Interview: Reenergizing the Electric Car
An interview with Tesla Motors' founding father
JON: So why don't you tell me a little bit about how Tesla Motors got started.
MR. EBERHARD: To build the kind of electric car that I personally would like to drive, is really why I started. I felt that every electric car that had been around before had been designed ultimately by people who really thought of driving as a necessary evil. So I said if you usually walk or take the bus or ride your bicycle, if you must drive, well here is your punishment car. I like driving and even so, I still care about my impact on the planet and my impact on the instability caused by our addiction to oil. So I said, is it possible to build a car that let's me have a car that I would like to drive, but at the same time doesn't burn oil?
JON: Can you tell us a little bit about the mechanics behind the Tesla roadster and some of the geeky things about the car for people that aren't really familiar with it?
MR. EBERHARD: [Laughter] I'm an electrical engineer. I understand electronics, I understand motors. I know a little bit about cars, but I am certainly no expert; at least I wasn't three years ago. I knew that I could staff a team here in Silicon Valley to build the drive train, the motor, the power electronics and the battery system - that was our core technology. But I didn't think that we had the wherewithal to build a world class sports car all by ourselves. So we sought out a relationship with Lotus Cars in England and licensed the technology for their chasse, suspension and the safety systems of their car as a basis of our car; not the same chasse but the same kind of chasse, the same technology to that.
This is a good place to start. Many people consider the Lotus at least to be the best handling car on the road today and you can put it on the track and it's really magic.
JON: How come you didn't pick something more practical than a sports car?
MR. EBERHARD: [Laughter] Well it goes back to what I said. We want to change the way people think about these cars. You know, electric cars got a black eye, I think, from the cars that were out in the '90s and from all the cars that were just glorified golf carts. If you want people to re-seek electric cars, to take them seriously, to consider buying ultimately all of their cars as electric cars, we've got to break that. To break that, I want to break that in a great big way. I want to make a car that was absolutely not what people expected an electric car to be. I'll put this car up against any other car on the road and win. I want to have low priced cars, but I won't make this one low-priced.
JON: Did you come from an automotive enthusiast background?
MR. EBERHARD: I'm an electrical engineer and an entrepreneur and I like cars. I am not some god of cars or anything like that. I enjoy driving. I've owned a series of bizarre and interesting cars throughout my life.
JON: What are some of the bizarre and interesting cars that you owned?
MR. EBERHARD: Oh I don't know, I mean the spectrum, a Lotus Europa, a 1942 Ford GPW military Jeep, a 1970 Lincoln Mark III, a mid '60s Ford F100 pick up truck. It's all over the map.
JON: Are you an environmentalist? Are you a technologist?
MR. EBERHARD: Yes and yes.
JON: Okay, what's the basis? Maybe you can explain that a little bit.
MR. EBERHARD: I'm both. None of us are just one thing. Am I an engineer? Am I a left handed person? Am I a liberal? Am I an environmentalist? I'm lots of things, right? And we are not all 100 percent consistent either. You know, I do care about my footprint on the earth. I do care about global warming, but I also like to drive. And sometimes when I drive, I'm beating the hell out of my car. I'm wasting energy too you know, it's just the way I am. And I think that I am not the only one like that.
