also, sonsini’s an interesting choice. i believe the man was once described as the “Larry Bird of Silicon Valley. The go-to guy when you need the thing to work.” (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/27/8394382/index.htm)

So, what’s not working? If your primary goal here is ramping up production to meet targets, get cars into customer hands, and actually fill that Apple Store lookalike you’ve built in Los Angeles with a saleable product, why didn’t you get a board member with a background in, I don’t know, cars? I hear Lee Iaccoca isn’t too busy these days.

It’s interesting that you’ve chosen to focus here on “corporate governance and corporate finance.” Did WS Investments take a stake in Tesla?

Lets start with the fact that Larry Sonsini does not just join boards of people who want his legal assistance. If that were the case he would be on many hundreds of boards. His joining our board has nothing to do with the lawsuits you mention, although his experience in such matters is obviously valuable, as is his experience in other areas of corporate governance and corporate finance.

Regarding production of the Roadster: we anticipated a slow ramp and are a bit behind the schedule in the early going (as we reported to our customers and on our blog), but that has nothing to do with the fact that we “are relying on third party components.” What does that even mean? All car manufacturers rely on third party components for all their cars.

Our planned acceleration of production when the final transmission is completed has nothing to do with the Magna lawsuit. The transmission that Magna designed, which proved not to be durable, is history. The lawsuit is over a disagreement as to what is owed at the conclusion of that relationship. Our plans for the permanent transmission are unrelated to the lawsuit and have no connection to it. On what basis are you conditioning our completion of the final transmission to the conclusion of that legal matter?

This article is a poor mashup of other people’s reporting with some lazy speculation thrown in. I’m all for open discussion and healthy criticism but this is just bad reporting.

Darryl from Tesla.