PRESIDENT ERDOĞAN MEETS TESLA FOUNDER MUSK
Right after a week when a protocol on the Joint Venture for Turkey’s Automobile was signed at a ceremony at the Presidential Complex with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in attendance, the president’s office welcomed a surprising guest whose left his mark on the global automobile history. The guest was none else, but the founder of Tesla, Elon Musk.
The surprising meeting came after Turkey announced a joint venture consisting of five companies, Anadolu Group, Karsan Otomotiv, Turkcell, Vestel and BMC, to manufacture Turkey’s first indigenous cars which could run on electricity as the discussions imply. Minister of Transportation, Maritime Affairs and Communication Ahmet Arslan and Minister of Science, Industry and Technology were also present at the Erdoğan-Musk meeting.
Elon Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers. He made headlines in May 2012, when Space-X launched a rocket that would send the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station. He bolstered his portfolio with the purchase of Solar-City in 2016. A company dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars, Tesla was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers who wanted to prove that electric vehicles can be better, quicker and more fun to drive than gasoline cars. Five years after its formation, the company in 2008 unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of ac- celerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithium ion battery. Additional successes include the Model S, the company's first electric sedan. Capable of covering 265 miles between charges, the Model S was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine. In 2015, Tesla expanded its product line with Model X, the safest, quickest and most capable sports utility vehicle in history that holds five-star safety ratings across every category from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And to complete CEO Musk’s “Secret Master Plan,” in 2016, Tesla announced Model 3, a low-priced, high-volume electric vehicle that began production in 2017.
In April 2017, it was announced that Tesla had surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker. The news was an obvious boon to Tesla, which was looking to ramp up production and release its Model 3 sedan later that year. Today, the company builds not only allelectric vehicles but also infinitely scalable clean energy generation and storage products. Musk has also been innovative in transportation with his hyperloop project, which is a mode of passenger and freight transportation. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable energy, the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure tubes at speeds reaching higher than 700 mph.