Before Tesla became a $1.3 trillion juggernaut eyeing a potential megamerger with SpaceX, Elon Musk was writing a check to a then-27-year-old Stanford engineer who couldn’t get anyone to take his electric car idea seriously.
JB Straubel had spent years building solar-powered vehicles in his spare time “basically as a hobby,” he told Fortune earlier this month on the sidelines of its Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. “That was sort of my pathway into becoming passionate about electric vehicles, and then also meeting Elon, ultimately.”
