Tesla sues over car design.
April 16th 2008 05:18
Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley maker of electric sports cars,has filed suit in San Mateo Superior Court against a competing company and two of its employees, saying they stole some of Tesla’s design ideas and trade secrets.
Tesla, recently started shipping a two-seat electric sports car in limited quantities.
Previously it hired Henrik Fisker, a Danish-born designer to do the body design for a four-seat sedan, code-named White Star.
The Tesla lawsuit claims that Mr. Fisker and his chief operating officer, Bernhard Koehler, doing business under the name Fisker Coachbuild, fraudulently agreed to take on Tesla’s $875,000 design contract to gain access to confidential design information and trade secrets, then announced a competing vehicle.
Both the planned Tesla sedan and Mr. Fisker’s recently announced Karma are meant to be hybrid cars using a small gas engine to power a generator that charges a battery, which in turn powers an electric motor. The design, known as a serial hybrid, is thought to greatly extend the range and efficiency of hybrid vehicles.
Tesla executives said they decided not to use Mr. Fisker’s design and were starting over on the design for White Star when they discovered that Mr. Fisker was going into competition with them. The design switch caused a three- to six-month delay in production of the car, which is now scheduled to go on sale in 2010, the company said. Tesla is building a factory in New Mexico to manufacture the sedan.
“It caused a slight delay in White Star because we could not use the Fisker styling,” said Elon Musk, chairman of Tesla. “The styling was substandard compared to what he unveiled for his product. He gave us an inferior work product, and it’s obvious why.”
The Tesla lawsuit seeks to stop Mr. Fisker from using Tesla design documents, along with a return of the money from the contract and unspecified punitive damages.
Having previously designed cars for BMW and Aston Martin, more recently Mr. Fisker has modified BMW and Mercedes-Benz luxury cars to create even more expensive custom cars that cost as much as $234,000.
Tesla’s White Star is expected to cost between $65,000 and $70,000.
It appears that litigation is becoming more and more necessary in the world of technology.
techno the geek tells ya. But, hey, I'm no lawyer
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