Tesla, Inc. – History

Tesla was initially founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in July 2003. The name Tesla was derived as a gift of tribute to the inventor of electricity Nikola Tesla. Then in February 2004, Elon Musk invested 7 million dollars into Tesla, becoming the largest shareholder of the company. During the initial time, Tesla faced difficulties as it was unable to get funding from venture capitalists because people believed that electric cars are not sustainable. During the development of their first roadster car, Elon Musk played a huge role for Tesla in gaining capital funding. Tesla received its huge 40 million funding round in May 2006 led by Elon Musk through Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Then in 2008, Elon Musk became the CEO of Tesla Motors as both the founders left the company. Then in June 2010, Tesla became a public company by filing for its IPO on NASDAQ by raising 226 million dollars for 13.5 million shares. The model S Sedan by Tesla was awarded several achievements and it was ranked the best car worldwide in 2012 and 2013. Tesla also announced a new feature called Tesla autopilot which is driver assistance and navigation system in all Tesla cars since 2014.

Tesla started to reduce its first ever vehicle called the Roadster in 2009 and then the Model S sedan car in 2012, the Model X SUV car in 2015, and the affordable Model 3 Sedan in 2017. It also launched a Model Y Crossover car in 2020. Out of all the given cars manufactured by Tesla, model 3 is the most affordable and highest-selling electric car all over the world with over 1.2 million units sold globally. Similarly, Tesla also launched its other vehicles like the Tesla semi-truck in November 2017 and Tesla Cyber Truck in November 2019.

Also entered the energy storage and manufacturing Market by Tesla power wall and Tesla power pack lithium-ion batteries for commercial and industrial purposes. One of the biggest controversies was when Tesla acquired SolarCity for 2.6 billion dollars for photovoltaic and solar cells in November 2016. Tesla shareholders accused Elon Musk of supporting his brother’s company Solar City because it was facing huge liquidity issues. So in August 2018, Elon Musk considered taking Tesla private by tweeting his opinions which created a huge lawsuit against Elon Musk and his company by the SEC for fraud and market manipulation with its shareholders.

Tesla is a popular American car production and clean energy company. It is currently headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company is popular for manufacturing electric vehicles like cars, trucks, and pickup trucks to reduce emissions and promote vehicles that use renewable energy. Tesla also manufactures batteries and solar panels and solar roof tiles for electric energy storage in homes. Tesla is currently one of the most valuable companies all over the world with a market capitalization of more than 1 trillion dollars. 

The chief executive of Tesla is Elon Musk, the world’s richest person. Tesla shares a huge percentage of manufacturing electric lithium batteries and superchargers for its electric cars. Tesla energy which is a subsidiary company of Tesla has installed more than 4 gigabytes hours of energy and it is the largest global supplier of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Despite the huge success of Tesla in the electric vehicle market, it has also faced several lawsuits and controversies due to death caused by the autopilot mode in Tesla and also some tweets made by CEO Elon Musk.