According to a November Quartz article, Tesla is now worth more than GM, Ford, Toyota and almost every other car company combined. Hard to believe, right? Especially when you consider that back in 2013, Tesla was so broke that Elon Musk came close to selling it to Google. The deal? A tidy $6 billion up-front plus $5 billion for factory expansions. But in true Musk fashion, he pulled the plug at the last second – not out of arrogance but because Tesla’s fortunes reversed practically overnight. According to Ashlee Vance’s biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Tesla faced a critical cash shortage in early 2013, compounded by customer complaints about Model S design flaws and internal mismanagement, with some executives concealing the severity of the crisis from Elon Musk. When Musk discovered the situation, he fired senior staff, promoted junior employees he believed had more drive, and issued an urgent companywide mandate to prioritize delivering car...