Tesla Death Watch 5: Oops! Eberhard's Car Crashed. Or Not.

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

If you think Tesla's wealthy and influential client list is getting impatient to see delivery of their single-speed supercars, imagine how Martin Eberhard must feel. The co-founder and mastermind of the EV roadster was supposed to receive the #2 Tesla,. It appeared for a while that Tesla had skipped over its godfather in favor of delivering to everyone else. Now AutoblogGreen (ABG) reports that Eberhard's Tesla has arrived from the UK. Unfortunately, it suffered "significant" front-end damage at the hands of a company lacky. Or did it? Tesla's Daryl Siry told ABG that #2 was damaged on its final shakedown before delivery. Eberhard claims "It is news to me that this happened on the day the car was to be delivered." Adding insult to, well, insult, Autoblog founder Jason Calcanis notes on his blog that he will be receiving the #16 Tesla in six weeks. Calcanis jauntily contemplates giving away a Tesla on his holier-than-thou "human-powered search engine" Mahalo.com. For good measure, current Tesla Chariman Elon Musk recently declined to correct Fox Business News' Liz Claman when she called him the "creator of the Tesla" in this so-bad-it's-almost-funny pimpatorial segment. Dude, Elon, give the man his car and his props before this whole thing goes Tango Uniform.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Alexeck Alexeck on Jun 20, 2008

    I'm curious, what's up with the Tesla that makes it so bad? It looks pretty cool to me. Educate me, am I missing something?.

  • Davey49 Davey49 on Jun 21, 2008

    Alexeck- there aren't any actual cars, maybe one.

  • Ihatetrees Ihatetrees on Jun 21, 2008

    I just watched the video. For cryin' out loud, they don't even DRIVE the car! And what's with the crap about Musk's re-usable rockets!! Claman's pimpfest isn't as appalling as Couric's [s]blowjob[/s]interview of OJ, but it's in the same ballpark.

  • David Dennis David Dennis on Jun 21, 2008

    Alex, the Tesla is looking like an exceptional car with a great design and amazingly low operating costs ... ... that the company can't make to save its life. After about four months of official "production", Tesla still hasn't made more than 3-4 completed cars, and they've made a lot of bizarre and fishy statements on the way that's made people seriously distrust the company. I think a lot of people believe that once founder Martin Eberhard was pushed out of the company, it lost its soul and has been drifting badly ever since. I thought Martin was a lot like Jim Jannard of the RED Digital Cinema company, who has admitted several times in posts on his forums that "we really don't know what we're doing" while at the same time delivering, in spades. In other words, someone you could trust to tell you what was really going on, and to fix the problems as they came up. Martin got kicked out by the money guys, and to say that people have less faith in the company's subsequent management is being kind. Tesla Motors is a wonderful idea and I hope the management team finds a way to right the ship and get production seriously going. The fact that they couldn't get Martin's car, which he bought and paid for, on the road literally months after alleged production unit 1 was on the road is simply appalling. D

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