Episode shownotes
Tesla boss Elon Musk has shown many times with his companies that he only knows one direction. He is considered one of the most innovative minds of our time - but also one of the most controversial. Musk describes himself as cold and considers empathy to be a weakness.
A research team led by Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden from Handelsblatt reported on abuses at Tesla in a series of articles back in May 2023. The starting point was the information and a total of 100 GB of internal data from a whistleblower. Former Tesla service technician Lukasz Krupski contacted the medium in November 2022 and subsequently provided an unprecedented collection of documents from all areas of the e-car company. The very first file was an Excel list containing the email addresses, telephone numbers and, above all, social security numbers and other sensitive data of more than 70,000 Tesla employees. Investigations and research by Handelsblatt ultimately revealed that all the data was genuine and authentic - and most of it was highly sensitive.
The material provides enough material for a book. And that's exactly what Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden have written. "The Tesla Files" was published on March 21, 2025 and we spoke to the authors about Tesla and Elon Musk in two podcast episodes.
In the second part, we talk about Tesla boss Elon Musk, his management style, his political influence and his form of marketing. We talk about his soft spot for Germany, his innovative strength and his willingness to take risks.
We discuss how he managed to become the richest man in the world, what drives him and what he sees in parties like the AfD.
The link to the book: The Tesla Files by Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden, published by C.H. Beck. 26.00 euros https://amzn.to/4inKtpQ