Behind the look of every Tesla is the vision of one man.
And no, it’s not Elon Musk.
You may have become aware of Franz von Holzhausen when he smashed a Cybertruck window by accident.
Oh my f***ing God. Well, maybe that was a little too hard.
And then the same thing happened again.
Awww man!
Softening the truck with a sledgehammer beforehand certainly didn’t help!
Franz von Holzhausen is the lead designer at Tesla, arguably one of the best in the world.
Anyway, welcome Franz.
Awesome to have you guys.
Designing is in his blood.
His father was an industrial designer in Connecticut
and Franz followed in his footsteps, studying industrial design at Syracuse University.
However, while working for his dad, an intern mentioned a design school
out in LA which piqued his interest, so he left Syracuse two years into his studies
and enrolled at the ArtCenter College of Design. He also spent time at its
sister campus in Switzerland which exposed him to European influences.
He wanted a career that focused on his love of cars.
He once said it was important for him to design products that were not just
beautiful but useful to people.
In 1992, he joined Volkswagen straight out of school to work on a top-secret project:
redesigning the Beetle.
The Concept One is all but forgotten today.
But in 1994, people went crazy for the new take on the retro design.
It looked a lot simpler than the Beetle of the sixties.
Von Holzhausen had an eye for minimalism early in his career.
He realized the look of a car could change the way people felt about a brand.
The new Beetle brought back a sense of nostalgia and helped reinvigorate a company in decline.
Soon, other brands decided to go retro: Chrysler with the PT Cruiser,
the Mini Cooper, and Ford with the fifth-generation Mustang.
After nearly eight years at VW, he moved to General Motors…where he
led the design for Pontiac’s Solstice and the Saturn Sky.
Although they didn’t do well sales-wise, they were seen as really “cool” roadsters. Pure and fun.
But as it turned out, working at a big car company with a huge design team
wasn’t his thing…as he couldn’t make the kind of impact he knew he could make.
Von Holzhausen put it this way during an interview with Ashlee Vance for his biography on Elon Musk:
“I knew I didn’t want to die there.”
After five years at GM, Mazda came calling.
Von Holzhausen produced concept cars that reinvigorated Mazda.
Or, as von Holzhausen put it to Vance:
Zoom zoom.
Three years later, in 2008, he left Mazda for Tesla.
A friend had told von Holzhausen that Tesla was looking for a chief designer.
He reached out to Musk’s assistant Mary Beth Brown and eventually met
Musk for an interview at SpaceX headquarters.
Musk liked what he saw and sold it as an opportunity to leave a cushy job
to work for a company that could potentially shape the future.
They took a drive in the Roadster and Von Holzhausen thought to himself,
as he recalled to Vance:
He said most of his colleagues thought he was crazy for joining Tesla.
It was super risky. Very few car start-ups succeed. Back then,
Musk only gave Tesla a 10% shot of surviving.
Musk hired von Holzhausen specifically to design the Model S.
He didn’t have much to work with - just a few sketches and a clay model.
He knew the Model S would need to be ICONIC. This would be the foundation for the entire Tesla line.
He once said it needed to attract people like a moth to a flame.
He designed the Model S in a corner of SpaceX’s factory and
reportedly worked on the prototype in a tent to keep away from prying eyes.
Musk handed over the creative reins to von Holzhausen but he did stipulate
that the Model S needed to be cool like an Aston Martin or a Porsche.
It needed to have a touchscreen as iPhone technology was now all the rage
and Musk knew it would soon be commonplace.
But a touchscreen had never before been installed in a car. And the iPad was still years away.
Musk and von Holzhausen also drove the engineers crazy when they insisted on a smooth,
clean look for the door handles - as in, they only
stuck out when the door had to be opened. Despite the reluctance of the engineers, in
the end, they got their way! Musk also insisted on making the
body of the Model S out of aluminum rather than steel to compensate for the heavy battery pack.
Except car companies in North America had no experience producing body panels made of aluminum.
Aluminum is prone to cracking when it’s bent. It can also
develop lines that can make it difficult to hide with paint.
But the Tesla engineers got it done.
The year von Holzhausen joined Tesla, in 2008, the company struggled financially. In fact,
Tesla nearly went bankrupt on Christmas Eve.
That’s why von Holzhausen desperately wanted to show the Model S to the world,
to get people excited about what the company had to offer.
In March 2009, just six months after von Holzhausen joined the team,
Tesla unveiled a grey Model S at a media event.
The media fawned over it.
Wired magazine described it as a “stunningly beautiful car”
Few knew it at the time, but the Model S was far from being ready for the road. Unbeknownst
to reporters, the car had the base structure of a Mercedes CLS according to Ashlee Vance.
The Mercedes CLS was the foundation they used when working on the S.
Despite the work that still had to be done, Tesla achieved its goal of convincing people that it
could make beautiful electric cars…and compete with the big players like Audi, Mercedes, and BMW.
The Model S was a commercial success and proved to doubters there was indeed a market for EVs.
The original Model S was delivered in 2012 but it doesn’t show its age even
ten years later. It still looks pretty modern today.
The newer version of the S no longer includes the nose cone at the front, amongst other changes.
That was decorative, not functional, so they took it away - simplifying the look even more.
Von Holzhausen’s motto from the start has been simplicity without excess.
Which has been baked into every Tesla since - including the Model 3,
and will be an integral part of every Tesla to come.
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