Tak­ing the Wheel

Chap­ter 25 of the book delves deeply into the piv­otal moments for Tes­la between 2007 and 2008, mark­ing sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tions in lead­er­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly focus­ing on Mar­tin Eber­hard’s depar­ture and Elon Musk’s increas­ing involve­ment.

Eber­hard’s exit began with a din­ner in Palo Alto, where he pro­posed find­ing a suc­ces­sor to Musk, acknowl­edg­ing his own need to step down for Tes­la’s ben­e­fit. Musk was sup­port­ive, yet their search for a new CEO faced chal­lenges due to the com­pa­ny’s numer­ous issues, likened by Musk to a house on fire. The tip­ping point was an August 2007 board meet­ing where Eber­hard’s inabil­i­ty to pro­vide sat­is­fac­to­ry cost esti­mates led Musk to believe he was being deceived, a charge Eber­hard vehe­ment­ly denied despite acknowl­edg­ing under­es­ti­ma­tions of the pric­ing.

Short­ly after, Eber­hard was oust­ed from his CEO posi­tion in an unex­pect­ed call from Musk, which Eber­hard likened to a shock­ing blow, lead­ing to his depar­ture along with cofounder Marc Tarpen­ning. This ouster sparked Eber­hard to pub­licly air his griev­ances, par­tic­u­lar­ly against Musk, which even­tu­al­ly led to a law­suit against Musk for libel. The law­suit con­clud­ed in 2009 with an agree­ment that both Musk and Eber­hard would be rec­og­nized as cofounders of Tes­la, though ten­sions clear­ly con­tin­ued.

The chap­ter also explores Musk’s rela­tion­ship with Michael Marks, who took on the inter­im CEO role at Tes­la. Their ini­tial rap­port erod­ed as Marks chal­lenged Musk’s aggres­sive time­lines and man­age­ment style, advo­cat­ing for a more humane approach to lead­er­ship and sug­gest­ing part­ner­ing with expe­ri­enced automak­ers for the Road­ster’s assem­bly. Mark­s’s resis­tance to Musk’s direc­tives and the con­fronta­tion over out­sourc­ing assem­bly even­tu­al­ly led to his depar­ture.

Through­out, the chap­ter por­trays Musk’s intense and uncom­pro­mis­ing per­son­al­i­ty, jux­ta­pos­ing his vision­ary goals for Tes­la with the inter­per­son­al and man­age­r­i­al con­flicts that arose with key fig­ures like Eber­hard and Marks. It rais­es ques­tions about the com­plex­i­ties of lead­er­ship and the bal­ance between inno­va­tion and the human ele­ment with­in tech com­pa­nies, high­light­ing the per­son­al toll of the relent­less pur­suit of suc­cess.