interview > eberhard > clip: eberhard 20

Eberhard 20 (0:57)
Topic(s): Auto Industry / Electric & Hybrid
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Video Transcript

The difference between Tesla Motors and what goes on in Detroit with the big car companies is that we approach the problem from a different way. We're coming at it from a background of information science and electrical engineering and not so much mechanical engineering and so on.

One of the reasons that people didn't like taking a lot of lithium-ion batteries and building a big battery pack, for example, is that unlike lead acid batteries, and unlike nickel metal hydride batteries, when you put lithium ion batteries together to make a big battery pack out of it, you need a computer in there to monitor the charge of each battery and adjust them and keep them level. And when you scale that up to the size that we have in our car, to us, that required an optically connected network of computers in the battery pack, which is— sounds kind of like Silicon Valley. Does not sound like Detroit.

So that definitely required a blending of the technology of what Silicon Valley knows how to do, and then making a good car while you're at it.