Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group - Power play | tim higgins

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Elon Musk is among the most controversial titans of Silicon Valley.

To some he's a genius and a visionary; to others he's a mercurial huckster.

Billions of dollars have been gained and lost on his tweets; his personal exploits are the stuff of tabloids.

But for all his outrageous talk of mind-uploading and space travel, his most audacious vision is the one closest to the ground: the electric car.

When Tesla was founded in the 2000s, electric cars were novelties, trotted out and thrown on the scrap heap by carmakers for more than a century.

But where most onlookers saw only failure, a small band of Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs saw opportunity.

The gas-guzzling car was in need of disruption.

They pitted themselves against the biggest, fiercest business rivals in the world, setting out to make a car that was quicker, sexier, smoother, cleaner than the competition.

But as the saying goes, to make a small fortune in cars, start with a big fortune.

Tesla would undergo a hellish fifteen years, beset by rivals, pressured by investors, hobbled by whistleblowers, buoyed by its loyal supporters.

Musk himself would often prove Tesla's worst enemy-his antics more than once took the company he had initially funded largely with his own money to the brink of collapse.

Was he an underdog, an antihero, a conman, or some combination of the three?Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter Tim Higgins had a front-row seat for the drama: the pileups, wrestling for control, meltdowns, and the unlikeliest outcome of all, success.

A story of power, recklessness, struggle, and triumph, Power Play is an exhilarating look at how a team of eccentrics and innovators beat the odds-and changed the future.