Before Tesla was Tesla, it was a startup without a name, run by two engineers — Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning — who were certain about the car and stuck on what to call it. Eberhard has said he wanted a name that honored the inventor whose technology sat at the heart of the project: the AC induction motor, patented by Nikola Tesla in 1888. The car they were designing would be powered by a direct descendant of that motor. Naming the company after the engineer was almost too obvious.
According to Eberhard, the name came to him at a restaurant in Disneyland in 2003, on a date with the woman who would become his wife. He proposed 'Tesla Motors' across the table. She approved. The company was incorporated that July.
There was just one problem, and it was a thoroughly modern one: the name already belonged to somebody else.
The Man in Sacramento
A Sacramento-area man named Brad Siewert had registered trademark rights in 'Tesla Motors' back in 1994 — nearly a decade before Eberhard's dinner in Anaheim. Siewert wasn't building cars, but his registration sat squarely on the name the founders wanted, and in trademark law, a prior registration is a wall, not a suggestion.
The startup approached him, and the early negotiations went nowhere. Eberhard has described the resolution in his telling of the company's origin: after months of getting no response, he sent a final offer and dispatched it dramatically — a courier on a motorcycle carrying a check for $75,000. Siewert took the deal. For less than the price of one of the Roadsters the company would eventually sell, Tesla Motors bought the right to be called Tesla Motors.
The pattern to notice: the trademark existed years before the famous company did. 'Tesla Motors' (1994), like countless other names, was claimed by someone with no connection to the eventual brand. Whether a registrant is a visionary, a speculator, or someone with an abandoned project, the legal position is the same — the newcomer pays, rebrands, or fights. Tesla paid.
The Domain Took Another Decade
Buying the trademark didn't buy the internet address. Tesla.com had been registered in 1992 by a Silicon Valley engineer named Stu Grossman — two years before Siewert's trademark, eleven years before the car company existed. Grossman wasn't squatting in the pejorative sense; he'd held the domain since the era when registering one was something only network engineers thought to do. And he was in no hurry to sell.
So the car company launched as teslamotors.com and stayed there for its entire rise: the Roadster, the Model S, the IPO, the Gigafactories. Not until February 2016 did tesla.com finally change hands — terms undisclosed, though contemporary reporting placed the price in the millions. The redirect flipped that summer, completing a corporate identity that had taken thirteen years and two separate purchases to assemble. The timing was not cosmetic: the company was dropping 'Motors' from its name as it expanded into energy storage and solar — Tesla, Inc. needed tesla.com.
The Name Was Still Worth It
It's worth pausing on what the founders were buying. 'Tesla' is, in trademark terms, close to ideal for a car company: not descriptive (it says nothing literal about electric vehicles), historically resonant, short, pronounceable in every market, and — once the prior rights were cleared — fiercely protectable. The name also did narrative work no invented word could: every story about the company carried a built-in homage to a scientist who died broke and under-credited, which became part of the brand's mythology.
Nikola Tesla himself never trademarked his own name. He died in 1943 in a New York hotel room, his estate too thin to defend much of anything. Eighty years later, his surname is among the most valuable brand assets on earth — owned by a company he never knew, which had to buy it twice: once from a man in Sacramento, and once from an engineer who'd simply gotten to the internet first.
And Then It Happened Again — in China
Two purchases in the United States still didn't secure the name everywhere. When Tesla prepared to enter China — soon to be its second-biggest market — it discovered that a Chinese businessman, Zhan Baosheng, had registered "Tesla" trademarks there years earlier, around 2006. China operates on a strict first-to-file system: whoever registers a mark first generally owns it, regardless of who used it elsewhere in the world. Zhan had gotten there first.
The dispute dragged on with lawsuits in both directions before the two sides reached a settlement in 2014 that cleared Zhan's marks and domains and let Tesla operate freely in China. It was the same lesson the company had already learned twice at home, now with far higher stakes: a trademark is territorial, and a brand is only yours in the countries where you've actually secured it. The world's most famous EV maker had to buy its own name on three separate fronts — Sacramento, a Silicon Valley domain, and Beijing — before it truly owned the word "Tesla."
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Tesla named after Nikola Tesla?
The founders honored the inventor of the AC induction motor — the technology at the heart of the company's electric cars. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning chose the name in 2003, before Elon Musk joined as an investor and chairman.
Did Tesla Motors own the Tesla name from the start?
No — the trademark rights had to be secured from a prior holder. Accounts of the early company describe paying tens of thousands of dollars to acquire the Tesla Motors name, a common situation when a desirable mark is already claimed.
Can you trademark a historical person's name?
Generally yes, if the person is deceased and the name isn't otherwise protected — though distinctiveness still matters, and living individuals' names require their consent in most jurisdictions. 'Tesla' for cars was arbitrary enough to become a strong mark.
What does the Tesla story teach about name conflicts?
Check ownership before falling in love with a name. The company solved its conflict with money and negotiation early, while it was cheap relative to the brand equity that followed — waiting until after success multiplies the price.