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Where did Tesla get its name?
I continue to be mildly fascinated with how car companies come up with all the names for their makes and models. I know that Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla, but he surprisingly didn’t name the car after himself. Where did the Tesla name come from?
Mary Cahill · Updated on
Reviewed by Shannon Martin, Licensed Insurance Agent.
Somehow driving a Musk doesn’t sound as cool as driving a Tesla. Tesla got its name from Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American electrical engineer, inventor, and scientific trailblazer.
Tesla (the person) enjoyed a certain degree of prominence in the early 20th century, working alongside renowned inventor Thomas Edison and entrepreneur George Westinghouse in New York City. Tesla arrived in New York with the goal of getting funding for his prized invention, the AC motor.
Despite being way ahead of his time with developments in radio technology and electrical currents, Nikola Tesla did not receive the recognition he deserved. Some say it’s due to him being highly idiosyncratic and largely misunderstood. As a result, he died a penniless recluse in the New Yorker Hotel at the age of 86.
To Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it made perfect sense to name his groundbreaking electric car after the man who made such futuristic contributions to science and technology. Unfortunately, the Tesla name was already taken by another company—but Musk and his co-founders managed to wrangle it out of their hands for a cool $75,000.
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