December 6th, 2020 by Johnna Crider
Frank Thelen, who attended the Axel Springer Award ceremony honoring Elon Musk last week, shared his thoughts about Elon Musk in a heartfelt LinkedIn post.
“He’s incredibly authentic, real, human, and kind. He is not ‘selling’ Tesla, SpaceX, or any other company or product he is involved with. He has no standard statements/answers and truly thinks about each individual question. His answers are spontaneous, sometimes a bit long and unstructured, but very insightful and authentic. He said that his biggest mistake was ‘not spending at least 15 minutes with friends on the beach while working tirelessly on the falcon rocket.’
“What also astonished me was that he chose to sleep in the Berlin Factory in a meeting room, because he wanted to be close to the production and team. After a busy day, I need my personal space and privacy to recharge.”
“My personal highlight though was to see and feel that he truly loves life. He wants to create new experiences, make Science-fiction a reality, but he got equally excited about French cheese and talked about enjoying and cherishing the moment. After spending a couple of hours with him, my respect & gratitude grew even more. He is the real deal 🚀.”
Elon Musk received the Axel Springer Award last week and the ceremony creatively simulated what one may experience as the journey toward Mars. The Ernst Cramer conference room inside the Axel Springer House became a Mars spacecraft. The captain of the ship and presenter of the evening, Barbara Schöneberger, wore a SpaceX suit.
In an interview with Mathias Döpfner, Axel Springer’s CEO, Elon shared a timeframe of when he thinks he can send people to Mars. “In six years, maybe in four,” he said. He was also asked about when he would like to go into orbit for the first time. “Next year? I want a city on Mars where people can live, a Plan B. Everyone wants a future that is inspiring. Every child is fascinated by space. When I wake up, I don’t want to just think about problems. I want to think about the future. It sounds cool: born on earth, died on Mars.”
Elon also shared why he chose Germany as a site for a Tesla Gigafactory and spoke about his fears. Elon said that he was a big fan of Germany, had a lot of friends there, and that he liked Berlin. “It is a good location for singles as well as families. Berlin is not that poor, but definitely sexy.”
His big fear is something that he speaks of often — artificial intelligence. “Artificial intelligence has to be regulated. Machines already dominate us today. Think of us and the behavior with smartphones. Digital superintelligence is powerful. It has the potential to be more dangerous than an atomic bomb.”
Elon’s Dedication Of His Award
When receiving his award, Elon dedicated it to all of his employees in all of his companies. “I really appreciate this award. From here I would like to thank all of my employees in all companies. I dedicate the award to all of you!” This isn’t the first time Elon has given credit to his employees. He’s often taking to Twitter to thank his employees and his teams, whether they are SpaceX engineers, Tesla employees, or other notable groups of people he has worked with.
Thanks for recognizing the great work of the Tesla team! 45,000 people now.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2018
Good summary of Tesla progress in 2018 by @cleantechnica (due to Tesla team, not me though) https://t.co/vZgYts9auG via @cleantechnica
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2018
You’re most welcome. Very proud of Tesla team. Super tough 15 years!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2019
Tesla Texas team is making great progress! Giga Texas factory will be an asskicker.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2020
You’re most welcome. Credit to the Tesla team. Will do our best to help in any way.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2020
Congratulations Tesla team on making our 1,000,000th car!! pic.twitter.com/5M99a9LLQi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2020
Many talented engineers are working on FSD at Tesla. What matters is solving vision at high frame rate in our compute space with low latency between camera frame & actuation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2020
Definitely
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2020
♠️♠️ Tesla Autopilot/AI team ♠️♠️
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 8, 2020
Congratulations SpaceX Team! https://t.co/nO1Z98a94f
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 24, 2020
Related: Tesla Autopilot Innovation Comes From Team Of ~300 Jedi Engineers — Interview With Elon Musk
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About the Author
Johnna Crider is a Baton Rouge artist, gem, and mineral collector, member of the International Gem Society, and a Tesla shareholder who believes in Elon Musk and Tesla. Elon Musk advised her in 2018 to “Believe in Good.”
Tesla is one of many good things to believe in. You can find Johnna on Twitter