"As Tesla grew, Straubel was the internal champion for building the Supercharger network and the company's own battery factories, not just the cars themselves."
"Cal Lankton, Redwood's chief commercial officer, worked on charging infrastructure and energy sales at Tesla. At first, he says, utilities argued that grid-scale batteries wouldn't work and that they wouldn't use the technology."
"In 2017, after Tesla reached the milestone of mass-producing the Model 3, Straubel began work on Redwood on the side, and officially left the automaker in 2019 to begin launching Redwood."
"Investors were initially skeptical about his new project. '[They were] maybe a little bit confused, in a way, like, 'You're starting a garbage...'"
Redwood's strategy is rooted in early adoption of innovative ideas in energy and transportation. Straubel's history includes designing electric cars at Stanford and pitching electric sports cars to investors. Elon Musk recognized his potential and brought him to Tesla, where he championed the Supercharger network and battery factories. Despite initial skepticism about energy storage using lithium-ion batteries, the technology gained acceptance as costs decreased and demand increased. After leaving Tesla in 2019, Straubel faced investor skepticism again while launching Redwood.
Read at Fast Company
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