Chris H.

I am extremely disappointed to hear that Martin is no longer at TM. I should first offer my condolences to Martin and his family. I can hardly imagine the way he must be feeling right now.
I don't want to speculate as to what might have precipitated this event, but I suspect that it involved a clash between idealism and greed. I also would not be too surprised to hear in the near future that Tesla is being sold to an incumbent auto manufacturer. It would fit a pattern that most of us have seen before.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Martin for his vision and his passionate advocacy of EVs up to this point. I hope that this experience has not dampened his determination to bring a viable EV to the masses.
The Board at TM has squandered a great resource and a great deal of goodwill with this heavy handed power move. Shame on them.

X-CEOsWife

Chris,

Don't forget about the egos involved, as well.

TEG

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/02/t...berhard-fired/
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/12...re-from-tesla/

Ricknplano

Martin,

When one door closes another opens. I suspect you will have trouble answering the phone with all the job offers. But I would hate to lose the talents of one of America's great entrepreneurs to a "normal" job.

I would love to see an affordable family sedan using Firefly batteries and Maxwell ultracapacitors. Any ideas who might make this happen?

My very best wishes to you and your family.

MaryKathleenFlynn

For those of you following Tesla Motors founder Martin Eberhard's exit from the company he created, please see my post, with quotes from an email exchange Eberhard and I had earlier today:

http://www.techconfidential.com/behi...r-martin-e.php

I'm eager to see what Eberhard's next venture is. :)

Cheers,
Mary Kathleen Flynn
Senior Editor
The Deal & Tech Confidential

green01

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwomb...motors-fo.html

The above Green Wombat entry provides still more insight into the murky reasons for Martin's departure.

malcolm

Thanks green01

First I've heard about an issue with TWO transmission suppliers.

Or does this depend on who you ask?

WarpedOne

Am I the only one who sees this as a pile of b*llsh*t?

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BlackbirdHighway

It's not unusual that the creative genius is not the best operational manager. I'm not even convinced he was such a bad manager, maybe made a couple of bad decisions, but then, who doesn't from time to time.?

Often what happens is that the founder is placed into some non-managerial role where they can do what they do best, be creative and visionary maybe be a public advocate for the company. It's too bad they couldn't come up with some sort of position like that for Martin.

I hope we can put this behind us soon, and get back to thinking more about the cars. Getting Roadster production started will help a lot. An announcement about the Whitestar would be nice too.

We all feel bad for Martin, but really there's not a lot to be gained by continuing to dwell on his ouster.

AGR

The launch has been delayed on a few occasions, there is an outstanding transmission issue, the PR relating to the car motivated the competition to act sooner than later, the investors are getting impatient.

How do you buy time? You throw "somebody" under the bus.

Then make statements of a realigment and fine tuning of strategy with improved decisions that will expedite the project, and establishing a task force to look at other possibilities and potential cooperative efforts.

At the LA show every manufacturer with a track record of building and delivering vehicles with a dealer network was talking green, and getting closer to walking green.

Electric vehicles have an inherent credibility issue which Tesla initially dispelled.