This tale from +David Vespremi explains a lot of the unanswered questions from …
Throughout much of 2007 and 2008 I was in regular contact with David and his boss at the time +Darryl Siry at Tesla while I was writing for AutoblogGreen. Through the early part of 2007, everyone at Tesla was still claiming that customer deliveries of the Roadster would begin by fall. However, that summer while we were at an even in Ann Arbor, I remember telling my editor +Sebastian Blanco that it seemed unlikely that deliveries would begin before mid-2008.
Turns out I was write although the problems were actually much more significant than I imagined. In addition to all the software issues that Vesprimi describes, the original 2-speed transmission design was a mess and they had to start from scratch with a new supplier.
As of January 2008, when I went out to San Carlos for my first drive, they were still putting together a plan to reengineer the motor, power electronics and transmission while launching production with an interim solution to limited the torque output and locked the transmission into a single gear.
I actually had my first ride in the Roadster, sitting shotgun with SVP of marketing Siry in November 2007, and the car felt fairly solid at that time as Siry blasted through one of the canyons in Malibu but the company still wasn't quite ready to let a journalist behind the wheel. http://green.autoblog.com/2007/11/17/video-riding-the-pch-and-more-in-a-tesla-roadster/
By that time both Vesprimi and co-founder Martin Eberhard had been fired from the company. A few weeks later, editors from the four big car magazines each had their turn piloting the car and I followed right after http://green.autoblog.com/2008/01/28/abg-first-drive-hitting-the-road-in-the-tesla-roadster/
If nothing else, the saga of Tesla proved one thing to a lot of really smart people in Silicon Valley, building a car and a car company is a hell of a lot tougher than building a smartphone app, web site or a social network.
The Untold Story Of The Tesla Prototype Test From Hell
Take away timing, ego, innovation, and opportunity and what you are left with is bullshit. And bullshit is a dead deer, a dead car, and the smell of gunpowder and imminent media disaster.
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