musk tweeted “India commits to sell only electric cars by 2030. It is already the largest market for solar” a few days ago, it elicited instant respond from Anand Mahindra, executive chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra group. Mr. Mahindra threw a challenge at him by tweeting ``“Time you got out here Elon. You don’t want to leave that whole market to Mahindra do you? The more the merrier -- and greener.” It is a known secret that Tesla has been keen on entering Indian market. Not surprisingly, Mr. Musk's words are watched with more than cursory curiousness in the India
