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SpaceX and the Quest

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SpaceX and the Quest ( spacex-and-quest )

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cough up the extra cash. He tried to assuage Tesla’s customer base by arguing that the company had no choice but to raise prices. The manufacturing costs for the Roadster had come in much higher than the company initially expected, and Tesla needed to prove that it could make the cars at a profit to bolster its chances of securing a large government loan that would be needed to build the Model S, which it vowed to deliver in 2011. “I firmly believe that the plan . . . strikes a reasonable compromise between being fair to early customers and ensuring the viability of Tesla, which is obviously in the best interests of all customers,” Musk wrote in the e-mail. “Mass market electric cars have been my goal from the beginning of Tesla. I don’t want and I don’t think the vast majority of Tesla customers want us to do anything to jeopardize that objective.” While some Tesla customers grumbled, Musk had largely read his customer base right. They would support just about anything he suggested. Following the price increase, Tesla had a safety recall. It said that Lotus, the manufacturer of the Roadster’s chassis, had failed to tighten a bolt properly on its assembly line. On the plus side, Tesla had only delivered about 345 Roadsters, which meant that it could fix the problem in a manageable fashion. On the downside, a safety recall was the last thing a car start-up needs, even if it was, as Tesla claimed, more of a proactive measure than anything else. The next year, Tesla had another voluntary recall. It had received a report of a power cable grinding against the body of the Roadster to the point that it caused a short circuit and some smoke. That time, Tesla brought 439 Roadsters in for a fix. Tesla did its best to put a positive spin on these issues, saying that it would make “house calls” to fix the Roadsters or pick up the cars and take them back to the factory. Ever since, Musk has tried to turn any snafu with a Tesla into an excuse to show off the company’s attention to service and dedication to pleasing the customer. More often than not, the strategy has worked. On top of the occasional issues with the Roadster, Tesla continued to suffer from public perception problems. In June 2009, Martin Eberhard sued Musk and went to town in the complaint detailing his ouster from the company. Eberhard accused Musk of libel, slander, and breach of contract. The charges painted Musk as a bully moneyman who had pushed the soulful inventor out of his own company. The lawsuit also accused Musk of trumping up his role in Tesla’s founding. Musk responded in kind, issuing a blog post that detailed his take on Eberhard’s foibles and taking umbrage at the suggestions that he was not a true founder of the company. A short while later, the two men settled and agreed to stop going at each other. “As co-founder of the company, Elon’s contributions to Tesla have been extraordinary,” Eberhard said in a statement at the time. It must have been excruciating for Eberhard to agree to put that in writing and the very existence of that statement points to Musk’s skills and tactics as a hard-line negotiator. The two men continue to despise each other today, although they must do so in private, as legally required. Eberhard, though, holds no long- standing grudge against Tesla. His shares in the company ended up becoming very valuable. He still drives his Roadster, and his wife got a Model S. For so much of its early existence, Tesla appeared in the news for the wrong reasons. There were people in the media and the automotive industry who viewed it as a gimmick. They seemed to delight in the soap opera–worthy spats between Musk and Eberhard and other disgruntled former employees. Far from being seen universally as a successful entrepreneur, Musk was viewed in some Silicon Valley circles as an abrasive blowhard who would get what he deserved when Tesla inevitably collapsed. The Roadster would make its way to the electric-car graveyard. Detroit would prove that it had a better handle on this whole car innovation thing than Silicon Valley. The natural order of the world would remain intact.

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