Published 12:30 29 Jul 2025 GMT+1

Tesla founder reveals how to actually pronounce the company name

The EV company was first founded back in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning

Rikki Loftus

The founder of Tesla has finally revealed the real way to pronounce the company name.

Despite it's inseparable connection to Elon Musk today, EV company was first founded back in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

And now, over two decades later, Eberhard has finally shared how the firm is meant to be pronounced.

The mogul appeared in an exclusive interview with YouTuber Kim Java where he talked about how he had a spark of inspiration for the name during dinner at Disneyland.

During the chat, Eberhard said: “I had been thinking about a name for the company for a while now and I didn’t like anything. I tried this and tried that and I - naming a company is difficult anyways, I never pick on somebody for the name of the company because if you manage to get the domain name and get the trademark, congratulations, no matter how lame the name - but so I had thought of a lot of lame names that I didn’t like.

“The idea of Tesla came to me because I was thinking about the motor I wanted to use. It came to me while I was on a date with a woman who became my wife.

“We went to dinner in Disneyland. There’s a cool restaurant in Disneyland, it’s called the Blue Bayou… it overlooks the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.”

While at the restaurant, Eberhard suggested the name to his partner, Caroline.

He continued: “She liked it immediately. She was like, ‘oh, I think you’re behind schedule now. You need to get to work’.

And then the next two days later, the next day on my usual Wednesday coffee with Marc, which we still do by the way, I suggested to him Tesla Motors as the name of our company and he hadn’t even agreed that we’re going to do a company yet, but we’re in a cafe and he taps on his computer for a moment and says, ‘oh, now we own the domain name’.”