Not since Steve Jobs has a single person in tech garnered such worship, contempt and curiosity as Elon Musk.
His had quite the year with some very high highs and some very low lows.
So lets take a look back at Elon's wild 2018.
Spoiler alert, a lot of it revolves around his tweets.
In February, Space X successfully launched Elon's Tesla roadster into outer space while it blared David Bowie's "Life on Mars" as it exited our atmosphere.
It was a huge success for Space X as it works toward better reusable rockets for space missions and exploration, Some critics suggest that a more important payload could have been on board, but the internet generally gave me a lot of pass as soon as they saw those absolutely wild live feeds from the car, itself.
Then in March and April, Musk and Tesla were plagued with things like production issues, recalls, and other setbacks.
Leading to Elon tweeting Tesla had "gone completely and totally bankrupt" it was an April fools joke, but it definitely proved the CEO experienced some serious wear and tear while getting model 3 productions numbers up.
Shareholders didn't exactly appreciate the joke either with Tesla stock dropping 7 percent the day after Musk fire off the tweet Then in July, Elon's penchant for saying whatever's on his mind got him in trouble after he flippantly called a British cave diver a pedo guy, after the man criticized Musk's efforts to build a mini-submarine as part of a rescue effort in Thailand.
Elon pulled the Tweets and apologized But then doubled down a couple months later saying it was strange he hadn't been sued by the man.
Well, the man did actually end up suing Musk for libel and slander, and everyone ended up being a loser in this story, including Musk.
Musk also found himself in hot water with two massive government agencies this year.
After smoking pot on Joe Rogan's podcast for the whole world to see NASA administrator Jim Brightenson personally ordered a review of SpaceX.
Particularly to ensure it was adhering to its drug-free work place policy.
Brighton Sign said the event quote did not inspire confidence unquote and expressed concern about any company who might put astronauts in danger with work place culture.
In November, Brightonstein assured reporters we would not be seeing Elon Musk enjoying a joint publicly again but it's Elon.
So we'll see how that goes.
Of course, the biggest Musk news of 2018 was the tweet heard around the business world.
Let's go to the graphic.
I'm considering taking Tesla private at $420.
Funding secured.
Woo boy who knew less than ten words could do so much damage?
That tweet along with some subsequent tweets was the equivalent of kicking a killer beehive while naked and then rolling around on top of all the angry bees.
Some Tesla shareholders rejoiced.
Some freaked the eff out.
Share trading was halted.
The FCC got involved, ruled the tweet was fraudulent.
It was total pandemonium.
But in the end, Elon was fined 20 million bucks and forced to step down as chairman of Tesla for three years.
But in a recent 60 Minutes sit-down Musk indicated he was.
Still the company's largest shareholder and could pretty much get whatever he wanted done with a simple vote.
Even though 2018 held some personal and professional stumbles for Elon Musk, Barring any more antics from him or really bad news dropping before the end of December, it's actually looking pretty positive for his companies.
SpaceX is doing amazing things with its Falcon 9 and Starship rockets, while Tesla finally met a Model 3 production target of 1,000 cars a day and is up year over year in the stock market.
We're sure 2019 will be an equally bananas journey for Musk as he navigates running multiple companies and tweeting impulsively like his life depends on it.
It doesn't matter if you're rooting for or against him, we're sure he'll find ways to stir up his biggest fan, his worst critic and everyone else in between.
Until next time, be a good human.
