Ride The Lightning: Tesla Motors Unofficial Podcast

Tesla co-founder, current board member, and former Chief Technical Officer JB Straubel joins me to discuss Tesla’s early days, his interest in batteries, building the first Gigafactory, his battery recycling efforts at Redwood Materials, and more. Enjoy! TIMECODES 10:45 Interview starts 11:33 More of a car guy or engineering guy? 12:14 Origin of his interest in batteries 12:47 Building his first EV…long before Tesla 14:43 Did he always want to go to Stanford for engineering? 15:35 How JB met Elon 17:55 Recalling when he helped build the first Lotus Elise engineering mule for Tesla 18:43 JB still has his original Tesla Roadster 20:30 On the origins of Gigafactory 1, aka Giga Nevada 21:28 What car(s) JB daily drives 24:11 How Tesla acquired the NUMMI plant from Toyota 25:16 What were the challenges of building the Model S versus the Roadster 27:41 How JB felt when the Model S started winning awards, like Motor Trend’s Car of the Year 29:07 Did Panasonic get on board with Giga 1 right away? 32:21 How Model 3’s “