I would be interested to know. The origination of this site, the founders, motivations. No agenda, just came to mind that it was different when there was another blog already viable from Tesla. Just interested, nobody needs to reply.
Daniel is an international man of mystery. He was very young when he started the forum, and I think it was half enthusiasm and have entrepreneureal instinct. Original forum announcement: The Future of Cars is Electric | Blog | Tesla Motors Over the years he seems very hands-off considering it was his idea. I think he has other interests that occupy most of his thoughts. But, I really don't know much.
On this page you can sort by start date and see who the first people were. Interesting to note some of these people have relatively low involvement, considering 6 years... Member List - Tesla Motors Club - Enthusiasts & Owners Forum Edit: Or just go to top menu - Community, then Member List.
There were two other Tesla forum attempts by others besides Tesla's. This one stuck. Tesla also had an "owners only" forum that was really dreat for about a year. Then they started censoring and that quickly killed it. After they redesigned the website (Black to white BGx) I think it went away(?) Teslas public blog was also great for a while (black) with key employees writing blog posts and answering questions, including Martin the CEO. (who also had his own blog later.)