Tesla Success Story, Journey

Story of Tesla

Tesla is an American company of electronic vehicles and clean energy. In the previous time the headquarters of tesla was in Palo Alto later Tesla officially moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin Texas, United States. Now Tesla is the most valuable company in the world and it is also considered as the most valuable automaker. Tesla designs and manufactures electric cars, battery energy storage from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar roof tiles, and related products and services. The owner of Tesla is Elon Musk.

The company develops and is a major installer of photovoltaic systems in the United States through its subsidiary Tesla energy. The market shares of tesla are 17% in plug-in and 23% in the battery-electric segment. As of 2020, Tesla Energy is also one of the largest global suppliers of battery energy storage systems, with 3 gigawatt-hours (GWh) installed. Tesla was founded by a group of Silicon Valley engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. The name of the company is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla.

This group of engineers wanted to prove to the people that electric vehicles can be better quicker and more fun to drive as compared to gasoline vehicles. Tesla also wants the people to stop using fossil fuels and move forward to zero-emission toward a better future. At first, Eberhard and Tarpenning served as CEO and CFO respectively. Eberhard said he wanted to build "a car manufacturer that is also a technology company". The third employee of Tesla was Ian Wright.

In February 2004 the company received funding. This year Elon Musk joins Tesla as an investor. Later Elon Musk became the chairman of the board of directors and the largest shareholder of Tesla. In May 2004 J. B. Straubel joined Tesla as Chief Technical Officer. Elon Musk became the chairman of the company in 2004. The company plan for a business consists of three steps.

The first step was to produce a high-performance sports car to prove that electric cars are so cool and feasible. The second step was to make the car with high-end features and go beyond the average necessities and to make the product which will compete will high brand VMW and Mercedes. The third step was to produce electric vehicles that will be affordable.

But after all these planning Elon musk believes that the manufacturing car would cost 65,000 but actually the cost to build one has climbed to 140,000 and now at this stage the tesla was in big trouble because it was a matter of money-losing before even a single car was delivered. But at this time Elon Musk was the only lead investor and he did not run the company. When all these happening the SpaceX rocket was failing to reach the orbit of the earth. In 2007 he converted 8 million preferred shared in common. Now Martin Eberhard was asked to step down as the CEO from the board of directors.

Both the founders of Tesla left the company in 2008 and later Michael Mark which was an investor the former head of Flextronics stepped in as the interim CEO. But this interim CEO drew up a list which was the roadblocks for tesla in way of building a car. At this time tesla counter product problems. Meanwhile, a few media experts attacked tesla and saying that it would fail and the company was worthless, and many other bad comments. But Elon was not ready to concede his company defeat.

He thinks that the combustion engine made the people of the world dependent on oil which causes pollution and climate change. In December Ze’ve Drori became the CEO and president by replacing interim CEO Michael Marks. Later the tesla was able to overcome his production problems on Roadster. Elon musk accumulated hundreds of orders for $ 109,000 roadster sports car. At this time Elon accomplished the first step of tesla. Now the Elon musk was moved to the second step with the S model.

Later when Tesla started production of the S model in September 2008 the US stock market crashed. At this point, the investors of tesla only wanted to do one thing which was they wanted to put the money in the startup Car Company. As the days passed in 2008, Elon watched that the bank balance of tesla drop. By the end of this year, Tesla had less than $500,000 in the bank.

At this time the Elon musk had a nervous breakdown and this was a hard time for tesla. But at this point also Elon musk didn’t give up and he know what needed to happen. He know that he needed to make the roadster profitable and build battery packs for Daimler’s smart cars. Then they decided to use that revenue to make the tesla live long at this first time tesla also take a loan from the bank and launched the model S. At this time he became the CEO of Tesla.

Later persuaded other investors to give emergency funds. In the hard times of company Tesla, Elon Musk put most of his own money into it.

“At that point, every day was like eating a glass and staring into abyss of death.” ~ Elon Musk

These emergency funds of tesla make it afloat. Later the Daimler finally felt confident enough to buy 1,000 batteries from tesla. Later in June 2009 united states department of energy under the Obama administration. After he approved a $ 465 loan for tesla as part of the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program.

On June 29 the tesla went public on NASDAQ and the IPO raised $226 million for Tesla. These funds help tesla to start the production of the Model S which came into the market in 2012. In 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized Obama and called the tesla a loser. In 2013 the Elon musk announced that tesla prepared the full amount that they take as a loan and later tesla became the only company that has paid back the loan of the government.

Tesla launched Model X SUV in 2015. The hard work of Elon musk made tesla's most valuable company in the world. Elon Musk plays the most important role in the success story of tesla.