Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk: The Canadian Years
I had a chance to chat with Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk late last month about Tesla’s plans in Canada and to probe him on his own early days in Canada after arriving as a 17-year-old from South Africa. Musk, before making his way to Silicon Valley and striking it big, spent three years travelling across the Canadian west visiting relatives (his mom was born in Regina, Saskatchewan) and attending undergraduate studies in Kingston, Ontario, at Queen’s University. It was at Queen’s where he hitched up with his wife-to-be before heading off on a scholarship to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Of course, from there he went to California and founded Zip2, PayPal, Space X and finally Tesla Motors. The electric car maker recently opened a sales office in Toronto and Musk says Canada is an important market for the company, partly because the majority of the electricity comes from emission-free sources, but also because he believes electric cars appeal to Canadian sensibilities. If you’re interested in learning more, read my just published Toronto Star feature on Musk and Tesla Motors.
Tags: Elon Musk, Tesla Motors
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
