In the last article, I wrote about the difficulties of SpaceX, and Tesla was developing it at the same time as SpaceX.
We thought that at least building cars would be much easier than building rockets, but we didn’t expect that it would be so difficult for Tesla. At that time, Musk was going through two extremely difficult and extremely time-consuming projects at the same time. Starting a business that consumes time and money, having no income for several years, and almost running out of savings, all these circumstances make it too easy to give up...
Ster has loved tinkering since he was a child. Chemical experiments and inventions. When he was studying at Stanford, he bought a broken Porsche and converted it into an electric car in the garage.
Jobs and Bill Gates also started their careers by tinkering with things in the garage. It can be seen from this that don’t control your children and don’t always limit them when they go to bed and wake up. The world is astonished. Don’t kill your child’s creativity with your worldly schedule.
In 2002, Stern graduated from Stanford with a master's degree and changed several jobs.
I find that European and American parents are really calm. If they were Chinese parents, they would probably say, why are you so unstable? When will you stabilize?
Stern hosted a solar car team from Stanford juniors from the same interest club.
During the communication with them, Sturt realized the development of lithium-ion batteries and imagined how many kilometers the car could travel if ten thousand lithium-ion batteries were connected in series. ?
Stern lobbied Stanford students to build an electric car with lithium-ion batteries, and they agreed. But at the time, no one knew what Stern’s long-term plans were for this product, including Stern himself.
So Stern began to raise funds for this project. He began to send mass emails and went to exhibitions to distribute flyers. However, after a few months, no one was interested in this product, and investors repeatedly rejected him.
Until the autumn of 2003, by chance, Stern met Musk.
Musk was ignited as soon as he heard the concept, because he had been thinking about the possibility of electric vehicles for several years. They hit it off and Musk decided to invest in Ste and his team.
At almost the same time, Albert in Northern California was also interested in lithium-ion battery-powered cars. He recruited a few people, rented an office, and named the concept car "Tesla." ”.
In January 2004, the original Tesla entrepreneurial team began to look for people to invest.
From the beginning, Aibo thought of Musk because Aibo had heard Musk’s speech at a Mars interest group at Stanford a few years ago - Musk was recruiting SpaceX engineers at the time.
Aber believes that Musk is the kind of person with unique ideas and that he should be open to the field of electric vehicles. Others told Abel that Musk was also looking for investment projects in the field of electric vehicles - this was simply a coincidence.
Musk became Tesla’s largest shareholder and chairman with an investment of US$6.5 million. While Abra received the investment, he lost control of the company.
Musk took the lead and asked Ste to join the Tesla team.
Their initial plan was to produce a prototype car.
Cars are indeed easier to build than rockets. In January 2005, the first prototype was built. Musk tried it for a test drive. He was very happy and invested another US$9 million.
In July 2005, engineers discovered a huge potential flaw in the battery pack. They tried to ignite 20 batteries tied together, and the batteries exploded.
And their prototype car has 7,000 such batteries. Once it catches fire in a collision, the scale of the explosion is unimaginable.
Tesla set up a 6-person test team to solve the battery problem. In order to find a way to prevent explosions, they used thousands of batteries in the experiment.
In May 2006, Musk invested another $12 million in Tesla.
The battery problem was solved, but the problem of overheating of the car body reappeared.
Tesla initially priced it at $90,000.
Their business plan is to start with a small number of high-priced products, and then gradually transition to models that are affordable to the public as core technology levels and manufacturing capabilities improve.
Aibo said: "Mobile phones, refrigerators, and color TVs were not originally low-end products designed for the public. These products were relatively expensive at the time and were tailored for those with corresponding purchasing power. "Built."
In July 2006, they showed the car to the media, and another auto show invited the Tesla team to put the car on display at the show.
At the exhibition, Tesla conducted a pre-sale. Tesla was so popular that everyone lined up to pay a deposit of US$100,000.
In the process of testing, improving, and preparing for mass production, Tesla’s team discovered a problem with the transmission system, and the suppliers did not want to redesign and manufacture a transmission system for a trivial startup company. A transmission system suitable for Tesla.
The original pre-sale Tesla was expected to be delivered in November 2007, but starting in January 2008, the Tesla team had to start from scratch to solve the problem of the transmission system.
When he learned that there were problems in the production process, Musk became concerned about the way Aber was managing the company, so he asked an intermediary to come to Tesla to investigate.
The middleman discovered that Tesla’s expenses in terms of equipment and raw materials were astonishing, and not everyone strictly abided by the company’s accounting software, but some people used it, and some used it. People don’t use it, and among those who do use it, many of them memorize it casually, but they still report the data to the board of directors blindly.
Rearranging the costs shows that the cost of producing a Tesla may be US$200,000, but its expected selling price is US$90,000.
The incredible cost of automobiles, problems with the transmission system, and inactive suppliers have seriously affected the company's operations.
As Tesla began to delay delivery dates, customers who had paid pre-sales began to ask for refunds.
Musk believes that Abel made serious mistakes in managing the company and allowed costs to soar to such a high level. And in Musk’s view, Eberhard also tried to hide the seriousness of the situation from the board of directors, which was basically deceiving the company.
Musk replaced Abel as CEO and replaced him with Michael, who has extensive experience in handling complex manufacturing operations and logistics issues.
Since it began trying to mass-produce cars in 2007, Tesla has faced various problems:
The carbon fiber body looks good on the surface. But it was difficult to spray paint on it.
Battery packs sometimes fail.
Every now and then the motor will short out.
There are visible gaps between body panels.
The transmission system needs to be redesigned and manufactured by ourselves.
Tesla engineers had to redesign the car's engine and inverter and reduce some weight.
Michael is trying to package Tesla into an asset entity so it can be sold to large car companies.
In Michael’s opinion, Tesla must be on the verge of collapse.
This company can't even make their only product right, is bleeding money at any time, and has missed a series of delivery deadlines.
And Tesla engineers are still doing some irrelevant experiments.
So Michael believes that the most rational approach is to make Tesla look as good as possible and help it find a good buyer.
But Musk was not interested in dressing up Tesla’s assets and selling them at a price, so he changed another CEO. He removed Michael and replaced him with Giff.
Then Musk fully copied his working attitude at SpaceX to Tesla. When an emergency occurs, Musk will personally handle it.
When an employee missed an event because of the birth of his child, Musk yelled: This is no excuse. I'm very disappointed. You need to figure out what is more important to you. We are changing the world and changing history, and if you are not going to give it your all, then don't do it.
Although other employees have enjoyed the pleasure brought by various engineering challenges in the past five years, they are seriously exhausted physically and mentally. Several early-stage employees left because they couldn't stand Musk's personality.
By 2008, the company ran out of money, and the financial crisis swept the United States. Investors believed that no one would be willing to buy cars during the economic recession, so they were unwilling to invest in Tesla.
Now, if Musk wants to rescue Tesla from this dilemma, he can only risk losing all his property and putting himself on the verge of a mental breakdown.