Revenge 243
The Daimler executives arrived to Tesla. After a Pow-
erPoint presentation, the executives from Daimler were not
convinced. “Everything works great on PowerPoint. You
can make anything work on PowerPoint,” Elon said. “If you
have a demonstration model, even in primitive form, that’s
much more effective in convincing people.”^63
Daimler didn’t yet know that Tesla had modified a
Smart, so Tesla showed them what they had done. “We’ve
actually got something to show you. It’s electric. We put
in a Tesla battery and motor,” Elon told them. After a
test drive, Daimler was ready to explore a partnership. In
2009, Tesla got a $40 million contract to manufacture 1
000 battery packs for Smart cars and Daimler bought 10
percent of Tesla for $50 million.^198 “Tesla enables us to
skip a generation and get into electric as fast as possible,”
Daimler said.^59
But Daimler wasn’t the only car company that was
interested in Tesla’s technology. “That was Akio Toy-
oda’s office. He called and said he’d like to consider being
friends,” Elon said after he got the phone call from the
CEO of Toyota.^225 They set up a meeting with Toyoda who
wanted to discuss business opportunities. To show Toyota
they were serious, they learned everything about the fine
points of Japanese business etiquette, including how to bow
the Japanese way.^210
The breakfast meeting took place in Elon’s private
home in Bel Air. Only minutes before the meeting began,
the Tesla team saw how Elon walked out of his house. To
mark the occasion, he wore a Halloween joke tie deco-