eberhard

A San Mateo County Superior Court judge on Wednesday denied former Tesla Motors CEO Martin Eberhard's request that he be declared one of only two Tesla founders, according to a statement released by Tesla Motors late Wednesday night.

"We agree that Eberhard's claims on the question of who founded Tesla have no merit. We look forward to proving the facts in court as soon as possible and setting the historical record straight," Tesla's current CEO Elon Musk said in a statement.

The ruling is in keeping with Tesla's claim that the company was founded by a team of several people, … Read more

The legal battle and war of words between two Tesla Motors CEOs are heating up.

Current Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk responded in a lengthy company blog on Monday to a lawsuit charging libel and breach of contract from former CEO Martin Eberhard. In his blog, Musk dismisses Eberhard's claim that Eberhard was responsible for many of Tesla's key achievements, one of the key points of the suit.

Among other comments, Musk writes: "The facts are that when I requested through AC Propulsion to meet Eberhard, he had no technology of his own, he did not have … Read more

Updated at 8:30 a.m. PT with full statement from Tesla Motors.

The founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors, Martin Eberhard, is suing the company and current CEO Elon Musk for libel and breach of contract, opening up another lawsuit at the young electric carmaker.

The lawsuit (click for PDF) alleges that Musk sought to "rewrite history" by taking credit for the accomplishments and the very idea behind Tesla Motors, resulting in a damaged reputation for Eberhard. The suit was filed in the last week of May but become public on Wednesday night.

In addition, the … Read more

Here's a fun tidbit that has come out of the Tesla Motors stories this week: ousted founder Martin Eberhard was the exec who first concluded that Tesla needed to turn its Whitestar sedan into a gas-electric hybrid.

It was back in the summer of 2007, said Daryl Siry, vice president of marketing at Tesla. Eberhard examined the technologies, the price of batteries and other factories and "came up with the idea" for making Whitestar a serial hybrid. Serial hybrids are different than existing parallel hybrids like the Toyota Prius. In serial hybrids, the gas engine only charges … Read more

A few weeks ago, we asked Tesla Motors whether a pending departure of one employee we had heard about was part of a wave of layoffs at the company.

No, said Daryl Siry, vice president of marketing. It was an issue involving a particular individual.

It turns out that that more terminations were going on behind the scenes. Ousted Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard writes in his blog that 26 employees, including some vice presidents, have recently been cut from the company. That's about 10 percent of the company. The cuts come after Tesla was forced to delay the release … Read more

Tesla Motors founder Martin Eberhard, or at least a person who claims to be him on an online message board, says he's not happy about being pushed out of the management team.

Eberhard this summer stepped down from the CEO spot amid production delays and was replaced with interim CEO Michael Marks. In November, Tesla appointed a permanent CEO. What was less noticed was that Eberhard at that time also stepped down from the board. His official connection to the company now, besides being a major stockholder, is as a member of the advisory board.

On the Tesla Motors … Read more