In 2008, Tesla was on the brink of a financial collapse and CEO Elon Musk had just surveyed an ‘army’ of rejected cars. Frustrated by the revelation, an angry Musk said “I want names named. so if someone’s always on the hide seat and is always the root cause for problems, they will not be a part of this organisation for long term. It’s not okay to be a part of this company”. “If somebody can’t get happy, get divorced,” he continued, adding “Speak(ing) from personal experience”. Notably, Musk himself was going through his divorce with his first wife, Justine Musk.

Elon Musk’s three divorces with two wives

Elon Musk has been married and divorced twice, involving two marriages and three divorce proceedings. He married Justine Musk in 2000. The couple had six children together, including one child who died in infancy. The duo divorced in 2008, the same year Musk had his companies Tesla and SpaceX close to bankruptcy.In 2010, Musk married British actress Talulah Riley. The couple divorced in 2012 but remarried in 2013. Their second marriage ended in divorce in 2016.Musk has not married since. He was later in a long-term relationship with musician Grimes, with whom he has children, but the two were never married.

When Elon Musk said Tesla is ‘screwed’

The above comments were made during a tense internal meeting where Colette Niazmand, Tesla marketing executive, told Musk that people found faults with the Tesla Roadster and the company realised that the car “had substandard parts”. Video from the meeting has surfaced online recently. In the video, one of Tesla executives can be seen telling Musk “What’s going on here is the team has been doing a little bit of rework today. I got a message last week that if Roadster can’t sustain the company by March, then…That’s it. And that scares me”. Musk, who became angry by that point, said, “We need to get the company to cash flow positive in six to nine months. Well, we’re screwed. It’s really pedal to metal here. Each month it passes literally costs us tens of millions of dollars”.