SAN CARLOS, California — Tesla Motors on Monday announced that the dispute between the electric-car startup and its deposed co-founder, Martin Eberhard, has been "resolved." In an e-mailed message to Inside Line, the company said, "The terms are confidential and we are not disclosing details."
Curiously, the automaker appears to have rewritten a chunk of corporate history in the meantime.
The announcement describes Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Eberhard as "two of the co-founders of Tesla." Up until this point, the co-founders had been commonly described as Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who was described in Eberhard's lawsuit as his "longtime business partner." A major bone of contention in the lawsuit, which was dismissed on August 7, was just who founded Tesla Motors.
"Eberhard, along with Tarpenning, then incorporated Tesla Motors in July 2003," the lawsuit states. It describes Musk as "lead[ing] the first group of outside investors in Tesla Motors," in 2004.
Tesla's statement on Monday, however, includes this extraordinary quote attributed to Eberhard: "As a co-founder of the company, Elon's contributions to Tesla have been extraordinary."
In stark contrast, the lawsuit stated: "Within the last months of his employment at Tesla Motors, but more so after his departure from the company to the present, Musk has persistently and continuously made defamatory, disparaging, negative and harmful statements about Eberhard within Tesla Motors and in public forums such as electronic media, newspapers, Web sites and blogs.
"Musk has made statements as if he was the 'founder' or the 'creator' of Tesla Motors rather than Eberhard and Tarpenning, and that he was primarily responsible for the creation of the [Tesla] Roadster. Statements identifying Musk as the founder and/or creator of Tesla Motors were published and republished numerous times without Musk making any attempt to correct those false statements."
But now it appears to be all warm and fuzzy between Musk and Eberhard.
"Without Martin's indispensable efforts, Tesla Motors would not be here today," said Musk in the Monday statement.
Tesla Motors spokesperson Rachel Konrad told Inside Line in an e-mailed message, "I am not going to discuss details."
In August, Eberhard voluntarily requested that the lawsuit (CIV484400, San Mateo Superior Court of the State of California) be dropped. The lawsuit, which was filed in late May, claimed that Eberhard had been defamed by Musk, had received a damaged Tesla Roadster and that Musk was claiming credit for founding Tesla. Eberhard left Tesla on November 28, 2007. He was given a severance agreement that included a payment of $100,000, a grant of 250,000 in stock options and a mutual non-disparagement clause. But he says the severance payments stopped after he posted an article on his Tesla Founders blog that was critical of the company.
"Though the Tesla Roadster is a high-priced and impractical sports car, I started Tesla Motors specifically to address the twin problems of environmental damage and global instability caused by our heavy dependency on petroleum," that blog posting said in part.
The infighting appears to be over, though.
"I'm glad that we could put this behind us and direct all our energy toward making Tesla one of the great car companies of the 21st century," said Musk.
Inside Line says: More whining from spoiled rich guys. — Anita Lienert, Correspondent
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