Tesla was founded to prove that people didn’t need to compromise to drive electric cars. The company now builds more than just all-electric cars.
Tesla, earlier called Tesla Motors, was initially established by a group of engineers who wanted to show that electric cars could be better, and faster to drive than gasoline vehicles. Tesla now manufactures all-electric vehicles. It also makes endlessly scalable sustainable energy generation and storage systems. Tesla believes that the world should transition away from fossil fuels and toward a zero-emission future faster.
Tesla was named after Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla and has now become a manufacturer of electric automobiles, automotive batteries, solar panels, and residential power storage. The company was launched in 2003 by its first CEO, Martin Eberhard and CFO Marc Tarpenning.
PayPal cofounder Elon Musk and others invested money into the company. Musk served as chairman of the board of directors beginning in 2004 and became CEO in 2008, which was also the year when Tesla Motors debuted their first vehicle, the all-electric Roadster.
In corporate tests, the all-electric Roadster attained a range of 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge, a record for a production electric car.
Additional testing revealed that the Roadster’s performance was comparable to that of many gasoline-powered sports cars.
Despite a $7,500 federal tax credit for buying an electric vehicle, the Roadster’s price of $109,000 made it a premium item.
The company introduced Tesla Autopilot, a type of semiautonomous driving, in 2014 on the Model S. (and later on other models).
It began building Supercharger stations in the United States and European countries in 2012. The goal was to charge batteries quickly and at no extra cost to owners.
In 2015, the brand introduced the Model X, a “crossover” vehicle (a vehicle having aspects of a sport-utility vehicle but built on a car chassis).
It began constructing massive plants known as Gigafactories to manufacture batteries and automobiles.
Because of the desire for a more affordable vehicle, manufacturing of the Model 3, a four-door sedan with a range of up to 353 miles (568 km) and a price of $35,000, began in 2017.
The company’s name was changed to Tesla, Inc. in 2017 to indicate that it no longer sold only cars.
With a spectacular 184% growth in brand value, Tesla has now become the fastest-growing brand of 2021.
