How did Elon Musk create and develop Tesla?
He did not create it. He was the investor angel.
He was approached by the Tesla team and decided to invest 7 million dollars in it. They let him become a founder status.
The company founders were Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Later they absorbed JB Straubel as CTO and also gave him founder status.
Long stories short, the GM EV program was a giant failure in 1999. But two people from that team decided to remake the electric car program after the program died. That is when Elon Musk got in. The GM EV 1 program has a great documentary called “Who Killed The electric car”. *Who Killed the Electric Car? — Wikipedia
It is amazing that someone made a giant company RIGHT AFTER THE GIANT FAILURE.
Certainly, Musk helped Tesla a lot and he is the poster boy and spokesperson of Tesla. His team is SO GREAT and he does not need to worry about technical details really. What Elon did that impressed me the most is to develop the Tesla sales model — he did not use the traditional dealer model and build retailed stores himself. This move is his signature move. If you look around town, Tesla car dealers are never in prime locations — they formed a giant funnel to bring people there and created demand, and Elon Musk is the “eye-catcher”.
