Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century

As a Wall Street Journal technology and automotive reporter, Higgins has received insight into the interesting rise of Tesla. Here, he provides a detailed narrative about Tesla’s eccentric team of Silicon Valley innovators, whose goal was to beat overwhelming odds and change the future of the car. Tesla was founded in the early 2000s when, Higgins notes, electric cars were still novelties and other automakers had limited success with prior versions of them. The car business has notorious barriers to entry, this book explains, making it a "brutal business—and an expensive one." Tesla struggled in the beginning, including with a rapidly changing executive leadership, a troubled economy, layoffs, and many unexpected costs. But, Higgins writes, Tesla’s eventual CEO Elon Musk and his team kept a focus on "revolutionizing" cars and the automotive business in multiple areas. This book makes the case that Tesla started with an unlikely idea and became the world’s most valuable automaker because of more factors than just Musk’s leadership. Higgins used hundreds of interviews and multiple primary sources to weave together an intricate story of one company's mission to become the dominant car maker of the present and the distant future.