Elon Musk’s EV company is running a social-media campaign blaming European traffic deaths on red tape. Its safety claims don’t hold up, experts say, but regulators are starting to buckle.

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[–] 8 points 3 hours ago (1 child)

He’s been a shithead billio his entire life.

He did not make the car. He just bought the company.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 hour ago

    I've been following Tesla pretty closely since long before the first Roadster came out. This is false.

    There were a few co-founders of Tesla. One of them had opened an LLC. Elon and others bought into that because it was faster than forming a new LLC from scratch.

    The original Roadster was mostly Martin Eberhard in charge, Elon was a backseat investor who wasn't very involved with the design. Eberhard's design used a two-speed gearbox- a real engineering challenge to make a gearbox that can shift gears under load at 15,000 RPM. They went through multiple designs which all failed reliability tests after significant engineering expense. After a couple of those is when Elon stepped in, pushed out Eberhard, and took over the company. Elon then decided the car would have a single reduction gear, no shifting, and a larger motor to provide the necessary torque. In hindsight this was the right decision as pretty much every EV today uses the same setup.

    Elon was then significantly involved in the design and engineering of the Model S, X, 3, etc.

    If you want more info search archive.org for the Tesla blog any pre-Roadster timeframe.

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