Elon Musk, the world's richest person, once could not afford a mechanic to repair his car

Gulf Today Report

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is today the world's richest person - but did you know that there was a time when he could not afford to pay for a mechanic to repair his car? Such was his condition that to fix his first car — an old 1978 BMW 320i that he purchased in 1993 - Elon Musk bought replacement glass for $20 from a junkyard. This snippet of information Musk revealed on Twitter when an old photograph of him fixing the car went viral on the microblogging platform, according to a report in a section of the Indian media.

"@elonmusk in 1995, fixing his car by himself as he couldn't afford to pay for repairs," a Twitter user wrote while sharing a throwback picture where a young Elon Musk is seen fixing a car window.

"I bought the replacement glass from a junkyard for $20. They're great places to get spare parts," Elon Musk, 49, tweeted on Monday in response to the old photograph.

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The throwback picture was first shared by Musk's mother, Maye Musk, on Twitter in 2019. "@elonmusk #1995 And people said you knew nothing about cars," she wrote in an apparent dig at critics and naysayers.

Replying to his mother's tweet, Elon Musk had revealed that he had fixed everything on that old BMW himself as he could not afford professional repairs. "Couldn't afford to pay for repairs, so I fixed almost everything on that car from parts in the junkyard," he wrote. He further revealed that he had bought the 1978 BMW 320i in 1993 for $1,400 (approximately 1 lakh rupees).

Musk donates $5m to Khan Academy

The Tesla CEO is also quite generous. He has donated $5 million to e-learning platform Khan Academy.

In a video posted on Twitter, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan said he wants to give a huge shout-out and thank you to Elon Musk and everyone at the Musk Foundation.

"For their credible generous support for Khan Academy, they just recently gave a $5 million donation to Khan Academy," he said.

"This is going to allow us to accelerate all sorts of content and engage millions of students around the world."

Khan Academy has 120 million registered users and 20 to 30 million students are using the platform every month.

"We have about 200 million hours of learning. I view this type of investment in what we're doing is really foundational for us to be able to build a multigenerational institution, so that future Elon Musks of the world are also able to tap into their potential," Sal Khan added.

As millions of kids take online school classes from home globally including in India, government along with private education sector have a great responsibility to offer online e-Learning to more than 60 million college students and 1.5 billion school students worldwide.

Khan Academy was founded as a non-profit in the US in 2008 and focuses on creating a set of online tools that help educate students, by creating short lessons in the form of videos.