The lunch that led to Tesla is a story that Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk and Tesla co-founder JB Straubel shared in their recent interview. The two (of five) co-founders were interviewed by the Financial Times at their Future of the Car summit this week, and many of us … [continued]
This article is part of a short series on the history of EVs. You can find Part 1 here. The Tesla Roadster Both the compliance cars and the serious cars since 2010 have one big thing in common: they were forced into existence by pressure from the Tesla Roadster. Like … [continued]
The five co-founders of Tesla — Marc Tarpenning, Martin Eberhard, Elon Musk, JB Straubel, and Ian Wright — were certainly greenies, and the environmental value of EVs was one of their prime motivators. However, they were also rocket scientists and sports car connoisseurs, and they were well aware of another exciting advantage of electric powertrains.
It sometimes happens that a symbolic event marking the end of one era neatly coincides with an event that ushers in the next, although no one notices the concurrence at the time. In late 2003, a brief renaissance of electric vehicles came to an ignominious end, as GM rounded up and smashed its EV1 electric cars. Just a few weeks later, three Silicon Valley entrepreneurs sat down for a fateful lunch.
The past 12 years of Tesla’s growth and development has been a sight to see, and it’s been a terrific story to cover closely since 2012. This past week was the 10 year anniversary of Tesla buying its Fremont factory from Toyota and GM. Tesla cofounder and CEO Elon Musk recently reflected on the company’s growth since then and memories of that period, which feels like a lifetime ago.
Considering how much major automakers are struggling to develop their own commercially viable EVs and catch up with Tesla, it’s ironic that several of these brands did produce EVs back in the 1990s, but cancelled those models, leaving the field wide open for the California upstart.
It would be hard to think of any technology more critical to today’s technological wonders than the lithium-ion battery, which is found in everything from tiny hearing aids to giant power plants. Three pioneers of our “rechargeable world” — John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino — have now won a well-deserved Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work in developing lithium-ion energy storage technology (as reported by Bloomberg).
A couple of years ago, Nicolas Zart interviewed one of the few owners of an AC Propulsion tzero and explained the history of the transformative tzero for CleanTechnica readers. I recently ran across the article and decided it was ripe for a reprint. Enjoy! —Zach
Tesla is, at its core, an engineering company. The company as we know it today was founded on the building blocks of lithium-ion batteries and electric motors. Having an early interest and exposure to supercapacitors, Elon Musk saw the potential with lithium-ion and electric motors and ultimately found the golden combination he was looking for at AC Propulsion.
Pop quiz: What American automaker brought a pure electric car to market in the 1990s? Even a fresh-faced neophyte to the world of EVs probably knows the answer. But wait. Here’s another one: What automaker attempted to make a pure electric car in the 1960s, and again in the 1970s? Fewer may know the answer to that one. Final question: What automaker triggered a series of events in 1990 that led to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passing a mandate requiring all major automakers to have no-emissions cars be a percentage of their sales by 1998?
