Elon Musk's Brother Kimbal Says He Wasn't Happy With GM Killing Its 'Ugly As Sin' Electric Car

Elon Musk‘s brother and Tesla Inc board member Kimbal Musk on Sunday detailed the premises under which he joined the EV company as a founding board member.

What Happened: “For me personally, I was really upset that General Motors had killed their EV car,” Kimbal said in an interview with Lex Fridman published on Sunday. The board member was referring to GM’s electric EV1 from the late 90s which was eventually discontinued.

Tesla’s idea of putting an electric motor in a sports car and selling it at a high price resonated with him, Kimbal said, as opposed to GM’s idea of putting electric motors in a “crummy car.”

“What others had been doing, at least General Motors had done, is you put it (electric motors) into a really crummy car and sell it as a commuter vehicle that doesn’t really work that well and looks ugly as well. They really did everything they could to make that thing as ugly as sin,” Kimbal said.

On the other hand, Tesla sought to put electric motors in a sports car, which, Kimbal said, is the appropriate technology for an appropriate car given that electric motors have incredible torque. Kimbal liked the idea in theory and hence decided to join the company as a founding director. However, he was not initially convinced it would work.

“General Motors had done such a terrible job of making everyone think that these things are terrible but I was curious,” he said.

Kimbal said that the first time he fell in love with the company was when he drove a Roadster development mule on a street in the Bay Area called Bing Street and tried to accelerate.

“It was a feeling I’d never experienced before. Gasoline cars have an inertia to them. This was like being shot out of a cannon,” he said.

Elon Musk On EV1: Company CEO Musk has previously said that there would have been no need for Tesla if GM continued to make more electric vehicles since it made EV1.

"I expected there would be an EV2, EV3, and so forth, and if they'd done that actually, there would be no need for Tesla," Musk said at Viva Tech conference in France in June 2023.

However, General Motors recalled all the vehicles, including the ones with customers, and crushed them in a junkyard ‘for reasons that aren't clear,' said Musk.  Customers loved the car so much that they held a candlelit vigil at the junkyard ‘like someone was getting killed,' the CEO said.

"If somebody is holding a candlelit vigil for them because they love your product so much, maybe you should make more of it," Musk said while adding that it still blows his mind that GM killed the project.

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