End of the Beginning 336
incredible. I just show up at the board meetings to hear the
good news. It’s really great.”^351 The third company, Tesla
Motors, had as we now know a few ups and downs but is
today also on the right track. “It feels good in retrospect,
but it was extremely difficult and stressful at the time,”
Elon said. “It’s really this year [2013] I’ve felt really secured
about Tesla. Tesla is now ten years old, so the first nine
years were quite insecure.”^445
When Elon co-founded Tesla, he had a vision: “I would
like to be able to look back and say: Tesla accelerated
the transition from hydrocarbons to sustainable electric
transport by at least five to ten years.” This vision is now
a reality. “We’re still very little, and so while the big
automakers won’t be afraid of us, they should be afraid
of their competitors imitating us,” Elon said. “Our success
will make Toyota worry about what BMW will do, and GM
worry about Honda – will create a concern about being
late for the party. So our role is as a guiding light, helping
bring these cars to market five or ten years faster than they
would have otherwise – which could make an important
difference for saving the species.”^59
The Model S won the 2013 Motor Trend’sCar of the
Yearaward, which is a competition that began in 1949. “I
did a double-overhead high-five with George Blankenship,
who told me the news,” Elon said. “Hopefully, what it will
mean to the public is something very powerful. It should
symbolize the transition to electric. Motor Trend’s Car of
the Year award is the top award, obviously, in the car indus-
try and the most respected, so for Motor Trend to say that