Investigation“Elon Musk, an American hero” (3/6). At the start, there is an engineer, Martin Eberhard, who wants to act for the planet by designing a revolutionary, 100% electric car. He founded a company he called Tesla. But it is Elon Musk, with his capital and entrepreneurial spirit, who will make the affair an industrial epic.
“We are in the West, here. When the legend goes beyond reality, then the legend is published. “ So ends The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance (1962), a western by John Ford, where we discover that the hero who killed the bandit (Lee Marvin) is not the one we thought. The impostor (James Stewart) became a senator when the brave cowboy (John Wayne) died anonymously. “ Unlike “Liberty Valance”, we would not like to publish the legend ”, has explained The world to Martin Eberhard when he told him about the project which consisted of telling the “True story of the founders of Tesla”. His response was immediate: “I’m a little apprehensive about these requests; this always leads to the publication of articles of worship for Elon Musk. “ The truth “ Tesla founder eventually agreed. The engineer now lives in his house in California, so isolated and far from modern technology that the interview took place on a good old landline …
Martin Eberhard does not hide it: “I’m not a big fan of Elon Musk. “ “He claims he started the company, but he wasn’t there, you know, continues the engineer. He never set foot in our first building in Menlo Park [Californie]. He was an investor. He didn’t have an office, he came for the supervisory boards. ” From the founding of Tesla in July 2003 to the end of 2007, the operational CEO of the company was Martin Eberhard. But very early on, Elon Musk believed in the business and invested his personal fortune in it, while Eberhard had no money in his pocket. Admittedly, he had successfully launched an e-book start-up, NuvoMedia, in the 1990s, with his lifelong friend, Marc Tarpenning, but it was not enough to finance the construction of a prototype car. electric. “I wasn’t a rich guy like Musk. Do you know how much I had in my box when I sold it? 2%. And my wife had half of it when we got divorced… ” The company having been valued a little less than 200 million dollars (around 175 million euros today), that left him 2 million… before taxes.
So when at the beginning of 2004, a certain Elon Musk invited him to come and meet him in Los Angeles, Martin Eberhard had no choice. He says yes to the $ 6.5 million offered by Musk, who thus becomes the largest shareholder and chairman of Tesla’s supervisory board. And it’s the same who will ask Eberhard to resign at the end of 2007, when it will take a new step and move from prototypes to industrial production. A compromise accepted by the two men would later grant Elon Musk the title of Tesla Co-Founder.
You have 87.01% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
