During the course of our discussion (presented in three parts: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk described how he came to be a part of Tesla Motors and how he, as "Product Architect," influenced the development of the Roadster as and what will become the WhiteStar sedan. Based on his description of the events, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable title. Even as told by Martin Eberhard, co-architect doesn't seem inaccurate, although Eberhard might have preferred it to be otherwise. One thing that isn't in doubt is that Musk is not a founder.

Some in the mainstream media over-simplify things by referring to Musk as the creator of the Roadster, and if anything Musk's sin here may be more an error of omission. By not speaking up to clarify his role in the process previously, he has at least appeared to passively take credit for more than he should. If nothing else, as with so many successful entrepreneurs, his self-assurance can certainly come across as arrogance. I don't know the man personally so I can't really comment as to what he is like on a personal level. Aside from the financial aspects his role is probably most analogous to that of Bob Lutz at GM where he makes high level decisions about design direction which are then brought to fruition by the engineers, designers and technicians. Read on after the jump for the rest of my conclusions.

Among the readers of this site, one of the cars that elicits a lot of passion is the Tesla Roadster. The battery-powered Roadster and its provenance have elicited a great deal of discussion over the past nine months, in particular since the demotion and ultimately the departure of co-founder Martin Eberhard. This is a complex tale involving passionate entrepreneurs with that all-too-common but in many ways necessary human frailty known as ego. When humans interact, they often see the same results through their own mental filters.

People can see exactly the same thing and interpret it in many different ways. Unfortunately in today's media landscape, particularly on television, but also in blogs we often see a very cut-down sound-bite version of things. Sound-bites by definition are taken out of context. In and of themselves they often lead to incorrect or at least inaccurate conclusions.

With all of that in mind I was recently contacted by Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk. Musk wanted to discuss his role at Tesla, and hopefully fill in some of the gaps in the story. What follows after the jump is the phone conversion that I had with Musk recently as well as some comments from Martin Eberhard via e-mail exchanges. Eberhard's version of events is italicized.

Update: Just to be clear Elon Musk contacted me immediately after a previous article where I called into question his role in the development of the Roadster. He wanted to clear up what he felt were misconceptions of his role rather than to pitch a story idea about him.

Yesterday we told about news from Tesla Chairman Elon Musk that the Silicon Valley EV startup had struck some sort of deal with Daimler. We speculated that it might be an engine supply deal for the range-extended version of the WhiteStar. Tesla Marketing VP and primary spokesman Darryl Siry declined to comment on the deal and Daimler has apparently said nothing. Lucky for us, one of our readers pointed to where Fox Business News had the video up on their site so that we could see exactly what Musk said. Unfortunately, it appears that at least on the topic of the Daimler deal, Musk said nothing beyond what we had already heard and there isn't much to be drawn from his statement beyond our existing conjectures.

However, watching the rest of the clip, it became clear that in typical Fox (and almost all of traditional media fashion) they weren't about to let facts get in the way of a good story. Reporter Liz Claman started off the puff piece by introducing Musk as the creator of the Tesla Roadster. Now whatever you may think of Musk and what has transpired at Tesla over the past 10 months, calling him the creator of this car is blatantly wrong. Martin Eberhard had the vision for Tesla and he and the team of engineers are the ones who created this car. Musk then goes on to describe the Roadster as "the only production electric car for sale in the United States of any kind." This is most definitely not true. It may be the only really desirable EV but there are plenty of others of various descriptions. Obviously all the neighborhood electric cars out there are for sale and are drivable on many roads. They certainly aren't in the same class as the Roadster but they are electric. And of course we must grudgingly acknowledge the Zap Xebra here as well even though it is technically a motorcycle. Nonetheless this is not a promising start to the five-minute interview. And given that we know of only two cars that have been delivered to customers (one of which was Musk himself) calling the Roadster in production is still very much a stretch. We know almost no one watches Fox Business News but this is ridiculous and don't even get me started on this reporter. The video is after the jump.

On Saturday morning, Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk delivered a keynote address to the TIeCon conference in Santa Clara, CA and then sat down to talk about the plans for funding the future operations of Tesla. We've previously heard from both Musk and Marketing VP Darryl Siry about some of the plans, but Musk gave some clarification to the timing. First up for Tesla is a Series E round of venture capital that will sell off about 10 percent of the company. Following that is a Department of Energy loan guarantee program. The company will likely borrow between $100 and $200 million through the DOE program. Following that, Musk wants to launch an initial public offering by the end of the year.

One interesting element of the plans is the possibility of letting early Tesla customers take a piece of the that Series E funding round. That possibility first came up during a Tesla Town Hall meeting for customers last December. At that time, at least one customer asked about the possibility of investing in the meeting and Musk replied that he would like to see it happen. During Saturday's conference, Musk indicated that there are some legal issues that needed to be addressed, but the company was working on making it happen. Perhaps the new presence of Larry Sonsini on the Tesla board will help. The cash will from all this fund raising will be used for the development and production of the WhiteStar sedan hopefully by 2010.

[Source: News.com, thanks to Doug for the tip]

It can be interesting to see what happens when geeks with money meet up for dinner in Santa Monica. You're having a pleasant meal and the next thing you know you're racing down the road in a Tesla Roadster and a Corvette, live-streaming the video from two perspectives with cell phones. Tesla chairman and financier Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis (co-founder of Weblogs Inc. of which ABG is a part) and super blogger Robert Scoble decided to go for a joy ride for dessert the other night and stream the festivities using a new service called qik. Scoble rode shotgun with Musk in production Roadster #1. Calacanis (who has a Roadster on order) was in his Corvette. Musk laid waste to the Corvette. Some guy named Ray who evidently claims to know a thing or two about cars claims this was due to Jason's inability to drive. In fact, Musk, as is his prerogative as fundraiser-in-chief at Tesla had his production model built with one of the short-lived two-speed transmissions which contributed to its extraordinary accelerative abilities. This Ray guy apparently didn't actually watch either of the two videos since Musk explained this to Scoble. Needless to say Scoble was duly impressed by the ability of the Roadster to increase its velocity with remarkably low levels of noise (at low speeds at least).

[Source: ValleyWag, thanks to Alex for the tip]

Click image for photo gallery

Ready for the Whitestar? CNET is, and recently interviewed Tesla's co-founder, Elon Musk, about the eagerly-anticipated next vehicle from Tesla Motors. Elon says some things we know - the electrically-powered sedan will cost between $50,000 and $60,000 and is estimated to sell 10,000 to 20,000 units a year. He also reveals that the name might change and that the design will be finalized by the second quarter of 2008. A working prototype should follow by the end of the year -- big news, indeed. Musk mentions the "default location" or "most likely" location for the Whitestar production plant is Albuquerque, which, based on earlier reports, is not surprising. Check out the complete conversation between Elon Musk and CNET's Michael Kanellos here.


[Source: CNET]

Click the Roadster for a high-res gallery

Tesla Motors had another customer conference call the other day where some of the management team took questions from those who have put up cash and are waiting patiently for their new electric cars. The first such call happened in December just after new CEO Ze'ev Drori came on board. For this meeting Ze'ev and chairman Elon Musk were joined by CTO JB Straubel and Vehicle integration VP Malcolm Powell along with primary talking head Darryl Siry.

The meeting opened up with a statement from Musk where he reiterated the company's commitment to building WhiteStar in addition to getting the Roadster into production. JB Straubel gave a run-down on DriveTrain 1.5. Not much has changed since we spoke to Tesla last week although Straubel did say that the motor cooling implementation hasn't been finalized yet. They are testing several different configurations and expect to have it validated within the next few months. Customers also delved into areas such as being allowed to invest in the company. Straubel explained that the new transmission has no clutch mechanism or even a neutral state. The gears are continuously engaged, and neutral comes by way just turning off the current flow to the motor. Switching the current flow to spin the motor backwards will give reverse. You can listen to the entire call here.

[Source: Tesla]

Following the recent departure of co-founder Martin Eberhard from any active role at Tesla Motors there has been plenty of criticism of company Chairman Elon Musk in the comments here and elsewhere. For the two or three of you out not familiar with Elon Musk he made his fortune as one of the founders of PayPal. Subsequently he has invested in numerous ventures including private space programs, and notably to our readers, Tesla Motors.

In all the discussion following Eberhard's departure, the voice of Elon Musk has been conspicuously absent. Following a town hall meeting for customers last week various bits of information came out including purported plans for handling the transmission problems on the Roadster and future vehicles. In a new post on the Tesla blog, Musk speaks for the first time since Eberhard's departure. It should come as no surprise that he doesn't discuss that issue, but he does indicate that Tesla has no intention of selling out to any other company, but instead wants to stay independent and grow, eventually as a public company. Future products include range extended EVs in addition to straight battery EVs. You can also find mp3 files of the town hall meeting on the site in three parts, here, here and here.

Related:

• Tesla clarifies their plans for early production transmissions
• Tesla: Roadster production unit #1 completed; future models may use range extender
• More on Martin Eberhard's departure from Tesla Motors

The saga of Martin Eberhard's abrupt departure from Tesla Motors continues to unfold. A story on the Green Wombat blog at Fortune's site has more details on what happened during Eberhard's last few days with the company he helped get off the ground. It appears that a personality conflict between Eberhard and Chairman Elon Musk was at least partly behind the firing.

It also looks like at least a majority if not all of the members of the Board of Directors had lost confidence in Eberhard's ability to get development of the Roadster back on track. Given the continuing issues that Tesla has had with transmission suppliers, things did not bode well for the chances of getting the WhiteStar sedan done on time and on budget.

[Source: Green Wombat, thanks to Peter for the tip]