20. Founders

In the ear­ly 2000s, Jef­frey Bri­an (JB) Straubel, Mar­tin Eber­hard, and Marc Tarpen­ning emerged as piv­otal fig­ures in the trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney of elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs), lead­ing to the foun­da­tion of Tes­la Motors. JB, a Wis­con­sin native fas­ci­nat­ed with elec­tric vehi­cles from a young age, pur­sued his pas­sion through var­i­ous exper­i­ments, includ­ing con­vert­ing an old Porsche into an elec­tric car dur­ing his time at Stan­ford. Despite his inno­v­a­tive efforts, finan­cial back­ers were ini­tial­ly elu­sive until a piv­otal meet­ing with Elon Musk, who was then explor­ing entre­pre­neur­ial space ven­tures. Musk’s inter­est in elec­tric vehi­cles and ener­gy stor­age syn­er­gized with Straubel’s vision, lead­ing to Musk pro­vid­ing ini­tial fund­ing sup­port.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Mar­tin Eber­hard, a Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neur moti­vat­ed by envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and the inef­fi­cien­cy of gaso­line vehi­cles, embarked on a quest to cre­ate an elec­tric car that could rival con­ven­tion­al sports cars in per­for­mance and appeal. His search led him to the tze­ro pro­to­type by AC Propul­sion, inspir­ing him to start his own EV com­pa­ny. Eber­hard’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Marc Tarpen­ning, who shared a sim­i­lar vision, result­ed in the foun­da­tion of Tes­la Motors in 2003, named after the inven­tor of the induc­tion motor, Niko­la Tes­la.

The inter­sec­tion of these pio­neers’ paths occurred when Musk’s search for inno­v­a­tive elec­tric vehi­cle projects led him to Straubel and sub­se­quent­ly to Eber­hard and Tarpen­ning. Despite ini­tial resis­tance from AC Propul­sion to com­mer­cial­ize the tze­ro, Musk’s encounter with the pro­to­type con­firmed his belief in the poten­tial of elec­tric cars to change the world. His insis­tence on cre­at­ing a high-qual­i­ty, high-per­for­mance EV, con­trary to the ini­tial incli­na­tion for a low­er-priced mod­el, set the stage for the cre­ation of Tesla’s first prod­uct, a high-end road­ster aimed at demon­strat­ing the supe­ri­or­i­ty of elec­tric vehi­cles.

Thus, a blend of Musk’s finan­cial back­ing and vision, Straubel’s tech­ni­cal exper­tise, and Eber­hard and Tarpenning’s entre­pre­neur­ial dri­ve and envi­ron­men­tal ethos cul­mi­nat­ed in the launch of Tes­la Motors. This ven­ture not only aimed to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the auto­mo­tive indus­try with elec­tric vehi­cles but also sought to estab­lish a sus­tain­able ener­gy future, set­ting a prece­dent for the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric mobil­i­ty.