Revenge 238
TTAC stopped the countdown when Tesla delivered
Roadster number 100 to its owner. But they were still
negative to Tesla’s future as a profitable car company. “I
still believe Tesla doesn’t have a hope in hell of staying
in business,” they wrote. “But it will take a while for
that to play out. I made my point: they’re a company
fueled by tree-hugging hype rather than solid engineering
or accountability.”^203 This is a common misunderstanding.
The truth is that Tesla doesn’t manufacture electric cars
primarily because of the environment, Tesla manufacture
electric cars because the world is running out of oil.
The first customer who got his Roadster was Elon
himself. It was delivered in February 2008. “It’s an awesome
day. It feels like victory,” Elon said. What do you do
in Silicon Valley when you, after years of toil, receive
delivery of your very first product? “You take a victory lap
down University Avenue in Palo Alto of course,” a Tesla
employee said. “To me this is the Silicon Valley version
of John Travolta going for a strut at the end of the movie
Staying Alive.” So Elon jumped in the car together with JB
Straubel and drove away closely followed by four Roadster
prototypes.^273
Elon began using the Roadster as his daily driver be-
tween his home in Bel Air and SpaceX in Hawthorne. “It
has been a blast driving my Tesla Roadster every day for
the past several weeks,” Elon said. “Reaction from driving
the car around Los Angeles has been great. It’s thumbs
up wherever I go – something that never happens when
I’m driving the Porsche. A big advantage of the Roadster