Elon Musk, obviously has something. Being the charismatic CEO of any of his companies would have earned him fame.

I hadn't followed the Tesla story apart from the headlines. I am much more up on SpaceX which I have avidly followed from the start.

Tesla seems to be more chaotic than SpaceX. Both piggyback on the government's purse. Tesla in fulfilling green initiatives and SpaceX in supplying the government with a launch vehicle to space. In both, the breakneck continuous innovation in software and hardware play a big part of their success.

This book was written before Twitter though Twitter does play a part in the story as it was thought that his constant PR via Twitter was the source of a lot of trouble and controversy relating to Tesla.

You can't doubt that a lot of the success of Tesla is down to Musk. But a lot of Tesla's success is powered by the Musk's hype machine and his army of fans, many who have put their money where their mouth is to pre fund the development of their cars. He reminds me very much of Steve Jobs who was also able to inspire fanatical support, was the master of product announcement and seamless U-Turns and spinning unfinished software into some kind of advantage with his "reality distortion field".

You probably won't be a Tesla fan after reading it.