PART 1 Summary
In the fall of 2003, a possessed electric engineering genius named J.B. Straubel hunted down Elon Musk to pitch his idea of electric planes. Although Musk did not bite on that, he was captivated by Straubel's project of electric vehicles. The two paid a visit to AC Propulsion, a pioneer company in this field which had tzeros, a type of kit car in its pipelines. Back then, a commercial electric vehicle was still an unheard-of practice. Musk offered to fund the transformation, only to be rebuffed by the run-of-the-mill entrepreneurs who regarded it as a boondoggle.
Then came the turning point in early 2004 when Eberhard and Tarpenning, the cofounders of Tesla Motors, whose ideas happened to coincide with Straubel's, came up to Musk, talking him to fund their electric cars. With a whopping investment of $6.5 million, Musk became the largest shareholder and took up the mantle as the chairman of Tesla. Straubel also joined the force and invigorated the team by bringing in a collection of talent with relentless ethos.
Despite being a Jonny-come-lately in the market, Tesla gained an edge over the competition by developing two successful prototypes and a method to contain fires caused by batteries.
In mid-2006, EP1 (engineering prototype 1) and EP2 came to life in close succession and grabbed the attention of the well-offs. Thanks to the success of Tesla, Silicon Valley, for the first time, overshadowed Detroit in automatic industry.
PART 2 Expressions
1. There was no clean-technology movement at this time, but there were companies dabbling with new uses for solar power and electric vehicles. Straubel ended up hunting down these startups, hanging out in their garages and pestering the engineers.
dabble:
1.to move your hands, feet etc about in water
children dabbling their feet in the sea
2.dabble in/ at/ with: to do sth or be involved in sth in a way that is not very serious
a people who dabble in painting as a way of relaxing
Pester : to annoy sb, especially be asking them many times to do sth SYN harass
Pester sb for sth/ pester sb to do sth
I can’t even walk down the street without being continually pestered for money.
Pester power: (n.) the ability that children have to make their parents buy things or do things for them by asking them again and again
2. Unlike today, when the university would jump at the chance to support such a project, Stanford tried to shut down this group of fringe freaks and geeks.
fringe group/ event/ issue etc: a group, event etc that is less important or popular than the main group etc, or whose opinions are not accepted by most people involved in the same activity (O.) mainstream
The environment is no longer a fringe issue.
3. The team had just raced 2,300 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles, and Straubel offered the strapped, exhausted kids a place to stay.
Strap: (n.) 皮带；布带； （v.）to fasten sth with straps
Strapped (for cash): informal, having little or no money at the moment
Can you lend me ten dollars? I’m a little strapped for cash.
Strapping: a strapping young man or woman is strong, tall, and looks healthy and active
4. Eberhard too tried to goad AC Propulsion into being a commercial enterprise rather than a hobby shop.
1. to push animals ahead of you with a sharp stick
2. to make sb do sth by annoying or encouraging them until they do it. SYN provoke
goad sb into (doing) sth
Katy goaded him into telling her what he had done.
5. While at Disneyland a few months earlier on a date with his wife, Eberhard had come up with the name Tesla Motors, both to pay homage to the inventor and electric motor pioneer Nikola Tesla and because it sounded cool.
Homage:[ˈhɒmɪdʒ] sth you do to show respect for someone or sth you think is important.
The film pays homage to Martin Scorsese’s ‘Mean Streets’.
6. Tesla still needed a lead investor who would pony up the bulk of the $7 million needed to make what’s known as a mule or a prototype vehicle.
pony up sth: to find or produce a particular amount of money
All investors had to pony up a minimum of $5000.
7. They also purchased some machine tools, hand tools, and floodlights to work at night and started to turn the facility into a hotbed of R&D activity.
A hotbed of sth: a place where a lot of a particular type of activity, especially bad or violent activity, happens
The university was a hotbed of radical protest.
8. It was still early days, for sure, but Tesla was on the verge of inventing battery technology that would set it apart from rivals for years to come and would become one of the company’s great advantages.
Be on the verge of sth/doing sth: to be at the point where sth is about to happen
Jess seemed on the venge of tears/ a nervous breakdown.
The show was on the verge of being canceled due to low ratings.
Verge on/ upon sth: to be very close to a harmful or extreme state
Many of Lewis’s activities verged on the illegal.
Some of his ideas are verging on the dangerous.
PART 3 Thoughts
Had anyone from Detroit stopped by Tesla Motors at this point, they would have ended up in hysterics. The sum total of the company's automotive expertise was that a couple of the guys at Tesla really liked cars and another one had created a series of science fair projects based on technology that the automotive industry considered ridiculous. What's more, the founding team had no intention of turning to Detroit for advice on how to build a car company.
看过这样一句话印象非常深：“When it feels scary to jump, that is exactly when you jump. Otherwise, you end up staying in the same place your whole life.” 很多时候我们都在等待一个万事俱备的时机来开始一件事情，但往往导致的结果是这件事情还没有开始就已经结束了。还记得大一的时候有个非常牛的律所招实习生，但由于担心自己学历太浅没有优势就想着再过两年申请，两年以后又由于种种的原因导致自己从未给这家心仪已久的律所投过简历。“明日复明日，明日何其多。日日待明日，万事成蹉跎。” 人真的有种懒惰和胆怯的天性，所以敦促自己去实现一个目标的最好方式就是迈出第一步，不管这一步多么的随便和潦草，因为只有迈出了第一步才能给自己斩断后路逼迫自己前行。