AnOutsider

Haven't read it fully yet, but what lawyer would call posting this a good idea?

Brent

To me, the crux of TM's contribution to EVs is the laptop battery idea, of using these small commodity cells to construct a single, large battery. Without that, the other innovations TM brought to market were really re-takes on old idea. For some reason, I had always thought that the laptop battery idea came from ME. However, one major point from Musk's blog post is that AC Propulsion seems to have had the original idea. Two entities -- those backed by Ian Wright and ME -- went about commercializing it, and Musk chose to fund ME's. (EM says he never spoke with Wright.) If this claim proves correct, then ME's founder claim -- and the underlying claim to being the idea's originator -- becomes weakened, perhaps considerably. ME becomes a businessman, not a visionary. ME had a corporation, EM had the money, and only with the two together could TM become a reality.

Brent

It's not a good idea from a lawsuit perspective. It is, however, probably a good idea from a public relations perspective. Ultimately, I think ME's case is tenuous, so the blog post probably won't harm EM.

Tdave

I hope EM got permission to publicly post all those private emails from others. If not, then that's very bad form.

James

I am sure that Elon's lawyer read it and approved it prior to being posted.

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WarpedOne

I hereby officially remove my support for this company. It is bound to fail because of egos in charge. Sad.

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AnOutsider

If true, a lot of those who follow him like Steve Jobs will be heartbroken... or not.

If what he say is true, it does change the game, but I do get the sense that SOME bits he glossed over.. like the production number issue

I was thinking that too.

Probably, but I was always under the impression that you keep everything to yourself until things come to trial or whatever.

So you wanted a Model S because of who was running the company or because of the car?

Arnold Panz

Wow! If only they spent this much time and space writing to the Model S waitlist (I know that's for another thread, but I couldn't resist).

A couple of noteworthy quotes. First,

So EM considers himself a "founder" in this broader sense. This isn't a bad position to take legally -- I doubt there's a formal definition of "founder", and if he can reasonably call himself a "founder", then ME's whole case is pretty much shot.

Second,

This smells like a countersuit to me, which is basically where, as part of defending a claim, a defendant(s) bring claims against the plaintiff, in this case ME. That's unfortunate, because it makes it much more difficult to settle a case when there are more claims flying back and forth.

Finally,

The not so veiled insinuation is that ME only chose to file his claim because (a) Tesla now has deep(er) pockets thanks to Daimler's investment, and (b) they may be more anxious to settle because Daimler wouldn't want to be associated with such an ugly situation.

I'm pretty certain EM did this over the objections of his lawyers, which means that ME's Complaint, and the ensuing publicity, likely got under EM's skin. Unfortunately for ME, that may be the high water mark for him in this case. Again, I have no rooting interest in this case one way or another, but am just analyzing it as an interested third party with experience in these types of cases.

xcelero.ii

Thanks for posting! I am glad to see this kind of communication from Elon and by extension, Tesla Motors.

For anyone who's eyes can't bare the strain of such a long read on a monitor. I have created a Text-to-Speech version for you're listening pleasure.

This is a computer voice but it's pretty damn good!

QuickTime version for in-browser:
In The Beginning Text-to-Speech

MP3 version for in iTunes:
In The Beginning Text-to-Speech

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xcelero.ii

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