Tesla and its CEO are quite certainly one of the most, if not the most famous ‘corporation and leader’ duo among today’s millennial and gen Z population. So what exactly is it that has made Tesla so popular, and why is its CEO Elon Musk just as famous as well? Let’s delve into a brief history of how the brand came to be and what circumstances led it to become a world leader in its particular business stream.
Tesla, Inc. or simply known as Tesla is a major electric vehicle company, that almost every auto enthusiast knows (unless they’ve been living under a rock of course!), based in the United States of America. Founded on the 1st of July, 2003, the company has its present base of operations in Palo Alto, California and was named after Nikola Tesla, a pioneering inventor and scientific thinker who has been credited with a number of inventions whose applications are still very much prevalent today. The futuristic visions of this Serbian-American engineer were probably what motivated engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to name their company after this personality. After all, one was already an epitome of scientific prowess and the other- its namesake company would go on to become a well-known name in the automobile and clean energy sector.
Tesla’s founding
The company was founded on the inspiration that Eberhard and Tarpenning took from some of the leading companies of their time. A direct source of motivation behind its founding was GM’s EV1 and the ‘tzero’ by AC Propulsion. The former project ended up with several of their models crushed because GM did not foresee a profitable future in the EV market, a claim that Tesla ended up disproving some years down the line. On the other hand, AC Propulsion’s tzero became the underpinning model for Tesla’s Roadster- the company’s first ever vehicle. Sometime after its founding, Elon Musk, who was also intrigued by Tesla’s vision decided to fund the company- thereby getting officially involved in the company’s working.
Peter Tsai/Flickr
Principles behind its foundation
Tesla is a big name in electronic mobility, clean energy and all the other related sectors. Whether you like your automotive toys or if you’re simply a fan of technology, there is no doubt that you’ve heard of a little brand named Tesla. The company’s co-founder Martin Eberhard had once stated that he wanted Tesla Motors (as it was then called) to be ‘a car manufacturer that is also a technology company’ and rightly so, today Tesla is exactly what Eberhard envisioned it to be. The fundamental innovations in a Tesla model were set to be its battery, software and the motor which also became the core foundations of running Tesla cars.
On more occasions than one, Musk has said that the objective of Tesla is to accelerate the shift from conventional mobility and energy systems towards cleaner energy, and more sustainable and fuel-efficient automation. The sustainable transport objective is accomplished through Tesla’s electric vehicles while clean energy is achieved through the company’s research in solar power.
Working in accordance to the principles of its co-founders, Tesla has become a world leader in manufacturing and delivering its electric cars globally while its solar panels are highly sought after by American consumers.
Tesla’s First Car
Wanting to build upon the positive market reaction received by General Motors’ EV1 (even though this project was later scrapped), Eberhard and Tarpenning started to research into creating a sports car which would be run entirely on electricity. As unconventional as this thought was, it was exactly the kind of vision that the new brand needed in order to establish an identity for itself.
The project was also what reeled in its future CEO Elon Musk, who then invested large amounts of capital into the company. The Roadster prototype was first unveiled in 2006 at an exclusive invitation-only event, and two years later, the first Roadster had already been put into production. The electric sports car achieved a number of feats, some of them being the first ever achievements made by a car. Before the Roadster, electric cars were considered things of the far future which could not be viable options for daily usage mobility. Albeit a bit on the pricier side, this car proved that electric vehicles were not only powerful enough to stay on the road but were also efficient enough to offer large mileage levels per charge- a feat that other preceding EVs were notoriously known to have been unable to accomplish. It was also the first ever production car to be launched into orbit, a move that immediately propelled the company and Musk towards becoming mainstream technological pop culture icons.
The Roadster can travel 393 kilometres per single charge of its lithium-ion battery and accelerates from 0 to 100 in just 3.7 seconds- figures never before seen for a BEV (battery electric vehicle). The pioneering model remained in production until 2012 and sold more than two thousand models all around the globe.
Musk’s take-over of Company Leadership
After Tesla’s original two founders resigned from their posts, the CEO position was first temporarily given Michael Marks and then permanently to Ze’ev Drori in November, 2007. It was under Drori’s leadership that the Roadster made it to the market as a sellable product. However, not even a whole year had passed since Drori’s CEO-ship that Elon Musk (who also held a considerable chunk of the company’s shares) stepped forward and took over Tesla as its new Chief Executive Officer.
As soon as Musk acquired his new position, he laid off 25% of the company’s staff. Not only this, the transfer of power also suffered backlash from former members of the company, Eberhard and Tarpenning, who alleged that they had been forced out of the company. However, the suit was later dropped and just as at the start of his leadership, controversy seems to find Elon wherever he goes.
Tesla’s Financial Troubles
Although the company had launched and sold many Roadster models, it still did not have nearly enough cash to keep on going with its everyday operations. Following this, Daimler AG invested to get a 10% stake in the company, a 465 million loan from the Department of Energy and going public on NASDAQ helped Tesla regain some of its capital and get back on its feet.
This was sometime in 2009 and 2010 and less than a decade later the company once again underwent financial troubles leading to a pecuniary collapse worth 12 billion US dollars.
Musk’s Contributions to Tesla’s Controversies
Elon Musk is extremely active on Twitter, a fact that all his twitter followers as well as the general population are very well acquainted with He is known for his humorous and sometimes biting remarks on many topics which more often than not- end up stirring some kind of controversy and legal trouble for the popular businessman.
One of his 2018 tweets about privatization buyback of Tesla created uproar within the investors as it became a race to grab as many stocks as they possibly could, leading to a 10% increase in the company’s stock price. However, Tesla did not go private and had to bear the brunt of Elon’s social media mischief. The company paid a settlement fee of 20 million USD and Musk too was not spared as he had to step down from his position of the company’s Chairman of the Board of Directors. He kept his CEO position while the Chairwoman title was succeeded by Robyn Denholm.
Tesla’s Former and Upcoming Projects
After the Roadster, Tesla made its plans public of launching a sedan- the Tesla Model S. This was the company’s first sedan and a huge success. A few years later in 2015, the company also started probing into the solar energy sector and launched plans of powering homes with clean energy. The Model 3 is Tesla’s sedan which aims at a wider customer base, making it as affordable as possible. The company has also laid a huge network of superchargers all throughout the United States and Europe. Its latest project includes the Cybertruck, an electric pickup truck which already has more than two hundred thousand pre-orders. At the end of 2020, the company boasted about half a million Tesla vehicles sold and delivered to customers worldwide.
Despite huge setbacks to the company, both financially and legally, Tesla Inc. has managed to survive through it all and constantly innovate in mobility and energy sectors. This is also visible in the increase in sales as compared to its first year of production; in 2008 the electric car maker made an aggregate sale of 14.7 million USD and just over a decade later the figure had gone up to 24.5 billion USD. Tesla has also set into motion its plans of expanding into the Indian market. This year, the company is set to launch its first ever vehicle in India, the Tesla Model 3.
Favourite Car: '67 Camaro
Quote: Always focus on the front windshield and not the rearview mirror - Colin Powell
- up! can be Volkswagen’s answer to Maruti Swift & Hyundai i10 Nios in India - February 15, 2021
- Save Gotham! Somebody abandoned a Batmobile in Mumbai - January 24, 2021
- Should Honda e be the Japanese Automaker’s First Electric car in India? - January 22, 2021
