He co-founder of Tesla, martin eberhardhas given an interview to Business Insider where he talks, among other things, about his bad relationship with Elon Muskand of the Autopilot.
martin eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla in 2003. Eberhard was CEO of the company from 2003 to 2007.
Elon Musk entered Tesla as investorin 2004, with an amount of 75 million dollars. That allowed him to become the Administration Counsel President.
The founder of Tesla and Elon Musk: the controversy
In his years as CEO, martin eberhard he oversaw the development of the Tesla Roadster, the company’s first car. But from the beginning, the disagreements with Musk they were constant.
In 2007, the board of directors fired Martin Eberhardaccusing him of accumulate delays and exponentially grow the budget of the Tesla Roadster. Elon Musk was elected CEO.
According to the version of martin eberhard that counts in Business Insider, his dismissal was a maneuver by Elon Musk to seize power. From then on he began to say that he was the founder of Tesla, and the person responsible for designing the Tesla Roadster. On Tesla’s own website, Musk appears as a co-founder, something that is technically not true, since he entered as an investor a few months later.
So martin eberhard it sued by defamation and slander. Finally, both reached an out-of-court agreement, and the trial did not take place.
Since then, in 2009, has not spoken to Elon Musk, despite sending him congratulations when SpaceX put its first rocket into orbit. Congratulations that had no response.
“I don’t need to read anything else about him“, says Eberhard. “What happens is Musk makes some wild claim on Twitter and suddenly a bunch of journalists want to talk to me. This is how I find out“, he explained to Business Insider.
Musk said in November on Twitter that “I was a product manager and led the design of the original Roadster. Eberhard was rich and he could have risked his money, but he didn’t want to.“.
But eberhard claims that Musk was not especially involved:”he was no more involved than any other board member. He came to the board meetings. He did not have an office in the company. He didn’t come there regularly. He didn’t give instructions to my employees, nothing like that. He was a council member“.
Beyond your disagreements, his way of thinking is also very different. Eberhard claims that I would not have bought SolarCity, the company that makes solar panels, because “it was a distraction“. Although now Tesla generate 3 billion dollars a year with her.
He also confesses that his way of acting as CEO is different:”I am a believer in treating employees with respect and I don’t like random firings and suchhe promises.So maybe the culture within the company would have been a little nicer.“.
Finally, criticize the autopilotthe autonomous driving mode, because he believes that Tesla should focus on “cars that can be driven“, and also it is full of bugs and dangerous:
“I think the technology is too immature to be on the road“, he reaffirms. “I mean, it’s my cautious nature, but I would have had a hard time putting software with so many bugs on the roads.”
The bad relationship between Tesla founder, martin eberhardand the current CEO, Elon Musk. A few years ago, his statements might have seemed unbelievable to us, but looking at the new Musk who has revealed himself with the purchase of Twitter, some things that Martin Eberhard says seem to be quite consistent with the current Elon Musk. What do you think?