INTERVIEW: He's a multimillionaire with his own space programme - but Elon Musk just wants to help

DO NOT BE jealous of Elon Musk. Sure, this tall, lean 37-year-old may have made two multimillion dollar dot-com fortunes by the time he was 31, selling an online publishing company to Compaq in 1998 for $307 million, before selling PayPal to Ebay in 2002 in a $1.5 billion deal. Yes, this South African-born physicist by training and entrepreneur by instinct may have reinvested his fortunes in glamorous and admirable new ventures, with his own electric-car, solar-energy and space-exploration firms. And yes, he may have an intercontinental private jet and a 23-year-old English actress fiancee in the form of Talulah Riley. But you shouldn't be jealous, and for three good reasons.

The first is that Musk is doing you a favour. He founded Tesla, which makes electric sports cars. and Solar City, which converts homes to solar power, primarily to help break our dependence on fossil fuels. Should our pillaging of the environment prove terminal, Musk plans, in all seriousness, to establish a human colony on Mars; he founded SpaceX to develop the low-cost, reusable rockets he believes we need to make interplanetary travel affordable. He's like a benign Bond villain; he simply thinks on a bigger scale than mere mortals. And being Elon Musk, he can't help but make money - SpaceX has already signed lucrative contracts to provide launches for Nasa and the United States Air Force.

Secondly, you don't cash out of the dot-com bubble twice and start three new businesses in wildly disparate fields without incandescent intelligence and the ability to fit more into a day than a time-lord could manage. If all this had happened to Musk by dumb luck we could justify jealousy. In addition to being chief executive of both Tesla and SpaceX, he is product architect at one and chief technology officer at the other, and actively engaged in the engineering that looks likely to revolutionise both businesses.

And lastly, doing all this isn't easy. Musk got his Falcon 1 rocket into earth orbit - something only nine countries and the European Space Agency have achieved - in September last year, at the fourth attempt. And trying to establish America's first successful new carmaker since Jeep in 1941, in the midst of a deep recession and using a radical new form of propulsion, isn't rocket science; it's much harder than that. "I'm working about a hundred hours a week," he says at the opening of Tesla's new dealership in London. "People often ask: 'Are you having fun?' I say I should be, but it wouldn't be true to say that I am. But I'm not asking people to feel sorry for me."

Musk's difficulties at SpaceX have been "almost purely engineering". Tesla's troubles are more varied. The automotive establishment had long viewed electric cars as a dead end because they couldn't drive as far as conventional cars, or be made as cheaply. Tesla's stroke of genius was to take a Silicon Valley approach to the price problem. Musk and his co-founders realised electric cars didn't have to compete with Ford Fiestas; at least, not at first. Instead, its first electric car would be like other new, high-end electronic gadgets; desirable, expensive and rare. Like every other new gadget, Tesla plans to make electric cars less expensive with time and volume, with those first customers subsidising their development. If it can make them cheap enough for us all to afford, we'll have cheaper motoring and the world will be a cleaner place.

So Tesla's first car, the Roadster, went on sale last year at an eye-watering $101,000, but with a 0-100km/h time of 3.9 seconds it will, in Musk's words, "kick the ass of any Ferrari, except the Enzo. Why would you want to buy a slower car that kills the environment?"

Matt Damon and George Clooney were among the first customers. But its birth was traumatic, with engineering problems that put its launch back by 18 months, massive cost over-runs and lawsuits against Tesla's former chief designer and from one of the co-founders. Late last year, Musk admitted Tesla was down to its last $9 million; he had to lay off 80 staff, shut its Detroit engineering centre and stump up half of two further $40 million financing rounds, bringing his total investment to around $74 million. "It's been quite the soap opera. It certainly got very hairy there for a while. I was faced with a choice of either letting Tesla die, or doubling down. So of course I doubled down."

But as usual, it seems Musk's instincts have been proven right. In May, Tesla announced Daimler had taken a 9 per cent stake for $50 million. Tesla will provide the technology for a trial fleet of 1,000 electric Smarts, with affordable, production electric Smarts and Mercedes A-classes using Tesla powertrains following within three years.

Last month, Tesla announced it had got the Roadster's costs under control and that it would start making a profit. And on June 23rd, the US department of energy announced Tesla would be one of the first three companies to receive a slice of the US federal government's $25 billion fund to encourage green cars. It is only open to companies the US government considers 'financially viable'; GM and Chrysler need not apply while still in bankruptcy.

Tesla will use its $465 million easy-terms loan to build its next car, and the next stage in Musk's plan to make electric cars affordable. Unveiled in March, the Tesla Model S is a seven-seat electric hatchback capable of 100km/h in 5.5 seconds, with a range of up to 300 miles and a charging time as low as 45 minutes. Slightly larger than a BMW 5-series estate, when it goes into production in 2011 it will cost US buyers around $50,000 after a federal tax credit. Without a tax break, European buyers can expect to pay closer to €60,000 before local taxes. Tesla plans to build 20,000 cars a year at a new factory in Los Angeles, alongside a new plant that will supply electric powertrains for Tesla, Daimler and anyone else who comes knocking.

So has Musk saved the electric car? "I feel like I'm emerging from a long, dark, nasty period," he says in his odd, unplaceable accent. He looks tired - maybe it's the jet lag. "We've really turned the corner. I don't want to get over-confident, but things are looking pretty good."

So with Tesla seemingly saved, Musk can get on with his mission of making mass-market electric cars both available and affordable, and he insists that having Daimler as an investor won't stop him working with other carmakers. "With all the companies I've been involved in, no investor has ever lost money. But we're not going to hold back this technology for ourselves and not give it to anyone else. Daimler knows this, and all the other investors know it too. I have non-economic motives as well as economic motives and if they don't like that, they shouldn't invest.

"It's worth knowing that I'm a volunteer. The success of these companies won't change my lifestyle one iota. I already have everything I could want from a personal consumption standpoint. It's just that these are the problems I think are important and need to be solved, and I'm trying to help solve them.

"I'm not trying to paint myself as some sort of saint, I'm just making the point that the success of the company doesn't change my life. It's not like there's a bigger jet I want to get, and I don't really like yachts. If I was purely trying to optimise my net worth I'd be in the oil business."

Musk hints heavily that the next Tesla, after the Model S, could be an electric pick-up truck aimed at businesses crippled by high fuel prices. "It's conceivable that if things go really well we could have another variant in 2012, but 2013 more likely. We gotta learn to walk and chew gum at the same time."

But there are plenty who question whether he has enough capital to grow so fast, particularly when the component cost of electric cars remains so high and Musk admits margins will be kept tight to make them affordable. But despite the fact Tesla has delivered only 500 cars, Daimler's investment already values the company at $550 million - nearly half what General Motors was worth just before it went into bankruptcy, despite producing over eight million cars a year. "It will definitely be worth north of $1 billion. We're at half a billion dollars now. . . Normal market improvements will take us to $1 billion, and if we've done well executing the Model S and our powertrains, maybe even up to $2 billion."

Musk's share of Tesla is currently "around a third"; even if it slips to a quarter with further funding rounds he could end up with a stake worth half a billion for his $74 million investment. But don't be jealous. If Tesla goes public at that value it will be because it has provided us with affordable, emission-free electric cars that cost pennies to run. And Elon Musk will be hard at work on his next project, designing the trappings of your first Martian home.