Autoblog

Michael Corleone said it best, "It's not personal, it's business." There's been a lot of turmoil in the Silicon Valley hills lately as the Tesla Motors saga continues. Departed founder Martin Eberhard reports on his blog at TeslaFounders.com that the reorganization has been a "bloodbath" and questions the wisdom of the corporate machinations. Tesla's Daryl Siry contends that the company needed to tighten up its organization and refocus on the goal of actually delivering cars versus burning investment dollars. It's a lot like what went on in the nascent personal computer industry 30 years ago: a passionate team of visionaries assembles around a common ideal, and eventually it becomes a business, at which point pain ensues prior to success, or failure occurs. Tesla intends to remain independent, and now wants to move forward with solving delivery holdups.

[Source: AutoblogGreen]

News of Tesla's co-founder and CEO Martin Eberhard stepping down has been making the rounds in both automotive and tech circles all morning. The gist is that Eberhard will become Tesla's President of Technology so he can stay hands on with the all-electric Tesla Roadster's development, while a man by the name of Michael Marks, formers CEO of a company called Flextronics and one of Tesla's investors, will become interim CEO while a permanent replacement for Eberhard is found.

From the reports we've been reading, it makes it sound like Tesla's in turmoil over this management shakeup, with some outlets claiming the executive shuffle will cause additional multi-month delays in the first deliveries of the Tesla Roadster to customers. We have no reason to believe that is the case, and thanks to Sam Abuelsamid over at AutoblogGreen who was able to speak with someone at the company, it appears that Eberhard had been planning to step down for some time, as the day-to-day operation of running a big company was keeping him away from the Tesla Roadster's development. Tesla's Vice President of Marking Darryl Siry told ABG the move is much like what happened at Google when founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin brought in Eric Schmidt to run the show so they could focus on other projects. So it appears that despite some reports you may read, Tesla is not in turmoil and Eberhard's relocation within the company is just one more step on the company's roadmap to producing what promises to be a landmark vehicle.

[Source: AutoblogGreen, Tesla]