Tesla's Martin Eberhard cuts Detroit a little slack

We reported the other day on a Wall Street Journal article on Tesla Motors and their Roadster which mainly covers the same ground that we and countless other outlets have discussed for the past year. Here's a little more context about what was said in that interview.
In the article company co-founder Martin Eberhard does acknowledge that building a real car and a viable business is no easy task. Martin has come away from this effort with a new-found respect for the issues that car-makers have to face in creating vehicles and bringing them to market. The task of meeting all the performance and safety requirements for modern cars has proved considerably more difficult than anticipated. This was especially true when combined with the job of integrating previously non-automotive technology like Tesla's lithium ion battery pack. They also had to deal with re-engineering required by the failure of components in testing. Then there is the problem of organizing the logistics of a world-wide network of suppliers for production. While Detroit automakers clearly made mistakes with their electric car programs in the 1990s, Martin acknowledges that they definitely know a lot more than most people give them credit for.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]