Elon Musk, the maverick founder and CEO of the electric car maker Tesla Motors, has had his eyes on China for a while now. He called the China market a “wild card” in the company’s future before Tesla entered the Chinese market.

    TESLA Motors Inc. delivered its first eight electric sedans to customers in China on Tuesday and CEO Elon Musk said the company will build a nationwide network of charging stations and service centers as fast as it can.

    Tesla probably will invest several hundred million dollars in charging infrastructure in China, Musk told reporters. He said it will open several hundred service centers.

    “My instructions to the team are to spend money as fast as they can spend it without wasting it,” he said.

    The Palo Alto, California, company previously announced a US$121,000 sticker price for its Model S in China. It said import taxes and shipping account for the difference with its U.S. price tag of US$81,000.

    Customers received the first Model S sedans at a brief ceremony at Tesla’s office in a Beijing industrial park, also the site of its first Chinese charging station.

    “I’m incredibly appreciative of customers like you for taking a chance on a new product from a new company,” Musk told them. “Without customers like you, we would have no chance.”

    Tesla hopes to partner with China’s state-owned power monopolies, State Grid and Southern Grid, to operate charging stations, but no “serious discussions” have begun, Musk said. He said the car can be charged from a wall socket but the charging stations speed up the process.

    The stations will have solar panels, but Musk said that was meant to show vehicles can run without power generated from coal rather than to make them independent of utility companies. He said charging stations will be built both in cities and between them to facilitate long-distance travel.

    Musk said previously that Tesla might sell 5,000 cars this year in China but emphasized Tuesday that was “just a guess.”

    “I do think that’s probably a good number. Maybe it will be higher,” he said. “I don’t honestly know. Thus far, the response has been very positive.”

    Musk also previously said Tesla might try to manufacture cars in China in as little as three to four years. He said that might take longer but the company still hopes to produce vehicles where they are sold.

    Some Chinese customers expressed frustration after Tesla delayed deliveries by several months. Musk said the company wanted to avoid a repeat of trouble it had in Europe when it rolled out vehicles too quickly. He said deliveries were postponed while the company made sure all customers had access to charging facilities.

    “We intentionally held back on the debut to the Chinese market until we were confident of that,” he said. Referring to customers, he said, “I met with them earlier today and personally apologized.”

    The auto maker plans to open 10-12 stores in China this year, including its flagship store in Beijing. Tesla is hoping that China will account for 1/3 of its growth this year, with Model S sales coming at par with that of U.S .next year itself. As Musk said in an interview, “It’s not my firm prediction — it’s more like a low-fidelity guess.”

    A legendary man, Musk has drawn attention among his Chinese customers this week. He is actually transforming the way we live today.

    Musk founded his first company Zip2 at the age of 23 and sold it for US$300 million. But that was not enough to quench Musk’s thirst for startup success, so he opened a new online payment platform called PayPal which allows users to safely buy and sell online.

    Since then, Musk has made solar energy affordable for the public through his company SolarCity, and he has made the dream of an electric car possible and inexpensive with Tesla Motors. If that wasn’t enough, his SpaceX space travel adventures have proven to be a major success with a very promising future.

    Musk’s mind was set to focus on things that would most affect the future of humanity: the internet, clean energy and space.

    Musk taught himself computer programming at an early age, which allowed him to sell his first program by the age of 12.

    Leaving home at 11, Musk avoided serving the South African Military, and decided he wanted to live in the United States, believing, “it is where great things are possible.”

    Musk moved so that he could acquire his Ph.D. in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University in California, but ended up dropping out early to fullfil the dream of launching his first startup.

    Musk’s first taste at being an entrepreneur was through the creation of Zip2. A website that provided online content publishing software for various news organizations, which he started with his brother Kimbal Musk.

    Although Zip2 was only a small business. Compaq’s AltaVista bought Zip2 for over US$300 million, which made Musk and his brother multi-millionaires.

    Musk used US$10 million of his earnings from Zip2 to create an online financial service and email payment company in 1999 called X.com. Musk acquired Confinity Inc. which was initially a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. The merged company’s intentions were to keep the name X.com, but public surveys eventually showed that major consumers considered the name X.com vague and mistakenly pornographic, so they found PayPal more in line to its intentions.

    After an initial public offering, the company was bought out by eBay.

    Musk’s obsession about space was showcased in the game “Blastar,” which he had created when he was 12 years old, eventually exhibiting to the world that he could beat NASA in space technology. Later, he created the company SpaceX.

    In September 2009, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket became the first privately funded liquid-fuelled vehicle to put a satellite into Earth’s orbit. On May 25, 2012, Musk launched his next project “The SpaceX Dragon” vehicle successfully docked with the International Space Station, making history as the first commercial company to launch and dock a vehicle to the Station.

    Besides his space ambition, Musk is also fascinated with making cars.

    Musk’s idea for electric cars had stirred his mind long before Tesla Motors was present. Co-founding Tesla Motors and contributing to the company as head product designer, Musk managed to build the first viable electric sports car to help humanity break away from fossil fuels. The high-end electric car, the Tesla Roadster, was sure enough in high demand, which allowed Tesla Motors to produce an affordable model to launch to the public.

    Musk hit a snag in 2007 as Tesla Motors was falling short of available funds. The cost to build the cars at a high quality was over US$140,000, at which their intentions were to sell the cars for US$65,000. Hard decisions had to be made and Musk gave additional dedication to the company, forcing the company to replace Martin Eberhard as CEO with Musk.

    Tesla Motor’s come-back was outstanding and almost over schedule, by substituting a Daimler Smart Car’s gas engine with the Tesla drive-train and battery. The company gained US$70 million.

    Entrepreneurs and other company workers were sure Tesla Motors would fail because the company’s products were seen as an attack on mainstream vehicles.

    Musk released an offering to the public in 2010 for Tesla and was granted a place in the stock market; there hadn’t been an IPL for a car company since Henry Ford, and the company’s net-worth grew to US$2 billion. This courageous move put faith in other companies to finance and produce electric cars.(SD-Agencies)