Inside the outrageous come-from-behind story of Elon Musk and Tesla's bid to build the perfect
car Elon Musk is among the most controversial titans of Silicon Valley. To some he's a genius
and a visionary to others he's a mercurial con artist. Billions of dollars have been gained
and lost on his tweets his personal exploits are the stuff of tabloids. But for all his
outrageous talk of mind-uploading and space travel his most audacious vision is the one
closest to the ground: the electric car. When Tesla was founded in the mid 2000s electric cars
were novelties trotted out and thrown on the scrapheap by carmakers for more than a century.
But where most onlookers saw only failure a small band of Silicon Valley engineers and
entrepreneurs saw potential. The gas-guzzling car was in need of disruption the world was
ready for Car 2.0. So they pitted themselves against the biggest fiercest business rivals in
the world setting out to make a car that was faster sexier smoother cleaner than the
competition. But as the saying goes to make a small fortune in cars start with a big fortune.
Tesla would undergo a truly hellish fifteen years beset by rivals pressured by creditors
hobbled by whistleblowers buoyed by its loyal supporters. Musk himself would often prove
Tesla's worst enemy--his antics more than once took the company he had funded largely with his
own money to the brink of collapse. Was he an underdog an antihero a conman or some
combination of the three? Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter Tim Higgins had a
front-row seat for the drama: the pileups wrestling for control meltdowns and the
unlikeliest outcome of all: success. A story of power recklessness struggle and triumph
Power Play is an exhilarating look at how a team of eccentrics and innovators beat the
odds--and changed the future--