Tesla Workers Killed in Plane Crash Are Identified as Feds Launch Investigation
By Scott Doggett February 18, 2010By Scott Doggett, Contributing Editor
Federal investigators today are examining the site of a small plane crash in a Silicon Valley neighborhood that killed three employees of electric-car maker Tesla Motors, and sources identified the dead.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were on site today trying to reconstruct what happened by interviewing witnesses and inspecting wreckage and skid marks on the street.
The twin-engine Cessna 310 went down in East Palo Alto Wednesday after taking off from a nearby airport shrouded in fog. The plane struck a 10-story-tall electrical tower and pummeled in pieces, killing its three occupants.
Investigators plan to release a preliminary report on their findings next week.
Sources told Green Car Advisor that the dead were Doug Bourn, 56, of Santa Clara; Brian M. Finn, 42, of East Palo Alto; and Andrew Ingram, 31, of Palo Alto. All three men were engineers for Tesla, the Silicon Valley company that makes highway-capable electric cars.
Bourn, who received his pilot's license in 1974, owned the plane that took off from the Palo Alto Airport about 7:55 a.m. Wednesday headed for Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Los Angeles County, where Tesla has a design studio.
Shortly afterward, in heavy fog, the plane collided with electrical tower and fell onto houses below. No one on the ground was injured.
According to his LinkedIn page, Bourn was a senior electrical engineer whose specialties included digital logic design, analog circuit design, and test fixture design and construction. Next month would have marked the beginning of his sixth year at Tesla.
Immediately prior to joining Tesla, Bourn was senior electrical engineer for IDEO, and before that he was owner of Lexington Engineering, a contract electronic engineering services company, for seven years.
Bourn earned a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He listed motorcycling, flying, skydiving and scuba diving as his interests on his LinkedIn page.
Brian M. Finn held the position of senior manager of interactive electronics since July 2008. In that capacity, he created strategy for multimodal driver information and infotainment systems and develop human-machine interaction for connected multimedia applications.
Prior to that position, Finn was manager of human-machine interaction/multimedia for
Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab for three years. Prior to that, he was team leader, telematics/interior comfort, for Volkswagen of America.
Finn held a master's of science degree in electrical engineering and a bachelor's of science degree in physics from Northern Illinois University. He listed guitar, gardening, cycling and skiing as his interests on his LinkedIn page.
Andrew Ingram was an electrical engineer at Tesla. According to his LinkedIn page, prior to joining Tesla he was an applications engineer at Dolby Laboratories for 3 years, and before than was technical specialist for the law firm Christie, Parker, and Hale.
Ingram received a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 2001. He did not provide any further information on his LinkedIn page.
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