NOVEMBER 1 2007
AMERICANWAY 55
California, isnot bankingon thegreens.
“The idea the company was founded on
was that you could have a highly efficient
car without the trade-offs on performance,
styling, and drivability,” Siry says. “We’re
not dependingon a surge in environmental
awareness andglobalwarming.We saidwe
were going to build a car so beautiful, that
handles so well, and that’s so quick that
peoplearegoing tobuy it even if they’renot
passionateabout the environment.”
BY EARlY thIs
summer, almost 600
people, including George Clooney, Google
founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin,
andWill.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, had
plunkeddown$50,000deposits to get one
of the fir t TeslaRoadsters, evenbefore the
car had gone through its final safety tests.
Thosewhoordered fir t are expected to get
their cars this fall. Tesla, whichwill not ini-
tially sell to auto dealers, plans to open its
fir t dedicated sales center later this year.
“I think people are committing a lot of
passion to Tesla, both because the car is
awesome and because the people are going
about it in the right way, a way that might
actually succeed,” Sexton says. “They’re
marketing it fir t as fun and fast and sexy,
and second as electric. It competes, value-
wise,witha lot of exotic cars out there.”
The idea of building aniche car to create
a buzz and thenmoving intomass produc-
tion isn’t exactlynew. Siry points out that a
guy namedHenry Fordmade his name in
the early 1900s building race cars. In 1904,
shortly after forming theFordMotorCom-
pany,his thirdattempt tocreateanautomo-
bilemaker, he gave an exhibitionon the ice
of Lake St. Clair, setting a new land speed
recordof 91.4mph. Ford then sent the race
car driver, Barney Oldfield, barnstorming
around the country in the newmodel, the
999, creatingpublicity for theFordbrand.
Ford created theDetroit we know today,
with its assembly lines turningoutmillions
of cars around the clock. But what was ef-
ficient a century ago now comes with huge
costs, Siry notes. The big automakers face
dauntingstructuralissues,includinghealth-
care costs, contractswith labor unions, and
a production structure that allows them to
makeonlyahigh volumeof cars.
“We don’t have legacy issues,” Siry says.
“We’re taking a different approach. We’re
producing a low-volume car that will ad-
dress a certain niche, and thenwe’remov-
ingdown the line to larger volumes.”
It’s amodel used bymakers of high-tech
products, everything from computers to
high-definition TVs. “In what other mar-
ket do you enter at the low end?Flat-panel
TVs, cell phones, even refrigerators were
all originally pitched at the high end. That
drives the technology, creates a brand, and
builds desirability in the larger market,”
Eberhard told London’s
Financial Times
.
“That seemed even more important to us
with electric cars, because they had been
given such a black eye in the marketplace.
People thought about themasdorkmobiles,
just uglygolf-carty things.”
Eberhard has no prior experience in the
carbusiness.But thenhehadnoexperience
withelectronicbooksbeforehe formedNu-
voMedia, which helped create the market
with itsRocketeBook.Hesold thecompany
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