Photo courtesy David Havasi
David Havasi was a car guy from birth. He grew up near Auburn Hills, and his dad worked in the auto industry. “My childhood was steeped in Detroit auto culture,” he told me. “That’s what we talked about at the dinner table. My dad would bring home lab cars — like a library book, but it was a car. He worked on minivans, K-cars, a lot of projects that were revolutionary for their time, so I really got to appreciate innovation. His last project was the PT Cruiser, which basically invented the crossover segment.”
As Tesla co-founders Marc Tarpenning, Martin Eberhard, and Elon Musk did, Havasi felt the conflict between his love of speed and his concern for the environment. “I loved performance cars like the Viper and the Stealth — I learned how to drive on those cars. For me having a car was not utilitarian, and still isn’t. It was recreational — every drive is recreational. But there was this inner conflict — usually the more fun a car was to drive, the worse it was for the environment. It was a dichotomy that I really struggled with.”