“It’s taken us about a year to correct major errors,” Mr. Musk told the New York Times. Eberhard has a snappy response: “Look at the constant factor at the company through all the years: Elon.” A history lesson from PayPal: Not until Peter Thiel replaced Musk as CEO, and he ceased day-to-day involvement with the company, did it thrive. (Photo by Peter DaSilva/New York Times)

To be fair, these pics were taken this past Sunday, so it's poor evidence the place is in fact a ghost town but let's just say a tumbleweed rolling through the parking lot wouldn't be out of place. Aside from the fancy sign out front and the etched glass doors, it looks like every other sparsely decorated suburban office we've ever seen.

We love the reading materials in the lobby — all the buff books, plus Vanity Fair, a book on classic cars, The Toyota Way and its wonderful explanation of "lean manufacturing" and the Toyota Production System (may we also recommend Machine That Changed The World and the End of Detroit). TPS, as you know, is the management process where a company welcomes questions and seeks to solve problems via all manner of available help. Openness and communication is key with TPS. Hmm, maybe they only got through the first couple of chapters.

Hilariously, our two favorite books laying around have to be the Tesla bio on the waiting room table sitting across from The Car That Could, a book about the life and death of GM's EV1. We'll let you draw your own conclusions from that one.

Musk lucked out twice, with the $300 million of a long-forgotten Internet portal, and the survival, despite his best efforts, of PayPal, the payments site now controlled by eBay. According to Elon Musk, Elon Musk was the driving force behind PayPal during his brief, tumultuous reign as CEO of the payments company. Musk's version of events is a fiction believed by no one else. I know this because I spoke to PayPal insiders regularly while he was CEO, and they told me of chaotic management, boneheaded marketing and technology decisions, and serious turnover under Musk's reign.

That is what Tesla has to look forward to. In some sense, it's already been enduring it since Musk ousted founder Martin Eberhard and replaced him with Drori last year. Musk has been working at the company for several days a week, Darryl Siry, Tesla's VP of marketing, tells me, in an effort to portray Drori's beheading as some kind of smooth transition.

With a parlous economy, Tesla was already in for a bumpy ride. Musk is keeping his second job as CEO of SpaceX, a private rocket company which has seen several botched launches. Add to that the infamous tale of his PayPal-era car crash, and you've got an entrepreneur who's better known for destroying vehicles than building them.

But autos are an expensive business, thoroughly dependent on free-flowing credit for their manufacture and sale. Tesla's high-end electrics, a status symbol in good times, now seem excessive; who wants to drive a $109,000 car into a half-empty parking lot? Siry says that the company's moves aren't driven by demand, which remains healthy.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed told the New York Times 1,000, but the company suggests the factory will only employ 400 to 500 says the Wall Street Journal, with 250 current employees moving to the new headquarters once complete. Contrast that to General Motors and Toyota's joint-venture Nummi plant in Fremont, Calif., which employs about 5,500 workers. (Photo by Emil Rensing)

"Tesla's Whitestar and Darkstar programs are DOA. The Detroit office is in trouble. it's all hands on deck to get the roadster to work"

With Tesla still having problems with delays and a growing list of people who want their product, a little shakeup at the top could be taken as a sign that this is a company with a future and not another niche carmaker disaster waiting to happen. (h/t Jared)[NY Times]