*Story of TESLA* The U.S. electric car market includes the est | Brain Vibe ®

*Story of TESLA*
The U.S. electric car market includes the established automakers such as Ford (F) and Chevrolet (GM). But one company stands out from the car maker mix, and that is Tesla Motors (TSLA). Tesla entered the media spotlight in 2013 along with its CEO Elon Musk when it unleashed its flagship car the Model S.

Tesla’s release has been a hit with not only car buyers, but also catapulted the company into the spotlight as one of the few successful independent automakers along with being a pioneer when it comes to the electric car market.


The Model S, a sleek luxury sedan that starts at $69,000, has received top ratings from the trade industry and the press. Car & Driver has given the car five stars, and when the Model S first came out in 2013 Tesla made headlines when trade press gave it laurels. The electric plug-in car received a near perfect score of 99 out of 100 from Consumer Reports, which also named it as “the best car ever tested.” (For more, see: The Economics Of Owning A Tesla Car.)

By September 2014 the car hit all-time sales records in the U.S. with 2,500 sold, and in Q1 2015 sales reached a new high at 10,030. It is now considered a staple within the electric car stratosphere. The company’s market capitalization, as of May 24, 2015 was $31.3 billion.


Contrary to popular belief, Tesla is not an overnight success, and it is no longer a start-up so much as it is a pioneer in the electric car market. The company was founded in 2003 by two Silicon Valley engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who, according to the company website, “wanted to prove that electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.”

The seeds of the company go back to 1990 when Tarpenning met Eberhard, then an engineer at Wyse Technology, and they became good friends. The two had much in common including a passion for starting companies, and they soon launched companies including NuvoMedia, which released the Rocket eBook in 1998. A passion for autos started soon after Eberhard went through a divorce and decided to buy a sports car. He invested in a company and boutique electric auto maker called AC Propulsion, and wondered if this was a market he could get into.

In 2001 Eberhard and Tarpenning met Musk when they heard him speak at a Mars Society talk at Stanford University and introduced themselves. Musk came with a successful history of starting up companies. He along with Peter Thiel and Max Levchin were co-founders of PayPal. After making a fortune from his shares in PayPal after the company was sold to eBay in 2002, he launched another company Space X, which designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft (For more, see: The Making Of Tesla: Invention, Betrayal, And The Birth Of The Roadster.)


A few years later their paths would cross again when Eberhard and Tarpenning asked to meet Musk to share their idea of the electric car with him. The three met to discuss the idea with Musk on board.

Tesla was officially incorporated in 2003 with the goal of inventing an electric car that was powerful and beautiful with zero emissions. Other co-founders were JB Straubel who is still the CTO at Tesla and Ian Wright who left Tesla in 2004 and founded another company Wrightspeed.

In 2004 the company’s co-founders went through initial rounds of investing with venture capital firms. Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, came into the picture a year later when he led the initial round of funding for the company, and joined as the head of the board of directors.