Tesla’s Macintosh 188
were pretty good, and then as we got into it they started
getting worse and worse,” Elon said. “I was very puzzled as
to why he was producing such awful designs for us. The
design Fisker did for us was nicknamed ‘the white whale’
it was so bad. It turns out what he actually decided to do
was to take our specifications for the Model S. He took that
basic plans, shopped it, got it funded, didn’t tell us.”190,374
They sued each other, and the court ruled in favor of
Fisker. “There is no reason I would design a car purpose-
fully bad,” Fisker said. “That’s just ridiculous.” It’s common
that the best car designers work with different auto manu-
facturers, and Tesla knew Fisker had founded his own car
company. Fisker thought Elon needed to blame others for
his own difficulties. “On a trivial level, it reminded me of
the O.J. trial,” Elon replied to the court’s decision.^374
To avoid a similar experience, Tesla created their own
design studio in a small, white tent carved out of a corner
in the back of the SpaceX factory. Now they needed a
designer.
Despite the German-sounding name, Franz von Holzhausen
was born in 1968 in Simsbury, Connecticut. After graduat-
ing from the Art Center College of Design, he worked for
various car companies. He spent eight years at Volkswagen
and Audi where he learned the German way to combine
design with quality. Then he brought his knowledge to
General Motors where he worked with the cars Pontiac
Solstice and Saturn Sky. After leaving General Motors, the
next challenge was working with Mazda’s Kabura concept.
“So what I learned from all these positions was how to