We're always wondered if that guy in the comments who goes by the name of "Willy Ford" is the actual scion of Henry Ford himself and CEO of Ford Motor Company, Bill Ford. Probably not, but some CEOs do actively participate in the Autoblog community, like Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors. Eberhard must be a busy guy, as the countdown timer on Tesla Motors' website shows only 1 day, 8 hours, 59 minutes and 2 seconds left before the all-EV Tesla Roadster debuts (at the time of this writing), but he's sacrificed some precious ticks of the clock to participate in an outstanding discussion in the comments of our most recent post on Tesla.
We applaud Mr. Eberhard for stepping out, getting his message to the people and interacting openly with... well... his customers. And the dialogue between Eberhard, "Charles S." and "doable" in the comments is a fantastic debate on the efficacy of electric vehicles.
[Source: Us]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeff Banks @ Jul 18th 2006 8:20PM
Hey Mr. Eberhard how's it going?
Any sweet detail you could hook us up with a day early?
Austin Linton @ Jul 18th 2006 10:18PM
Will the band Tesla be playing at the premiere of Tesla motors new car?
serpentor @ Jul 19th 2006 2:50AM
based on the pic on the website, I'm 99% sure its based on a Lotus Elise body.
http://www.teslamotors.com/images/car_wheel.jpg
this pic gives it away, that side marker can only come from a Lotus.
one who knows @ Jul 19th 2006 4:36AM
You may be surprised.
starlightmica @ Jul 19th 2006 6:59AM
Hmmm, Elise side marker, and Mr. Eberhard mentions that final assembly wil take place in a high-wage nation - yep, England fits the bill there.
There was some speculation about this on Jalopnik a month ago - Lotus Elise with an electric motor and Li-ion batteries = Tesla roadster, we'll see for sure tomorrow.
Lithous @ Jul 19th 2006 8:43AM
"Hmmm, Elise side marker, and Mr. Eberhard mentions that final assembly wil take place in a high-wage nation - yep, England fits the bill there."
I'd have never guessed that one...
http://www.autoblog.com/2006/07/13/tesla-ev-supercar-one-week-away/2#c1741501
It could be England or Ireland. I notice in an interview he talked about DeLorean having to go to the Irish gov't for funds. As if a hint of where they went? Either one would not surprise me.
Tool @ Jul 19th 2006 9:46AM
Congrats MArtin. Nice article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/business/19electric.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Fazzster @ Jul 19th 2006 11:05AM
Tesla? They were a Christian rock band back in the 80's.......Maybe the fish badge will be standard.
it's doable... @ Jul 19th 2006 1:19PM
I enjoyed the back and forth with Mr. Eberhard. He seems like he's pretty wise on marketing, making a car people want, even if it isn't the most efficient vehicle possible. I am still skeptical as to what another impractical EV really means though. Perhaps that's because unlike Mr. Wright (link below) I am interested in EVs from the enviromental angle more than the dragster angle (I would say race car angle, but EVs cannot carry enough energy for even a 30 min spirited race...yet).
Comment to the site writers. I had a long, largely concilatory post on that thread that just got eaten. It would have been on July 14th, at about 11PM. I guess I entered the wrong email address for it to go to or something, so I wasn't able to confirm it and thus it was lost to me.
Surely your system keeps it in there somewhere, since it has to mail it out. If you could find it and send it to this email address for confirmation or just plain post it, I'd be grateful.
If it's not an Elise, it's real close. See link (ignore the Atom in the picture).
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/06/29/electric.cars.ap/index.html
They even have one of the creators of the Elise on their board.
Chad Gallion @ Jul 19th 2006 8:07PM
http://www.socalsvriders.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20842
Chad Gallion @ Jul 19th 2006 8:50PM
http://blog.wired.com/teslacar/
Wired got the pictures early. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder if you can hook the batteries into your laptop if its battery dies.