Tesla's done a good job keeping itself out of the courtroom recently, but the good times don't last forever -- founder Martin Eberhard has just sued the company and CEO Elon Musk for libel, slander, and breach of contract. Eberhard claims that after he and Mark Tapenning founded Tesla, he was
summarily pushed out of the company by Musk, wrongfully denied his severance package, and then disparaged both publicly and within the company -- and on top of it all, Musk sent the second Roadster produced out for "endurance testing" where it was wrecked instead being sold to Eberhard as promised. Ouch. Interestingly, the core of the lawsuit directly mirrors
the suit filed former PR director David Vespremi over the same series of events, so it seems like there's a pattern here, but we'll see how much of this is true when Tesla and Eberhard face off in the courtroom -- our friends at
Autoblog Green just received this statement from legendarily-prickly Tesla PR spokesperson Rachel Konrad:
This lawsuit is a fictionalized, inaccurate account of Tesla's early years -- it's twisted and wrong, and we welcome the opportunity to set the record straight. Incidentally, Tesla will also be filing counterclaims and in the process present an accurate account of the company's history.
Yeah, we'd say there are some fireworks brewing. Stay tuned.
Read - Autoblog Green
Read - Wired
Read - Eberhard's complaint [Warning: PDF]
posted June 11th 2009 11:49AM
I don't know who made what bad decisions, but there were plenty to go around when Martin ran the company as well. I remember them describing themselves as "car geeks". That was the first bad sign. They needed to have some no-BS cigar chewing auto exec who knew how to get cars MADE much sooner than they did. The two-speed transmission was incredibly dumb - just to knock a few tenths off the 0-60 time. Would they really have sold one less car if the 0-60 speed was a 1 second less - NO! That cost them at least 6 months.
And I care because...?
I was incredibly stoked about this company when they first announced the Roadster. I knew I wasn't going to be buying one in any reasonable amount of time, I was still in college. What has followed though is an amazing effort to drive consumer confidence and goodwill as far into the ground as possible. They make a cool car, and having done so have become so engrossed up their own arses to become belligerent to potential customers. The last straw for me was this past Earth Day, I was able to view two roadsters at an event but even approaching them sent their PR person over to deflect me. Obviously I can't buy one, I look too young. I could actually afford one now but I have no desire to anymore. I realize that this company is in the business of selling high-end cars but... realize that Tesla is preaching electric cars as something of a religion, and in a religion you need to win over converts and not turn away the prophets.