Tarpening and Eberhard left Tesla long before the company had any “change the world” influence on the automotive landscape. If you want to give credit to anyone other than Musk, give it to Tom Gage for designing the AC Propulsion tzero. Tarpening and Eberhard’s business plan was little more than “make a handful of tzero clones for weird enthusiasts like us.”
This always gets missed when people shit on Musk for not starting Tesla. Tesla was a complete shitshow before Musk took over. Arguably it was dumb for Musk to invest in the business in the first place.
In the end it worked because he put in even more money and was on the right side of history in regards to Lithium-Ion battery evolution.
I would also say that JB Straubel was CTO when they designed the LiIon battery backs and made them safe enough to use.
Tesla is a study in basically doing everything wrong except having the general right idea for the future, Li-battery electric car. Its pretty clear they had no experience with cars or manufacturing.
