Chapter 91: Rabbit Holes: Twitter, December 2022

Musk experiences a severe emotional crisis during mid-2017 to late 2018, oscillating between depression and manic energy following his breakup with Amber Heard and family trauma. He channels this pain into an obsessive push to ramp Tesla's Model 3 production to five thousand cars per week, moving to the Nevada Gigafactory to personally oversee the battery line's transformation, replacing automation with manual labor where needed and aggressively removing obstacles—both technical and personnel—to meet the survival-critical production target.

The chapter opens with Musk's acknowledgment that he experienced severe emotional turbulence in 2017–2018, describing oscillations between depression, stupor, and manic energy. He was found lying catatonic on a conference room floor before an earnings call, requiring intervention from Tesla president Jon McNeill to function. When asked on Twitter if he was bipolar, Musk confirmed he suspected it but had no medical diagnosis, attributing his condition to the intensity of his commitments rather than seeking treatment. In July 2017, during the Model 3 production launch event at Fremont, Musk appeared visibly depressed despite his attempts to project enthusiasm, warning the crowd about "production hell" ahead. Determined to survive, Musk focused obsessively on hitting five thousand Model 3s per week—a figure he calculated was essential for Tesla's cash flow. He moved to the Nevada Gigafactory, sleeping on factory floors for four to five hours nightly while assembling a team including Mark Juncosa, Steve Davis, James Musk, and Omead Afshar. They systematically troubleshot the battery production line, discovering unnecessary requirements (fiberglass strips that made no audible difference, plastic caps with no functional purpose) and eliminating them. Musk's intensity extended to harsh personnel decisions: he fired young engineer Gage Coffin over a misalignment issue, triggering cascading terminations up the management chain. His approach to automation reversed conventional factory design—after initially over-automating, he pivoted to "de-automation," removing robots and replacing them with human workers where the machinery caused bottlenecks. By April 2018, the Nevada line was functioning better, and Musk shifted focus toward Fremont, sometimes sleeping on the factory roof.