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Elon Musk laid off the Tesla Supercharger team; now he’s rehiring them
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
My point being, development of the consumer cars didn’t really kick off instill after Tarpenning and Eberhard left, and I don’t see how this current iteration of Musk would’ve pulled that off. I feel like this iteration of Musk would’ve fucked up Telsa spectacularly.
When the roadster shipped in 2008, that company could only hand make a few hundred cars a year and they didn’t even know how to make their own chassis, seats, infotainment software, etc. They had powertrain tech, and that’s about it.
The vast majority of the consumer product development and manufacturing tech was built after the OG founders left.
A company is more than its most visible members. There were likely plenty of competent people in the hierarchy that were there before Musk and were able to continue that trend of competency until Musk decided he needed to control more and more of the intricacies of the company.
The difference isnt what he was doing before to make things run smoothly so much as what he wasn't... that being getting in the way. He was a glorified PR guy. Which he was great at. Running a tech and manufacturing company? Not so much.