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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.
