work on lithium batteries could be put to very good use for another big need. In 1991, Sony took the lead and introduced lithium-ion batteries in consumer electronics. These smaller, more efficient batteries enabled laptop computers to run faster and longer on a single charge. And lithium batteries were decisively important for something else. They made it possible to shrink the size of cell phones enormously, and thus powered the cell phone revolution. In theory, the greater density of lithium batteries, combined with their lower costs, could make them a more viable and competitive battery for EVs—better than both the nickel-metal-hydride batteries used in the first hybrids and the lead-acid battery that is customary today in automobiles. But that was all in theory. No one had yet road-tested the idea.12
ELECTRIC DRIVE
While regulators were at one end of the spectrum in terms of promoting the electric car, at the other end were inventors and tinkerers and entrepreneurs and a small clutch of electric-car enthusiasts, many in California.
Among the EV activists was Al Cocconi, who had been part of GM’s illfated EV1 program. Cocconi took the idea of the EV1 and turned it into an electric supercar called the tzero. It could go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in a blazing 4.1 seconds.
In 2003 Cocconi came into contact with two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs straight out of the dot-com boom. One of them, Elon Musk, was a cofounders of PayPal. After selling it to eBay, Musk launched SpaceX, a commercial space shuttle business, which Musk intended to be a way station to his larger ambition—enabling people to colonize Mars. The other entrepreneur, Martin Eberhard, offered Cocconi $150,000 in investment for him to experiment with a different kind of battery: a pack composed of lithium-ion batteries, lots and lots of lithium-ion batteries. Cocconi took the money, made the modification, and the car hit 60 miles per hour in only 3.6 seconds.13
Not long after, Eberhard and Musk joined forces and together licensed Cocconi’s technology. They saw the potential for electrification with lithium-ion batteries and wanted to move the electric car into the mainstream. The lighter weight and greater energy density of these lithium batteries meant they were a potential game-changer for the EV concept.
But the electric vehicle simply could not compete on the basis of economics. However, Musk and Eberhard theorized that it could compete in an arena that mattered very much in California and certainly to their Silicon Valley peers—style, verve, performance, and hype. It would combine the values represented by a Prius with those of a sports car. Instead of something that looked like an oversize golf cart or an egg on wheels, they would build an iconic electric sports car. And they would call it Tesla in honor of the eccentric genius and inventor who in the nineteenth century had conceived the idea of alternating current, which George Westinghouse had used to achieve victory over Thomas Edison’s direct current.
Based on a Lotus Elise chassis with additional customization, the twoseater Roadster was intended to be an expensive but dashing sports car, priced at a level that made it affordable only for people who didn’t care much about price. If all went well, it would be a stepping-stone to a generation of more sedate but more economically competitive electric vehicles.
Building the Tesla would not be easy. It melded almost seven thousand offthe-shelf lithium-ion batteries of a laptop into a formidable superbattery. The engineering and design challenges for this new kind of car were enormous, and milestone after milestone was missed. “We hugely underestimated the challenge,” J. B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technology officer, observed. “Almost every major system on the car, including the body, HVAC, motor, power electronics, transmission, and battery pack, had to be redesigned, retooled, or switched to a new supplier.” It was a hard slog for the Roadster both in terms of the technology and money.
Still the Tesla was demonstrating something of signal importance to the auto industry: that the lithium-ion battery was adaptable to the car, and that made the EV a good deal more practical. This was, said Robert Lutz, the former vice chairman of GM, “the crowbar that helped break up the logjam.” The first Tesla was delivered in 2008. In 2009 Tesla won a $465 million loan guarantee from the U.S. government, and it subsequently brought in both Daimler and Toyota as investors and partners. In June 2010, it went public—in the first auto IPO in the United States since Ford went public in 1946—and in