Tesla CEO Elon Musk sat down for a three-part interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley this week. The first part of the interview, published yesterday, focusses on the early days of Tesla. During the one-hour segment, Musk once again addressed the controversial topic of who actually founded Tesla, which is today among the world’s most valuable automobile manufacturers.
Tesla was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. Elon Musk, along with JB Straubel, joined the company months later. The topic of who really ‘founded’ Tesla has been hotly debated, but Musk attributes the controversy to a sustained campaign by Eberhard – whom he calls the “worst person” he’s ever worked with – to gain credit for Tesla’s success.
“People think that someone else started it [Tesla], that you joined later,” Tesla Owners Silicon Valley President John Stringer asked Musk during the interview.
“That is not true,” Musk responded. “The reason people think that is because Eberhard has engaged in a non-stop campaign to effectively gain sole credit for Tesla for himself.
“He’s the worst person I’ve ever worked with,” Musk continued. “And that is saying something, okay, I’ve worked with some real assholes.
“So for somebody to be the worst person I’ve ever worked with, by far, that’s not easy.” You can watch the conversation play out below:
Musk has been keen to set the record straight on whom the credit for Tesla’s success should go to.
In April, he responded to a tweet declaring: “Elon Musk was not the founder of Tesla. He acquired it.”
Musk, in response, pointed out that Tesla was a shell corp when he joined. It had no employees, no business plan, no prototype.
The tech billionaire also pointed out that if filing a shell corp constitutes “founding a company”, then he would be the only founder of PayPal since he filed the original incorporation documents for X.com (which would later go on to become PayPal).
“When Eberhard was fired unanimously by the board in July 2007 (for damn good reasons), no one left with him. That says it all,” Musk added.
During his TED 2022 appearance, Musk said he regretted not starting Tesla with JB Straubel. He “stated that he didn’t invest in a company. He, Straubel, and the other individuals listed as Tesla’s founders created a company.”
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