Tesla Alum Takes on Battery Tech at Startup Atieva

The team at battery tech startup Atieva didn't plan on using high-profile electric-car startup Tesla Motors as Battery Class 101. But that's what it ending up being for many of the engineers at the two-year-old Mountain View (Calif.)-based startup; almost a third of the founding team (and about a fifth of the current one) learned the ropes at Tesla before joining Atieva. Founded by former Tesla Vice-President Bernard Tse and Astoria Networks founder Sam Weng, the company is developing software for monitoring individual battery cells, mechanical packaging, and controls for battery packs in plug-in vehicles.

Atieva isn't using the technology Tse and some of the other Atieva engineers worked on at Tesla, but Mike Harrigan, another former Tesla VP who joined Atieva as chief of sales and marketing earlier this year (Atieva now has about 30 people, mostly engineers), said in an interview this week that the new venture still takes lessons from Tesla. In addition to the industry connections Tse made during his time there, he and other engineers acquired basic knowledge about the demands on electric-car batteries. Such expertise, along with a tight focus on battery pack tech, which is not as capital-intensive as the manufacturing and distribution of actual cars, may help Atieva to avoid some of the delays, detours, and financial troubles that Tesla has encountered.