There’s plenty of buzz about Tesla Motors, its high-end electric vehicles and its dynamic CEO Elon Musk, but only uber fans know some of the more interesting facts about the car company, named after the brilliant Serbian-American physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla. Here are 10 of the most interesting — and fun — facts about the company:
1. Silicon Valley engineers founded Tesla
If you thought Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the mastermind, don’t feel bad. It’s a common myth. In fact, as told in this Business Insider article, the company, incorporated in July 2003, was the brainchild of “a tiny band of obsessive Silicon Valley engineers.” Of those engineers, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning are perhaps the best known of the company’s founders. The billionaire Musk — a PayPal cofounder — led the Series A round of investment in February 2004.
2. The founders were ousted
Tesla founders had no automotive experience, and the process of creating Tesla’s first car, the Roadster, was rocky, according to this account in Forbes. Eberhard planned the budget for the Roadster, which was introduced in 2008, much later than anticipated and significantly over budget. Musk believed the company could not survive with this leadership, so he put all of his liquid fortune into the company and ultimately took over as CEO. Legal battles ensued and were settled out of court.
3. Wall Street optimistic even after Tesla’s engines sputter
Tesla’s net losses more than tripled in the third quarter of 2015 due to increased expenses and research costs, the Associated Press reported. That worried investors and Wall Street analysts. But the gloom and doom quickly lifted — and shares rose more than 11 percent — after third-quarter reports showed Tesla beating revenue estimates although it posted greater-than-anticipated losses, according to Business Finance News. Share prices seemingly were also buoyed by Tesla’s assurances that barriers to higher production would soon be eliminated and when, after months of searching, the company had hired Jason Wheeler, Google’s former vice president for finance as its new CFO.
4. Tesla leadership has a brain drain problem
Tesla’s head of operations is among at least a half-dozen key employees who have left Tesla for Sonnenbatterie, a German solar storage system, to help lead that company’s global expansion, according to GreenTechMedia. Several of the defectors, including Tesla’s former country director for Germany and Austria, Philipp Schroder, had previously worked at Sonnenbatterie. Schroder is cited as a crucial member of Sonnenbatterie’s leadership between 2012-2014.