At Tesla, a Wild Week That Defined the Company’s Future
In a series of Tesla meetings in February, Elon Musk caught his employees off guard by demanding they speed up the delivery of a driverless taxi, opening a chaotic new chapter for the company.
On Feb. 28, Elon Musk used X, the social media service he owns, to make a bold promise about a product from one of his other companies, Tesla. In a post, he said a new version of the Roadster—a successor to the electric car that put Tesla on the map in 2008—would be able to accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than a second, nearly twice as fast as any rival mainstream car.
“I think it has a shot at being the most mind-blowing product demo of all time,” Musk wrote in another post.
The first minds to detonate belonged to members of Tesla’s Roadster development team in California, who learned of the car’s new specs only from Musk’s post that evening, said a former Tesla employee familiar with what happened. Until then, the team had been shooting to hit 60 miles per hour in a still-scorching 1.9 seconds. Now they would have to redesign key elements of the car—for one thing, to ensure its battery and motor didn’t overheat while accelerating so much faster, the former employee said.