9781422270370

manufacturers. That company, near closing, turned away the would-be electric sports car owner. Eberhard contacted his business partner and friend, Marc Tarpenning to form a second partnership. Although the pair had first collaborated on an e-book reader, finding out that GM no longer would offer any electric vehicles spurred the two business partners into action. The duo recognized the potential of electric vehicles, the earliest of which hit the roads in Europe during the 1830s, and the U.S. roadways in 1890. They examined the designs of 2003 and found that the only remotely viable

Martin Eberhard is an American engineer, inventor,

and businessman who cofounded Tesla, Inc.

design used a lead acid battery as a power source. With a dangerous battery design and capable of only a short range, Eberhard and Tarpenning chose instead to develop a new vehicle. Neither had run a car company before. They didn’t let that stop them, though, and although manufacturing electric cars flies far afield from creating an e-book reader, Eberhard served as the car company’s first CEO from 2003 to 2007. Teslas’s current CEO, Elon Musk, did enter the picture pretty early, but as a Series A investor in 2004, when the two company founders went in search of venture capitalists who wanted to support the project financially. He later assumed the positions of

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