You Can’t Sell a Car That Looks Like Crap 171
Detroit, was an advantage. An electric vehicle is like a
hybrid between a gasoline vehicle and a computer. “The
electric powertrain requires certain kind of engineers that
are in the Valley, and the best of them can be found here,”
a Tesla employee said. “If Tesla was founded in Detroit,
the mindset there is so focused on the internal combustion
engine that the level of innovation Tesla was looking for
would never have happened.”^335
The first car from Tesla, the low-volume, high-price
model, was the DarkStar. Since it was only a codename,
the real name became Roadster. Teslas’s goal with the
car was to prove that an electric car didn’t have to be a
glorified golf cart. An electric car could look like and have
the same, or even better, performance compared with a
gasoline car. “We have to make better cars than say GM and
Chrysler,” Elon said. “I don’t see that as a huge challenge.
The sad thing in the United States is if people can afford an
expensive car, they don’t buy an American car.”^361
Tesla designed the Roadster to beat a sports car in a
head to head showdown and at the same time be more
energy efficient compared with a Toyota Prius.^4 Elon’s vi-
sion said the Roadster would be the car that inspired other
auto companies to design their own electric vehicles. They
would ask themselves: if a small company in California can
make an electric car – why can’t we? “I would like to be
able to look back and say: Tesla accelerated the transition
from hydrocarbons to sustainable electric transport by at
least five to ten years,” Elon said. Thus, it’s not strange
the company’s vision became:Create the most compelling