Susana Gonzalez/Bloomberg
Elon Musk discusses his vision for traveling to Mars at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September 2016.
Elon Musk, much like President Donald Trump, is unusually comfortable sharing views and personal information on Twitter. The guiding force behind Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink, a company creating devices to connect human brains and computers, was particularly candid on Sunday when revealing that he may suffer from bipolar disorder.
The billionaire tech industrialist seemed a bit downbeat in a media briefing ahead of the handover of the first 30 Model 3 electric sedans on Friday afternoon (which all went to Tesla employees). He said the challenge ahead for Tesla to build the car in high volume would be “manufacturing hell.” Two days later, in an exchange via Twitter, he described experiencing “great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress,” even as the company achieved a milestone goal.
When another questioner asked Musk via Twitter if he was bipolar, he responded “yeah.”
“Maybe not medically, tho. Dunno,” he wrote. “Bad feelings correlate to bad events, so maybe real problem is getting carried away in what I sign up for.”
The timing of these comments coincides with Tesla achieving a goal Musk laid out in his original “Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan” back in August 2006: delivering a more affordable, highly desirable electric car.
That blog post came when Tesla was planning to release its first battery-powered car, the Roadster, which ultimately retailed for more than $90,000. Curiously, the new Model 3 is priced exactly at the level Musk had initially hoped to achieve with the Model S, which sells for more than $100,000 with premium options. The Model X crossover, Tesla's third vehicle, can cost even more.
“Without giving away too much, I can say that the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster and the third model will be even more affordable,” Musk wrote back in the carmaker's formative days.
Although the Model 3 potentially is to have a $35,000 base price, for now Tesla is focusing on production of Long Range battery versions of the car priced from $44,000. Add premium interior, any color other than black, larger wheels, Enhanced Autopilot and other options, and the price quickly jumps to the high $50,000-range.
The new car drives quite well, based on a very brief test by Forbes, and Tesla may have a hit on its hands – if it can make enough of them, and quickly enough to satisfy a remarkable amount of demand.
Tesla has won many fans – including a great many tech writers – who may not be familiar with how extremely difficult it is to build a car at all, let alone produce them in multiple hundreds of thousands a year. Older, bigger automakers have a century of experience to lean on when the add all-new vehicles to their lineups.
After a rough start and Tesla's near-death experience in 2008, Musk knows exactly how tough it is. And the company has beaten the odds many times as it continued to grow and add new models and services, due in no small part to his drive and an unwavering focus.
His publicly voiced concerns about the company’s latest production challenges suggest that filling more than 500,000 reservations for the car over the next year or so will be a tall order.
He's set a goal on reaching a high-volume production rate of 20,000 vehicles by December. No doubt he’ll have more to share on the subject on Wednesday, when Tesla is to release quarterly results and update analysts and investors on the outlook for the second half of 2017.
Alan Ohnsman covers the intersection of technology, autos and mobility. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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