Story - A junk electric golf cart found
at Door County's Alpine Resort and
the path that discovery lead a young
man down.
Tesla Motors Secret Weapon
It's Co-Founder and how he
found early inspiration in
Door County.
Some of the world's greatest inspirations,
ideas, and inventions have humble begin-
nings. One of those humble beginnings
occurred when a 14-year-old kid found a
golf cart in a small Wisconsin town, called
Egg Harbor –it turned out that young JB
Straubel's inspiration would develop and
change the auto industry decades later.
Because of his technological innovation,
we may soon leave gasoline-powered
cars in the past …thanks to an inspiration
that took place right here in beautiful
Door County.
JB Straubel: A Battery-Powered Mind
Bill, the owner of Alpine Golf Course
still remembers when the young, in-
quisitive kid asked to purchase the
rusty old golf cart. Straubel spent
quite a bit of time, snooping around
the resort's junkyard, which was con-
veniently located right near his fami-
ly's summer home in Door County's
Egg Harbor. Since that warm Wiscon-
sin summer day, Straubel has gone
from tinkering with electric-powered
golf cart motors to receiving his mas-
ters in energy engineering from
Stanford University. After that, he
designed hybrid electric propulsion
airplane platforms for Volacom, and
developed a hybrid electric vehicle
drive train
for Rosen Motors. He maintained his
association with his partner and em-
ployer, Harold Rosen, who is
also known for being the "father of
the geostationary satellite" and for
Co-founder JB Straubel found
early inspiration in Door County.