Elon Musk may be the most well-known name at Tesla, but it was Ian Wright who first pitched the idea of electric cars to Musk and helped co-found the company. Wright has since left Tesla on good terms to work independently and has chosen a new area to bring the electric revolution to: trucks. Specifically, those massive trucks that transport so many of our goods and emit copious amounts of pollution in the process.
Ian Wright was one of the five original founders of Tesla Motors, so he knows a thing or two about electric vehicles.
In fact, according to this great account of the origins of Tesla, he was the third person to join the company in 2003, and along with original CEO Martin Eberhard, he directly pitched the idea of making electric cars to Elon Musk in his SpaceX office in Los Angeles. Wright left Tesla on good terms about a year after it was founded, but he has stayed in the electric-car game. A creation of his, named the X1, is the fastest “street legal” electric car in the world, he says. However, these days, while Musk and Tesla’s ambition is to bring electric vehicles to the masses, Wright has a different vision. He wants to transform the market for the huge trucks that consume the most fuel and thus emit the most pollution.
