Tesla’s original co-founder, Martin Eberhard, is launching yet another electric vehicle battery startup and it appears to be extremely similar to its previous startup, which was recently acquired by SF Motors to help them make their own electric cars.
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We haven’t really heard much about Tesla’s original co-founder, Martin Eberhard, after the very public ‘founders disagreement’ with Elon Musk that led to his ousting from his role as CEO of the company back in 2008.
He briefly led Volkswagen’s electric vehicle development in the US and later joined his former Tesla colleagues at competitor Atieva, now Lucid Motors, before leaving in 2015. We learned last year that he resurfaced as a consultant for a Chinese electric vehicle company trying to enter the US market.
Now we learn that he has his own serious effort in electric vehicles as Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of his own startup called ‘InEVit. Inc’.
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We haven’t really heard much about Tesla’s original co-founder, Martin Eberhard, after the very public ‘founders disagreement’ with Elon Musk following his ousting from his role as CEO of the company back in 2008. He briefly led Volkswagen’s electric vehicle development in the US and later joined his former Tesla colleagues at competitor Atieva before leaving last year.
Now he resurfaces as a consultant for a Chinese electric vehicle company trying to enter the US market.
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Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning has kept somewhat of a low-profile since leaving Tesla in 2008 after an internal power-struggle saw his co-founder Martin Eberhard ousted as CEO and Elon Musk took over. After being an important part of what arguably started the electric car rEVolution, he mostly stayed away from the EV industry until he invested, alongside Eberhard, in electric motorcycle maker Alta Motors in 2014.
Other than the Alta Motors investment, since leaving Tesla he mainly took mentor and advisory roles, which he did again this week when he confirmed having joined the advisory board of ‘self-driving vehicles for industry’ company: Clearpath Robotics.
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A few weeks ago, Tesla Motors launched “Tesla Energy” by unveiling a new product series of home battery packs and energy storage products for commercial and utility scale use. JB Straubel, Tesla’s CTO, said Tesla has been working on the project for a long time. We now learn that the project might have been longer in the making than we originally thought. We uncover a blog post by former Tesla CEO, Martin Eberhard, dating May 22nd, 2007 that was removed from Tesla’s website. The post is titled “Introducing Tesla Energy Group”.
Out of the 5 founding members of Tesla motors, only two remain with the company; of course the now famous Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, Chairman and Product Architect, and JB Straubel, Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer. But the three expatriates; Marc Tarpenning, Martin Eberhard and Ian Wright, were instrumental to the founding of Tesla and although they left the car company, some in better terms than others, it is interesting to learn about what they are doing now. Unsurprisingly, most of them are still in the EV business.