Elon Musk sleeps at Tesla's factory 'quite frequently' to hit lofty production targets
Elon Musk will not rest until Tesla hits its goals. Literally.
Tesla's CEO revealed on Wednesday night that he has been sleeping in a conference room by the manufacturing area to ensure that the company hits its lofty production targets.
"I'm personally spending an enormous amount of time on the production line," Musk said on a conference call with analysts after Tesla released its first quarter earnings results.
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"My desk is at the end of the production line. I have a sleeping bag in a conference room adjacent to the production line, which I use quite frequently."
On the earnings call, Tesla affirmed its plans to vastly accelerate its production abilities and turn out 500,000 cars a year by 2018. Musk is essentially holding up his sleeping bag to all the doubters.
If this routine sounds extreme, remember that Elon Musk's superpower has always been sleep -- or really the ability to go without it.
At Zip2, Musk's first startup, he was known for sleeping on a beanbag next to his desk, according to Ashlee Vance's biography of the ambitious executive.
"Almost every day, I'd come in at seven thirty or eight A.M., and he'd be asleep right there on that bag," one former colleague from that time told Vance. "Maybe he showered on the weekends, I don't know."
Musk may now be a billionaire many times over with several hugely influential companies under his belt, but some things never change.
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Seth Fiegerman was a Senior Business Reporter at Mashable, where he covered startups, marketing and the latest consumer tech trends. He joined Mashable in August 2012 and is based in New York.Before joining Mashable, Seth covered all things Apple as a reporter at Silicon Alley Insider, the tech section of Business Insider. He has also worked as a staff writer at TheStreet.com and as an editor at Playboy Magazine. His work has appeared in Newsweek, NPR, Kiplinger, Portfolio and The Huffington Post.Seth received his Bachelor of Arts from New York University, where he majored in journalism and philosophy.In his spare time, Seth enjoys bike riding around Brooklyn and writing really bad folk songs.
