How he really did with production is impossible to know, and I suspect the person who creates his first car without making major mistakes does not yet exist. And the end result is a vehicle much loved by owners.

If I were Musk, and if Musk’s story was true, I would have kept Martin on as the public face of the company and had others take over engineering. Musk clearly is not nearly as talented a public image guy as Martin. When Musk took over I immediately took Martin’s side and grew to dislike Musk.

If I was owed substantial amounts of money, and the person owing refused to pay, I would certainly sue them however great a company I thought they had. This is especially true thanks to the contract with Daimler, which gives them substantial funding and enough to pay off Martin.

In short, Martin has to sue and I hope he will get a reward commesurate with his contribution. He founded the company and he did an enormous amount of initial research and legwork, all of which he deserves to be compensated for.

D

Of course I have. If you haven’t lived and worked in Silicon Valley from the 1980s through today you probably wouldn’t understand what I’m talking about.

It’s a good thing that people like Elon don’t think like this.

Musk is an control freak egomaniac. Eberhard to have over interested in the technical engineering challenges & not very focused on the financial aspects of product development – a typical engineer in other words :-)

even with the $350M they want to get from the DoE it’s going to be a big challenge for them to get the Model S off the ground on the timeframe they’ve committed to. I’m not sure how a $50k car is “accessable” to the mass market either, but they can knock themselves out developing it I guess. I’m no fan of Tesla, but the DoE has a better chance of getting our money back with them than with GM or Chrysler I reckon.

Elon Musk is a lot of things but “flake” is definitely one of them.javascript:document.getElementById(‘commentform’).submit();

BTW, has anyone noticed that Silicon Valley is becoming a bit player on the world stage, sort of like an aging rock star still touring, but doing lesser and lesser venues? Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate now exceeds the national average. Heck, Silicon Valley hardly makes any chips anymore.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&idim=county:CN060850&q=santa+clara+county+unemployment+rate

Second, I do believe that Musk is a much better CEO than Eberhard. Once Musk was put in charge a lot of the problems the Roadster faced (which Eberhard made constant excuses about) were quickly solved. That said, I’m not a fan of Musk pulling a Ray Kroc and acting like Tesla would exist without Eberhard. Both of these guys could have handled the situation better and neither is willing to accept any of the blame.

Both Musk and Eberhard are grade-A egomaniac jackasses that act like making some toys for the super-rich is going to revolutionize the auto industry and save the world. I hope the judge in this court case somehow manages to find both of them guilty.

Personally, they will never get a dime from me.

That is exactly the point. When your product blows and your balance sheet is negative all that is left to do is to claim reinvention of the wheel.

It doesn’t matter, at all, who gets the “credit.” To even bring up the issue just proves that both of these clowns are complete douchebags. True greatness is achieved by those who don’t care about the credit, and instead focus on the product itself. Tesla is far too young to be arguing over issues of vanity. Credit should only be acknowledged after years and years of success, and then only at one’s retirement ceremony… and then it should be demurred and pointed to the people who actually did the work.

Leadership is not about credit. There is nothing worse for a hard-working, talented team than working your ass off to make something amazing, only to have the “boss” bask in your glory. These two blow-hards should just shut up and let the car, and the balance sheet do all the talking.

–chuck

oh, and they didn’t invent the batteries either.