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Recently, Tesla has raised prices again;
Recently, Musk has once again changed his girlfriend;
Recently, Musk has become a father again;
Recently, Musk has been attacking a certain country’s big boss on Twitter…

However, in the past two years, the earth’s immunity to news about Tesla and Musk has increased. The “stimulation level” of the above four news can only be considered as three-star level at most.

Indeed, a series of news such as continuous price increases, changing girlfriends, becoming a father, and attacking others are typical scumbag behavior when performed by an ordinary man. However, when this scumbag’s most important identity prefix is “the world’s richest man with a net worth of trillions,” all these behaviors become routine.

Don’t worry! Just a few days ago, Grimes, the ex-girlfriend who recently gave birth to a son and a daughter for Musk (the daughter, named Exa Dark Sideræl, was born through surrogacy and is referred to as “Y”), quickly added a fifth news. The stimulation level of this news is at least four and a half stars.

The main content of the news is that Grimes, the little fairy, recently did an interview with Vanity Fair. The published interview content instantly made the “Mars governor” the “most abnormal” billionaire in the entire universe.

According to Grimes, Musk’s quality of life is completely disproportionate to that of a “billionaire” and more like that of a “billionaire debtor.” For example, when they were still together, the house they lived in cost only 40-50,000 US dollars, equivalent to less than 300,000 Chinese yuan… This price cannot even buy a bathroom in Shanghai. Moreover, this house was rented and had no privacy or security: “There was no security, and the neighbors seemed to take pictures of us from time to time. There was no protection at all.”

However, according to Grimes, the last straw that really broke the camel’s back of their relationship was Musk’s almost zero quality of life at present.

She revealed that she had once eaten peanut butter with him for eight consecutive days.

It is recalled that in 2019, Musk took her to check in at the landmark hot pot restaurant “Qi Men Shuan Rou Fang” in Beijing, as well as the Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant NOBU on Malibu Beach in Los Angeles. Especially the latter time, they were even driving the newly released Tesla pickup truck Cybertruck. It was a glorious moment, which made Edward Norton, who was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor every year, envious to death.In Elon Musk’s biography “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future”, author Ashlee Vance recounted an anecdote from his first interview with Musk. They had arranged to meet at a restaurant and Musk, being serious about his diet, requested the server to recommend a low-carbohydrate dish. After comparing options, he chose a dish of stir-fried lobster in squid ink sauce, which was even healthier than his parents’ diet.

Furthermore, during their time living together in Los Angeles, Grimes noticed a hole in the mattress. When she complained to Musk, he proposed an apparently impeccable solution: she could bring a good mattress from her own home to sleep on.

This encounter would make most women go insane, and instantly trigger suspicions of whether those around them had become rotten and turn on their “Sherlock mode”. However, Grimes did not do so. She acknowledged that their relationship grew apart due to Musk’s lack of attention to their living conditions, but she insisted that Musk’s lifestyle did not involve any problematic behavior.

“He spent all his money on ‘development,’ especially the Mars colonization project, which is not only extremely difficult but also unable to generate any revenue. Nevertheless, this is for the benefit of humanity,” Grimes admitted. One reason why she used to love Musk so much was that he didn’t fuss over small details and demonstrated genius. “Of course, sometimes you hope he behaves more normally. But the reason he is what he is today is precisely because of his divergence from so-called correct behavior.”

To many people, Musk’s unconventional behavior as a billionaire with debt is simply because his vision is too extensive. In particular, in the housing arena, Musk has “flaunted his modest means” on more than one occasion. Two years ago, he sold four luxury homes in Los Angeles (one of which was bought by Ding Lei), becoming a “LA drifter” overnight. At that time, Grimes fully supported his decision.

After that, the couple moved into the small bungalow mentioned earlier, which is even more “affordable” than an “affordable housing” unit. It is reported that the house is rented from SpaceX. However, judging from the interior pictures provided by the housing supplier, it’s not bad at all. Although it is less than 40 square meters, it has a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and a bathroom.

Musk had luxurious mansions but chose to rent a one-room apartment and sleep on a broken mattress. This upgrade to his workaholic personality was probably for the sake of immigrating to Mars and never living on Earth again. Meanwhile, Grimes has gone from a sweet little girl to becoming a powerful partner of a visionary man.

In fact, comparing several important founders in the domestic and foreign auto industry in recent years, we can see that many of them have struggled through similar hardships – just not as high-profile as Musk. For example, we are familiar with Li Bin.Compared to the executives of traditional car companies, Li Bin seems to pay no attention to his quality of life – he wears sweatshirts, carries backpacks, eats box meals and noodles, rents an apartment, and takes the subway… except for his hairline and marriage, Li Bin’s lifestyle is basically the same as that of Zhang Jiangnan.

No wonder a few years ago, the NIO car owners’ group most liked the super welfare was Li Bin’s “food photos”. For example, the two “box lunch photos” taken after the 2017 and 2018 NIO DAY made countless NIO owners and fans tearful.

Of course, the most tear-jerking photos for car owners are still the two sets of “private photos” in 2019. One set was taken on the evening of May 28, in a Henan beef noodle restaurant, where Li Bin took a selfie and a photo with the restaurant owner. The other one was a sneak photo taken on the eve of the third NIO DAY on December 4. In the photo, Li Bin was wearing a NIO sweatshirt and carrying a NIO backpack, sitting on the Beijing subway line 10 with a sad face.

In 2019, NIO was at a make-it-or-break-it moment, which was the most difficult period for Li Bin. The tragic encounter of “NIO CEO eating noodles and taking the subway” made countless people believe that “NIO is going down”. But the stories behind these two photos are full of coincidences.

The typical selfie style of a steel straight man in the first set of photos once made many NIO fans shed tears, because on that day, NIO successfully raised 10 billion yuan. This bowl of beef noodles was Li Bin’s reward to himself.

After the second photo was posted, NIO’s stock started to rise sharply, with an increase of over 7% at one point, and then the stock price fell back. The next day, it opened at 2.35 US dollars per share, and the closing price was 2.44 US dollars per share, up 7.49% compared to the lowest price of 1.19 US dollars per share. This became a new starting point for NIO’s stock price.

However, compared to Grimes, NIO’s boss lady Wang Yizhi is obviously more worldly. She can ring the bell and host the event together, eat box meals and do financing together, and buy a few bags on the side.

Especially the last one, Wang Yizhi’s Weibo of buying bags had been repeatedly “whipped” by many people, but now it is worth pondering – after eating box lunches and renting apartments together for several years, can’t we reward ourselves with some of the money we saved?

Moreover, the limited edition bags have long been the best wealth management products in the past two years, much better than funds in terms of value preservation.

However, if we talk about who cares less about their own life, it has to be Li Xiang.Actually, when he was working at PaoPao.com, he was nicknamed the “instant noodle killer” and he still eats them in that same way. And during his time at Autohome, Li Xiang’s reputation for being “stingy” was well known. Rumor has it that for a long period of time, because he didn’t receive any investment, Li Xiang had to monitor the cash flow and expenses every day, trying to pinch every penny. This led him to develop the habit of being “stingy”.

It is said that Xue Manzi, a master of investment, a life mentor, and a member of Mustard Seed Garden, once held a one-on-one counseling session specifically for Li Xiang’s habit of being stingy, and put forward the classic theory of “spending money cannot make one poor, only investment failures can”. This made Li Xiang slightly less stingy about money. Nevertheless, the habit had already been ingrained, and he couldn’t change it — especially when it comes to food. He always remains at the basic level of “as long as he’s full”.

In the early days when Li Xiang was starting his company, he invited Zhu Tianyu, the managing partner of Blue Elephant Capital, to eat several times. Each time, they went to Li Xiang’s cafeteria and he gave him a plate of rice with cucumber and fried sauce noodles.

It’s no wonder that in July 2020, Li Xiang felt heartbroken when BYTON suddenly collapsed. He wrote “300 people eating 50 million worth of snacks, a thousand business cards, how did BYTON burn 8.4 billion?” He couldn’t understand how such a powerful competitor could collapse because of “snacks”, and they were only one step away from success. He also admitted that he had been stingy in the past few years: “I always had to buy the cheapest discounted economy class ticket for business trips, and two people of the same sex had to stay together in an economy hotel…”

Because he dares to be ruthless with himself, investors, and his own people in every way, Li Xiang has become “the first-class cost killer of the new forces in the car industry”.

Of course, there is also He XPeng, who has owned mansions, yachts, and Moutai in the past two years.

It is said that he has always had a special hobby of inviting old friends to reminisce about their hardships by going to street-side stalls in Guangzhou and eating fast food for 7 yuan per serving. It’s like the domineering fathers in early Mary Sue literature who always loved to recall their first love, and pour their hearts out about how poor they were.

Of course, there is a more critical reason — in Guangzhou, you really can buy fast food for 7 yuan that includes two meats and two vegetables; it’s filling and nutritious, much better than Li Xiang’s instant noodles, or Elon Musk’s or peanut butter.

Looking back at the car manufacturers that emerged after China’s reform and opening up, it seems that they all experienced years of worrying about their living conditions.

In 2009, Economic Information Daily wrote two articles, “Who Makes the ‘Stock God’ So Fond” and “Buffett vs. Li Shufu: Who is Stingier?”, which detailed the “special saving skills” exhibited by Wang Chuanfu and Li Shufu when they first entered the car industry.

The former never flies first class and the family lived in BYD dormitories at that time. When attending the Detroit Auto Show in 2008, BYD executives did not choose to stay in a downtown hotel, but rented a house in the suburbs. At the time, all of BYD’s businesses were already profitable.The story of the latter is more dramatic.

For example, work lunches are often a bowl of cheap noodles. Once, he went to Beijing with a friend for business and ate at a small noodle shop for lunch. When they went to pay, they found out that two bowls of noodles cost 30 yuan, and he was shocked by the exorbitant price. He likes to go to tea houses for business meetings, but never orders tea or drinks. Instead, he always asks for a glass of plain boiled water, often making his companions uncomfortable: if they don’t order drinks, the tea house will not provide plain boiled water for everyone; if they do order drinks, the owner won’t have any cost and it’s not fair for whoever is paying the bill…

You see, the Buffs that successful people have in certain areas are always surprisingly similar.

Do you remember the motivational story about Henry Ford asking a waiter for his 50 cents change in a Chinese restaurant that we read as extracurricular reading in Chinese class back in school? Anyway, the central idea of this article is — Henry Ford’s success was inevitable because even as a successful entrepreneur, he still knew how to cherish every penny that belonged to him.

At that time, the teacher gave us some extra moral education: If Ford could save his 50 cents, even though you don’t have much pocket money and everything was given by your parents, don’t always think about eating at KFC! Can you succeed by constantly thinking about eating and spending other people’s money?

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.