Tesla is the electric-car maker founded in 2003 in Palo Alto, California, and named after inventor Nikola Tesla.
The company was incorporated as Tesla Motors in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Elon Musk joined as an early major investor and became chairman in 2004; he later became chief executive. The company shortened its name to Tesla in 2017.
Tesla's first production vehicle was the Roadster, launched in 2008. It used lithium-ion battery cells and was based on the Lotus Elise platform, helping challenge the idea that electric cars had to be slow or impractical.
Tesla's market capitalization has often been much larger than that of other automakers, partly because investors value its potential in software, energy storage, and autonomous driving as well as vehicle sales.