TESLA

Who are the Tesla founders? 

Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla in 2003. Ian Wright joined a short time later.

In February 2004, Elon Musk led the Series A funding round by joining the board as chairman and later as CEO.

Tesla appointed JB Straubel as Chief Technical Officer in 2004.

A legal agreement was agreed between Eberhard, Tarpenning, Musk, Wright and Straubel to call themselves Tesla founders.

CEO Elon Musk is a famous businessman, engineer, and investor who founded SpaceX and PayPal. Eberhard was Tesla's first CEO but was replaced in 2007 by Musk. Eberhard remains on Tesla's board of directors and is an integral part of the Tesla community today.

Tesla was originally named after Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current.

Nikola Tesla was born July 10 1856, over 160 years ago. He registered more than 300 patents and envisioned many more inventions. He is known as the Father of the alternating current (AC) foundation of much of contemporary technology.

Nikola Tesla also considered himself an inventor of wireless communication and the radio. He is first credited with proposing the idea of solar power, which would later become more popularised.

Tesla appeared on the front of Time magazine to celebrate his 75th birthday.

Elon Musk wanted to name Tesla Motors 'Tesla' after Nikola Tesla, which forced him to change his company's original name from "SRA" (Silicon-Valley motors (he was not fond of the name he chose.

Tesla Motors' original name was "SRA", and it stood for "Silicon Valley Automotive." The founders wanted to focus on Silicon Valley because Tesla's technology is based on advanced computer systems, which were mostly built with silicon (hence the name Tesla).