I’m not at all surprised, but I’m always a bit sad when I hear stories like this. Technology Tesla Motors founder ousted:
Tesla Motors has left founder Martin Eberhard by the side of the road months before the Silicon Valley electric car company rolls its hotly-anticipated Roadster supercar off the production line and into the hands of celebrity customers like the Google founders and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.Eberhard, long the public face of Tesla, has stepped down as president of technology and left the board of directors in a move that is — depending on who’s talking — either part of a planned transition or a hit-and-run take-out of the founder following the appointment of a new chief executive last week.
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In August, Eberhard, who started Tesla five years ago with the financial backing of PayPal alum Musk, relinquished his CEO spot so the San Carlos, Calif., startup could hire a top executive with experience in large-scale manufacturing. Former Flextronics chief Michael Marks took over as interim CEO, but Eberhard says he never expected to be booted from the company.“I truthfully thought I’d be spending quite a few more years at Tesla Motors,” says Eberhard before boarding a flight in Burbank to San Francisco. “The only surprise was that the board no longer wanted me as part of the company. There wasn’t any major disagreement going on, not that I know of anyway.”
As Eberhard recounts it, Musk told him about a month ago that he wanted him to leave at some unspecified future date. “I thought it was a strange notion to kick the founder out of the company anyway, where there wasn’t a big ideological difference on the board where we wanted to go,” Eberhad says. “For all Elon’s character and personality, he’s trying to solve same problem as I am. “
The end came suddenly last Tuesday. “Somebody in the company asked me if I would be leaving at a certain date and I said, `I don’t think so,’ but that turned out to be the case,” Eberhard says. On Wednesday, Tesla announced the replacement of Marks with a permanent CEO, tech veteran Ze’ev Drori, founder of chip company Monolithic Memories. Two days later Eberhard was packing up his office. “Elon did talk to me about leaving the company without having a [board] vote,” Eberhard says. “I left voluntarily when it was clear that I wasn’t going to win a vote anyway.” Eberhard, who will serve on a Tesla advisory board, says Musk explained why he was being ousted “only in the vaguest terms.”
When I reach Musk on his cell phone and put the question to him, he pauses and laughs a bit nervously. “I don’t know what to say without being negative,” says Musk, whose other post-PayPal ventures include rocket company SpaceX and solar systems installer Solar City. “It did not make sense for him to be at the company. Of course, if the board thought if it would be better for him to stay he would still be there.”
“I don’t think its ideological, it was more operational, I suppose,” he adds. “There wasn’t an obvious role for Martin.”
That rankles some at Tesla, acknowledges Darryl Siry, the company’s vice president of sales, marketing and service. “I think for a lot of people who have identified with Martin for many years and who are emotionally connected to Martin as a leader at Tesla, this transition is a bit jarring,” he says. “But we have to all adapt and move on.”