Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2021
Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has been picked by Time magazine as its Person of the Year for 2021. The recognition for Musk comes in a year that saw his electric car manufacturing company become the most valuable carmaker in the world as his own net worth surged making him the richest person in the world.
Making the announcement today, Edward Felsenthal, Editor-in-Chief of Time magazine, said, "For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year."
Elon Musk, who is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX and leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company, has now joined the elite company which also includes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Last year, US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were named as the Person of the Year by Time magazine.
"Even Elon Musk's spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic," Felsenthal added.
Tesla has seen a bull-run in the auto industry this year. The US-based EV-maker saw its market value soar to more than $1 trillion, making it more valuable than Ford Motor and General Motors combined.
Elon Musk soon reacted to the recognition he received from the Time magazine. During an interview, which was released with the Person of the Year announcement, Musk told Time, "Our intent with Tesla was always that we would serve as an example to the car industry, and hope that they also make electric cars so that we can accelerate the transition to sustainable energy."
Tesla, which is the world's largest manufacturer of electric cars, has its core market in the US, China and Europe. It also plans to enter India soon with its . models. Tesla's meteoric rise has been, to a certain extent, instrumental for other legacy carmakers to shift focus and switch to electric car production.
