Tesla Motors co-founder Marc Tarpenning explains why Roadster wasn't a hydrogen car

Tesla Roadster – Click above for high-res image gallery

One of the Tesla Motors co-founders, Martin Eberhard, has been in the news a lot this summer thanks to a lawsuit with current CEO Elon Musk. The other co-founder, Marc Tarpenning, hasn't said all that much about the time before we all knew instantly what Tesla Motors is. Until today.

Speaking this morning at IBM's Almaden Institute 2009 in San Jose, California, Tarpenning discussed how Tesla came to be and gave us a few details about those early days. Of interest, thanks to Earth2Tech:

While the Tesla Roadster is the electric-car poster child now, it could have been a hydrogen or biofuel car. Tarpenning said that "about half" of the people in the venture captal community wanted to learn more about fuel cells and the rest were down on hydrogen because "the energy equation doesn't make sense," and so they decided to go EV.

Tarpenning said he is "a little skeptical" about Tesla Motors being able to deliver on the 2011 production date for the Model S and the biggest problem for EVs gaining broader acceptance are the weak batteries. "The batteries really aren't good enough yet," he said.