
Tesla: The Origin Story - coloneltcb
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-the-origin-story-2014-10
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johnloeber
Origin story? Maybe. The coverage up through 2008 was good, but then the
author pretty much shortcut the rest of the article. They made no mention of
the immense financial difficulties Tesla faced in the 2007-2008 era, which is
of significant historical importance. The article completely omitted the
actual shipment and reception of the Roadster, and the subsequent development
of the Model S.

Nonetheless, it was nice to read about the very early history of the company,
some of which was unknown to me. I note the parallels to Steve Jobs in this
story, and how effective Tesla's PR machine is -- Musk really likes being
portrayed as the founder.

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SeanLuke
Not a good start. Second and third sentences in:

> The last successful American car startup was founded 111 years ago. It's
> called Ford.

This isn't remotely true. Ford was founded in 1903. GM was founded in 1908.
AMC was a merger of two companies, one founded in 1937 and the other in 1909.
Chrysler was founded in 1925. And that's just the big four.

~~~
agf
Reading the Wikipedia article, this statement may be based on the fact that
Ford was the last American car company to IPO (in 1956) making it the last one
to count as a startup.

~~~
SeanLuke
I don't think so, as 1956 wasn't "111 years ago".

~~~
w1ntermute
It says it was _founded_ 111 years ago, not that it IPOed 111 years ago.

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marze
I don't see why Elon isn't more direct about addressing the company's early
history. Why not say "I had to ditch the original founder of Tesla for various
reasons, then work really hard to get our first car out at a quality level
requisite for the future success of the firm. That's what happens when you
lose the confidence of the board and your biggest investor, tough luck".

The article is quite interesting overall. However, it is very Eberhard centric
and does a poor job of detailing the substantial challenges Elon faced getting
the first car successfully manufactured, as well as the financial challenges
and the US Govt. loan, and all sorts of other fascinating details. A book,
perhaps, would work better than an article.

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alexjeffrey
for anyone else wanting to read Elon Musk's story in more depth, I can't
recommend "The Engineer" by Erik Nordeus enough. He basically compiled titbits
of information from various interviews and articles and reconstructed the
timeline of Elon Musk's public life into a great biography.

[https://leanpub.com/theengineer](https://leanpub.com/theengineer)

~~~
SuperChihuahua
Thank you!

/The author

~~~
TY
Thank you for creating - looks like an interesting read. Just purchased.

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bernardom
Awful lot of negative comments here. I thoroughly enjoyed the article. Was it
biased? Everything is. But it explained a bunch of history that I didn't know
in narrative form, which I appreciate.

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asadlionpk
Great article, But didn't cover the launch of roadster. The whole article was
buidling for that ending. Still I wasn't aware of most of the history so was a
nice read.

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nraynaud
I feel so sad, I worked at an electric car company in the beginning of the
2000's (as a summer job), and we all knew that those cars were mechanically
far better than the combustion engine ones. You had constant power from 500 to
10000RPM, they broke some differential gears during R&D.

But the cars makers canned the projects one after the others. It's the telecom
industry who paid for the battery R&D in the end.

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bsimpson
Wait - did Business Insider do original reporting?

I think that's one of the signs of the apocalypse.

~~~
schandur
I was thinking the same. The first thing I do any time I open a BI link (on
that rare occasion), the first thing I do is check if they have listed a
source, and go read the source.

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rdl
It's interesting to contrast Tesla and Fisker.

~~~
jacquesm
Even more interesting to see the links between the two companies.

The Wikipedia page on the model S says it's designed by one Franz von
Holzhausen and doesn't mention Fisker at all but on the page of Fisker
Automotive you read this:

"On April 14, 2008, Tesla Motors filed a lawsuit against Fisker Automotive,
alleging they stole Tesla's technology and are using it to develop their own
hybrid car, the Fisker Karma, which was announced at the North American
International Auto Show in January 2008. Tesla's suit claims that the design
work done for the Model S by Fisker Coachbuild was substandard, and that
Fisker diverted its best ideas to the Karma. In early 2009 the suit was
settled in Fisker's favor and Tesla was ordered to pay Fisker more than US$1.1
million in legal fees."

I wonder how much of the Fisker design is still present in the model S or if
they tossed it all and redid the whole thing. When I first saw the Model S and
the Karma side-by-side I thought 'wow, those two look quite similar in a way'
with the Model S the clear winner (the Fisker looks kind of odd up close).

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LaFolle
Article says, "On April 23, 2003, Tarpenning bought the domain name
Teslamotors.com", but whois creation date shows 2003-04-03. Is that possible?

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lambeosaurus
Ouch, the bias is dripping from this article. Choice of pictures and wording
is quite provocative.

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0942v8653
I don't think I will ever understand how a Business Insider article can get 45
points.

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threeseed
Because it mentions Tesla. Spend some time in /r/technology and you will see
just how pervasive the Tesla love is amongst the technical community. There's
nothing rational about it.

~~~
nathancahill
You're getting downvoted, but I think it's true.

~~~
pm90
The tech community often roots for the underdog v/s the Goliaths. Just look at
the MS/IBM hate; and the love for Apple when it was struggling earlier this
century (of course that has changed now)

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waps
The more you read about great companies the more you realize that this is the
key :

    
    
      Eberhard realised that Musk was the first guy he had met
      who shared his vision for electric cars: Make a vastly 
      superior car, not just a car that sucks less.
    

This is why Google won, and again with Gmail, why Facebook worked (compare it
to the only "social networks" that preceeded it - dating sites and you'll see
how it's vastly superior), and even before, why Microsoft won (visual basic
being the truly superior product).

We also know that design-by-committee approach of large companies can only
ever produce mediocre products. Low-risk mediocre products. Most or all of
these are doomed. A lot of stuff is ready for complete disruption.

~~~
dmak
Could you elaborate please, what's the key? Partnership? Visionaries?

~~~
Sammi
Vastly superior products. That's also why the iPhone was the first broadly
successful smartphone. MS Windows was also at one point a vastly superior
product.

~~~
mikeash
This seems nearly tautological to me. Without knowing how to make a vastly
superior product, and without knowing how to tell whether a product is vastly
superior before testing it in the crucible of the market, this conveys no
information.

