Elon Musk Says Tesla's Initial Roadster Endeavor Was 'An Insane Nightmare'

Tesla Inc TSLA aspires to make 20 million vehicles by 2030, which will likely prove to be quite the challenge, but Tesla was built by overcoming obstacles, starting with the Tesla Roadster, the first all-electric production vehicle to use lithium-ion batteries.

"It was an insane nightmare," Tesla CEO Elon Musk recalled Tuesday during an interview on FT Live's "Future of the Car." "We screwed the pooch six ways to Sunday and made so many mistakes it's embarrassing."

What To Know: The first generation Tesla Roadster concept was based on the Lotus Elise chassis, but wielded the drivetrain from the tZero, a concept electric vehicle made by AC Propulsion. The company had no desire to commercialize the tZero, which is when Musk and company stepped in.

"First of all, we had no idea how to build a car," Musk said. "And then no one really knew how to build a commercial lithium-ion battery car. No one had ever done it."

By the time the car actually made it to production, essentially everything had been changed, Musk said.

"Maybe 6% of the parts were in common. All crash tests were invalidated, the structure was invalidated," he said. "In retrospect it would have actually been much smarter to start with a clean sheet design and not try to modify the Elise because we ended up with a lot of the limitations of the Elise, but almost nothing to gain in terms of reuse of parts, so that was a staggering dumb decision."

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Furthermore, the company ended up not being able to use any of the technology that it acquired from AC Propulsion because the tech wasn't viable in a production car, Musk said. 

Redwood Materials CEO JB Straubel, who was interviewed alongside Musk, is credited with getting Musk to invest in Tesla. He acknowledged that AC Propulsion provided a "helpful first proof of concept," but confirmed that Tesla used "almost nothing" from AC Propulsion in its Roadster by the time it was ready for customer deliveries.

"So what we are saying is that we were huge idiots and were totally wrong about the fundamental premises of creating the Tesla Roadster," Musk said with a laugh.

The second generation version of the Roadster was unveiled in 2017, but has since been pushed back several times. The EV is now slated to begin production in 2023. 

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Photo: courtesy of Tesla.