There is a popular myth on the Internet that Elon Musk created Tesla. While he was instrumental in the success of the company, the founding of Tesla is an unknown but fascinating story!
Tesla was the brainchild of Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who created the first Tesla Roadster and later invited Elon Musk to lead the company early. Eventually, the co-founders left as a result of a personal struggle, with Elon Musk taking over the company from then on.
TESLA: One of the biggest names in the automotive industry. From its clever car designs to its promise of a renewable future, Tesla has taken the world by storm.
Today, Tesla's simple reference immediately clarifies the image of a man: Elon Musk, a real-life equal to Tony Stark. You may have heard of his plan to force humans to colonize the planet or to take him to Mars from his boring company, which plans to build a superscope between New York and Washington. But for almost everyone, Elon Musk is synonymous with Tesla.
Today's story, however, does not concern Elon. Instead, he is a person you may not have heard of, although he was the real driving force behind the company.
His name?
Martin Eberhard Although the media believes in you, Martin founded Tesla and
The year is 1997. Martin spent a decade working as an electrical engineer when he met his future business partner, Marc Tarpenning.
Several seasons later "Magic: The Gathering" and the couple were already planning their first business venture: an ebook reader. In just three short years, the company he founded, Nuvomedia, sold 20,000 e-readers and sold its stake in it for $ 187 million. With a bright future ahead of them, the two entrepreneurs decided to focus on electric sports cars.
But how can one jump from ebook readers to electric sports cars? In a word: divorce.
You see, Martin divorced in 2000, and because he was stuck in any crisis in his mid-40s, he wanted to buy a sports car. However, he could not buy any of these rude gas criminals running wild on the streets.
This puzzle got him thinking, and he finally approached his old friend Mark with an elegant suggestion: build an electric sports car. In 2003, they began working together, which would eventually be the first car from Roadster, their new company Tesla.
Instead of relying on traditional combustion engines, Martin and Mark thought hard about using lithium-ion batteries, a technique they discovered in the days of their eBook. But, of course, building everyone from the beginning was not a realistic possibility.
Instead, he worked with two companies: AC Propulsion, a California-based automaker, and the British automaker Lotus. AC Propulsion created a small electric car called the Zero, which was fully electric and could reach 0 to 60 mph in 0 seconds, an achievement that no other electric car could achieve at the time. Martin could make his engine technology deal with AC Propulsion, but he still needed a real car to install the engine. This is where Lotus came from. One of his models, Lotus Ellis, marked all the correct boxes. It was short, fast, and sporty.
So Martin and Mark arrived at the Los Angeles Auto Show, where they defeated Lotus until he was a "very kind British man" and finally gave him the time of day. And yes, we are very good at this side of the lake, or at least our friends say we are. Now, where were we? With the car running and applying the latest technology, Tesla Motors began to grow rapidly.
By mid-2004, however, the company's coffers were gone. Martin and Mark managed to get out of the company for their first year and managed to get a modest investment from some capitalists, but to make the Roadster into production, Tesla needed some serious money. And I know what you think, is a car company having a problem?
What an irony, what a surprise. But here comes the myth of man, the myth, Elon Musk. Musk had just sold PayPal on eBay and was sitting on a large pile of $ 7.5 million he had invested in Tesla after meeting with Martin and Mark.
Musk invested $ 70 million in Tesla until 2008 but was still the iconic duo at the helm. Thanks to Musk's initial capital injection, Tesla successfully made a big leap in November 2004 when it created its prototype, the Lotus Ellis designed with AC Propulsion technology. The "mule", as it is called, ran like a charm and let the engineers swim with their performance. Tesla continued its R&D, taking another two years to make its Roadster debut.
Finally, on July 19, 2006, this labor product was presented in Santa Monica. The Roadster cost $ 100,000, but people were ready to throw money at Tesla. In the two weeks since the Roadster debuted, 127 cars have been sold. While the Roadsters did not close production lines until 2008, Tesla was a huge success and the first successful car launch in decades.
Internally, however, not everything was good and terrible. For reasons we would never know, tensions were rising between Elon and Martin. We all know that in August 2007, Martin received a phone call from a mask that was very nervous. In this call, Martin discovers that the Tesla board had met without him and decided to fire him as CEO. Oh, my dear. He was essentially forced to leave his own company. Technically, he was appointed president of technology, but he knew what he meant.
He later told Business Insider, "I did not hear what he said. I could not defend myself. I felt trapped." Eventually, of course, Marcos also resigned. In 2009, Martin sued Tesla for trying to "rewrite history," claiming that Martin was trying to get credit for what Markand did.
The suit also noted that the company deliberately and unjustly presented Elon as the founder, whom we know today is believed by almost everyone. Elon, in order not to lie without a fight, objected, and later that year, Martin dropped the charges. It seems that he and Musk came out of court, and maybe that is why the whole case was shrouded in mystery. Needless to say, the two are no longer talking. Of course, there is no doubt that both men contributed greatly to making Tesla what it is today, but it seems a little unfair that Martin has completely disappeared from the Musk interior. Perhaps this is the inevitable fate of any company with its charismatic co-founder.
(I'm looking at you Steve Jobs here!)
However, the fact remains that Tesla will not be a superstar of the automotive industry, he is today without the talent and perseverance of the real heroes of Tesla Martin Eberhard and Mark Tempering. Without the cooperation of these two men, Tesla would not exist today and Elon Musk would not have a car to send to Mars.
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