Tesla

Tesla Motors was incorporated in San Carlos, California by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Named after inventor Nikola Tesla, the company aimed to prove that electric vehicles could outperform gasoline sports cars.

Elon Musk succeeded Ze'ev Drori as CEO, injecting over $40 million of his personal funds to save Tesla from bankruptcy during the financial crisis. The first Tesla Roadster deliveries began, achieving 245-mile range and 0-60 mph in under 4 seconds.

Tesla went public on Nasdaq under ticker TSLA at $17 per share, raising $226 million. It was the first American car company to go public since Ford in 1956. The IPO provided capital to build the Model S and the Fremont factory.

Tesla began deliveries of the Model S, a luxury all-electric sedan with up to 300 miles of range. Concurrently, Tesla launched the Supercharger network, enabling long-distance EV travel. The Model S won Motor Trend Car of the Year and Consumer Reports' highest-ever score.

Tesla introduced Autopilot via a software update for Model S, bringing semi-autonomous driving features including lane-keeping, adaptive cruise control, and self-parking. It was the first over-the-air update of its kind in the automotive industry.

Tesla unveiled the Model 3, its first mass-market electric car, starting at $35,000. The car received over 300,000 reservations in the first week, the largest one-week launch of any product ever. By 2023, Model 3 and Model Y became the world's best-selling EVs.

Tesla held the grand opening of its Gigafactory 1 outside Sparks, Nevada on July 29, 2016. The facility was designed to mass-produce lithium-ion batteries at unprecedented scale, reducing costs for Tesla's electric vehicles and energy storage products. The Gigafactory represented a cornerstone of Tesla's strategy to achieve economies of scale in battery production and drive down the cost of electric vehicles.

Tesla began production of the Model 3 in July 2017, with the first 30 vehicles delivered at a handover event on July 28, 2017. The Model 3 was Tesla's first mass-market electric vehicle with a $35,000 base price, designed to bring electric cars to a mainstream audience. Despite initial production bottlenecks, the Model 3 became the best-selling electric car in the world and propelled Tesla to sustained profitability.

Tesla opened Gigafactory Shanghai, its first vehicle manufacturing facility outside the United States, and began delivering locally-produced Model 3 vehicles just 11 months after breaking ground. The Shanghai factory enabled Tesla to avoid Chinese import tariffs, significantly reduced production costs, and became the company's highest-volume plant. The factory's rapid construction and ramp-up demonstrated Tesla's manufacturing capability and opened the world's largest electric vehicle market.

Tesla began deliveries of the Model Y compact crossover SUV, which quickly became the company's most popular vehicle. The Model Y achieved record sales globally, becoming the best-selling vehicle of any type in multiple markets including Europe and Australia. Its success validated Tesla's platform strategy of building multiple vehicle types on shared underpinnings and cemented Tesla's position as the world's most valuable automaker.

Tesla joined the S&P 500 index, the largest company ever added, and its market capitalization surpassed $600 billion, making it more valuable than Toyota, Volkswagen, and GM combined. The stock price surged over 700% in 2020.

Tesla became the sixth U.S. company to reach a trillion market valuation, joining the ranks of Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. The milestone was driven by strong delivery numbers, a record Hertz order for 100,000 EVs, and surging investor confidence in electric vehicle adoption. Tesla reached the milestone just 11 years after its 2010 IPO, making it the second-fastest company to do so.

Tesla began deliveries of the Cybertruck, a radically designed stainless-steel electric pickup, after unveiling it in 2019. By 2024, Tesla operated six Gigafactories globally (US, China, Germany), with annual production capacity exceeding 2 million vehicles.

Tesla held its We, Robot event at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, unveiling the Cybercab - a purpose-built autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals - and the Robovan, a passenger van. Twenty self-driving Cybercabs gave attendee rides around the studio lot. Elon Musk stated the Cybercab would cost less than 30,000 dollars and enter production before 2027. The event marked Tesla's formal entry into the autonomous vehicle platform business.

Tesla officially launched its long-awaited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, beginning driverless Model Y rides for invited passengers. The service marked Tesla's entry into the commercial autonomous ride-hailing market, using vision-based Full Self-Driving technology. The Austin launch was the first of multiple planned robotaxi cities, with Musk announcing the service would expand to other US cities throughout 2025 and 2026.

Tesla launched its first fully unsupervised robotaxi service in Dallas and Houston, Texas, deploying 573 autonomous vehicles without safety drivers. The expansion from Austin to two additional major Texas cities marked the most aggressive autonomous vehicle rollout in the company's history, putting Tesla in direct competition with Waymo across multiple metro areas. TSLA stock surged 12% over four days following the announcement.

Tesla produced the first Semi truck off its new high-volume production line at Gigafactory Nevada, transitioning the electric truck program from limited pilot builds to industrial-scale manufacturing. The 1.7-million-square-foot facility adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada is expected to ramp production throughout 2026, with a long-term goal of 50,000 units annually. The milestone follows years of delays since the Semi was first unveiled in 2017.

Tesla reached 10 million cumulative electric vehicle production worldwide, becoming the first automaker to achieve this milestone. The 10-millionth vehicle was produced at Tesla's Fremont factory in California, with the Shanghai Gigafactory contributing record volumes. The milestone underscores Tesla's dominant position in global EV manufacturing, though the company faces slowing growth as it targets 20 million vehicles.

Tesla and SpaceX announced the Terafab advanced semiconductor fabrication facility in Grimes County, Texas, with an initial investment of USD 16.8 billion. The 100 million+ square foot facility will produce chips for Tesla's Optimus robots and Cybercabs, as well as high-power chips for SpaceX's space-based data centers. Intel is also contributing to the project, which could ultimately cost up to USD 119 billion across multiple phases.

Nevada regulators approved a permit allowing Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in the Las Vegas area over 12 months for paid public service. The Nevada Transportation Authority granted Tesla its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on August 20, 2026, replacing a smaller pilot authorization. Waymo and Uber subsidiary Aviari received permits for up to 1,000 vehicles each, making Las Vegas one of the most closely watched autonomous vehicle markets in the US.

Tesla informed its network of certified third-party installers that Solar Roof tiles will no longer be supplied, effectively ending a decade-long experiment in integrated solar roofing. The company will instead focus exclusively on traditional solar panels. The Solar Roof was first unveiled in 2016 as a premium product integrating solar cells into roofing tiles, but struggled with high installation costs, complexity, and limited market adoption compared to conventional panels.

Tesla began offering paid rides in its purpose-built Cybercab on public roads in Austin, Texas -- the first commercial deployment of a vehicle with no steering wheel, brake pedal, or mirrors anywhere in the United States. Within hours, NHTSA opened an audit query into whether roughly 1,000 Cybercabs were properly self-certified against federal motor vehicle safety standards written around human drivers. The probe is widely seen as a landmark test case for the broader robotaxi industry, as Tesla's deployment has moved faster than the regulatory framework for fully driverless vehicles.

Tesla announced at its Cybercab event in Austin that its Robotaxi fleet had surpassed one million miles of fully unsupervised driverless operation. The milestone, reported by Tesla VP of AI Ashok Elluswamy, marks the largest documented body of driverless miles for Tesla's autonomy program and came amid an ongoing federal safety probe into the Cybercab launch.