You Can’t Sell a Car That Looks Like Crap 173
they couldn’t sell it to a consumer because of the US legal
requirements, so Lotus sold it to Tesla.^355
Before the original founders met Elon, they made a
basic feasibility study to see if the concept really worked.
“In the business plan, we had worked out the basic dynam-
ics of the car well enough to know that the Elise chassis
was up to the job, that the weight of the car, combined
with the power of a drive system comparable to that of
AC Propulsion would give us the speed and acceleration
we sought,” Eberhard said.^199
The Elise’s exterior needed a new design to make it a
genuine Tesla, so they contacted four automotive design-
ers. “We gave all the stylists the same information and
they came back with these drawings that were terrible,”
Tarpenning said. The problem was that no-one at Tesla
could speak the design language, so they asked someone
who knew design and started all over again with a new
specification sheet. “It had these pictures of cars and little
sliders and it would say ‘feminine’ and you would slide
the little thing over,” Tarpenning said. “It was in design
language.” Apparently, it worked because when the new
design suggestions came back they were right on.^453
At a Christmas party in December 2004, Eberhard
taped the proposed design suggestions to a wall and asked
Tesla’s first employees to choose their favorite and least
favorite aspects of each design. The best design was the
sketch by Barney Hatt, who worked as a designer at the
Lotus Design Studio. His design was different enough that
Tesla could call it their own car.^209