Watch: Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveals how the EV giant got its name

World's largest electric vehicle maker Tesla got its name in quite an amusing way. Some may think that the company's CEO Elon Musk might have come up with the name but that's not what happened. Interestingly, he wasn't around when the founders of the company first decided on the name. However, the name ‘Tesla’ was actually owned by a company in Sacramento, California and Tesla had to buy the name from that company for $75,000.

File photo of Tesla vehicles used for representational purpose. (AFP)
File photo of Tesla vehicles used for representational purpose.

A video of Musk explaining the whole process of getting the name ‘Tesla' for the electric vehicle company, has been posted on Twitter by Tesla Silicon Valley Club. In the video, he can be seen explaining to a woman that the owner of the Sacramento company came up with the name ‘Tesla’ and his company owned it. But since the EV team wanted this name for their company, they wanted to buy the name from the other firm.

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However, the owner was unwilling to sell the name ‘Tesla’. Musk said, “I sent the nicest guy in the company to just go sit on his doorstep and not leave until he agreed to sell it to us." He added that the nicest guy from his company who was sent for this mission is someone who is ‘impossible to anger’. Eventually, the owner of the name ‘Tesla’ agreed to sell off the name to Musk's EV company.

Also Read : Tesla to open Canada battery gear factory in Markham, Ontario

Acknowledging the Twitter post, Musk also revealed that the team had thought of an alternate name in case they couldn't buy ‘Tesla’ from the original owner. “Haha true! The top alternate name, if we couldn’t acquire the Tesla Motors trademark, was Faraday, which a competitor ended up using," he wrote.

It is also widely known that EV giant Tesla has been named after electrical engineer ‘Nikola Tesla’.

First Published Date: 06 Nov 2021, 12:49 PM IST
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