Another Iceberg, Right Ahead 223
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.”^230
Marks was motivated to revive the dying company
because he was an early investor. The first thing he did
was to put together a list, known asMarks’s list, filled with
items that could delay the car. Marks realized that Tesla
needed to postpone the production of the Roadster with at
least six months. “I postponed anything that wasn’t aimed
directly at getting the Roadster out the door,” Marks said.
“If we didn’t get that car out, there wasn’t going to be a
business. There was a lack of knowledge about how long it
takes to get a car through tests and manufacturing bugs –
this is a very regulated industry. And there was a real lack
of recognition of how much it was going to cost.”196,223
In December 2007, Tesla hired a second interim CEO.
They recruited Ze’ev Drori because one of the investors
thought Tesla needed someone who wasn’t afraid of dan-
ger. Drori was born in Israel before he immigrated to the
US where he founded Monolithic Memories. When the Yom
Kippur War broke out in Israel in 1973 – the same conflict
that initialized a global oil crisis – Drori took the first flight
to Israel to fight in the war. He phoned the office and said
he would be gone until the war ended. Luckily, the war
lasted only 20 days. Drori had also experience from sports
cars as he was a racecar driver.^350
In October 2008, after interviewing more than 20 prospec-
tive CEOs, Elon decided to take the job himself. “I wish he
had done that earlier,” Marc Tarpenning said. “Elon was the