The Electric Stars 165
race car builder and driver.^384
Wright was also an entrepreneur and he practiced
to present his business idea in front of Eberhard and
Tarpenning. It turned out that Wright’s idea never worked,
but he thought Tesla’s idea was so interesting that he
joined the company. “They were keen to get me to join
up because I used to build and race sports cars as a hobby
in Australia,” Wright said. “I knew a bit more about how
cars worked than they did. The tipping point for me was
when Martin borrowed the tzero from AC Propulsion, and
I got to drive it. That was the thing that persuaded me –
although I wouldn’t want to buy that car, I could certainly
see how you could make something new and interesting
with electric drive.”^26
The NASDAQ stock market index was at an all-time
low and most investors licked their wounds from the
dot.com bubble. They were not interested in financing
heavy industry, especially not in companies involved in en-
vironmental friendly technology when the price of oil was
low. “Back then the only electric vehicles you could buy
were golf carts, and the VCs couldn’t imagine themselves
wanting to buy one of those, so it was a very uphill battle
at that time,” Wright said. A few investors were interested,
but only if Tesla found a lead investor.^205
Eberhard had earlier met a person called Elon Musk at
a conference arranged by the Mars Society. He contacted
Elon by e-mail when AC Propulsion told him Elon was
interested in electric cars. Elon replied with an invitation
to a meeting at SpaceX.