Lifestyle
Tesla’s 16-year anniversary: A tale of trials, tribulations, and grit that continues to this day
Sixteen years ago, engineer-entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated a company that was, for the most part, a legitimate long shot. Named Tesla Motors, the company occupied an office that had three desks and two small rooms in a decrepit building situated at 845 Oak Grove Avenue in Menlo Park, CA. The duo had a crazy business idea: they wanted to make electric cars, and they wanted to turn it into a business. At the time, the idea was practically insane, as EVs were not even part of any legitimate conversations in the auto market. Tarpenning and Eberhard had a concept for a Lotus-based electric sports car, but finding an investor who could pony up the $7 million required to build a prototype was insanely challenging.
Tesla’s Roots
During this time, Elon Musk was still busy looking into the idea of sending mice on a journey into space. Fortunately for Eberhard and Tarpenning, they soon got word that Musk, a multimillionaire who started a private rocket company, was looking to invest in the electric vehicle sphere. The duo flew down to Los Angeles and met with the SpaceX founder on a Friday, and over the course of the following weekend, Musk peppered Tarpenning with a barrage of questions about Tesla Motors’ business model. By the following Monday, Tarpenning and Eberhard were back in LA for another meeting with Musk. At the end of the meeting, Musk simply informed the men, “Okay, I’m in.”
Musk was precisely what Tesla Motors needed. He had the engineering background to understand what the company was trying to build, and his funds from his Silicon Valley fortune were vast. Musk invested $6.5 million into Tesla Motors, making him the largest shareholder and the Chairman of the company. Not long after this, Musk contacted JB Straubel, particularly as Eberhard and Tarpenning were meeting challenges in their vehicle’s batteries. Musk and Straubel had previously formed a kinship after finding common ground in EVs, particularly with the latter’s interest in using lithium-ion batteries to power a car (Musk had also agreed to fund Straubel’s lithium-ion battery ideas). During his meeting with Eberhard and Tarpenning, Straubel told them that he was building the battery they were looking for, also using funding from Musk. “We agreed to join forces and formed this ragtag group,” Straubel said, recalling Tesla Motors’ earliest days.
A lot has happened over the next 16 years. Tesla Inc., as the company is now called, has a market cap of around $40 billion, despite being one of the most shorted companies in the auto industry. The company has also expanded its operations to energy storage systems, a field that Straubel is still incredibly involved with. Elon Musk remains the largest shareholder and stands as the company’s CEO, though he has relinquished his Chairman role to board member Robyn Denholm following a run-in with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today, Tesla is involved in what could only be described as a battle for the future of transportation, being the undisputed trailblazer in the electric vehicle market. So vast is the potential of the company that legendary investor Ron Baron has predicted that Tesla could eventually be a trillion-dollar company.
From the Tesla Roadster to the Model 3
To say that it took a lot of effort for Tesla to get to this point is an understatement, particularly as every vehicle that the company has released was met with pushback and an immense amount of skepticism. The original Tesla Roadster, the car that Eberhard, Tarpenning, and Straubel were creating since the earliest days of the company, was released in 2008, right in the middle of the US financial crisis. Objectively speaking, a two-seater, all-electric sports car was not a practical purchase then. The original Tesla Roadster had its own fair share of production challenges as well, to the point where auto publication The Truth About Cars actually decided to do a Tesla Death Watch series. Though late, the Roadster became successful nonetheless, forcing the Tesla Death Watch to end and becoming prolific enough to usher in the WhiteStar project, which would eventually become the Model S.
Bringing the Model S to market was just as hard, if not more difficult than the Roadster’s already-painful production ramp. In 2007, Musk showed noted auto designer Henrik Fisker Tesla’s idea for the WhiteStar sedan, a vehicle that must haul a family and cost about half the Roadster’s price. Fisker had a reputation for creating stunning automobiles for Aston Martin, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, but as noted by Ron Lloyd, the former vice president of Tesla’s WhiteStar project, the designs he submitted for Tesla’s family sedan were strangely substandard. When Musk pushed back, Fisker would blame the physical constraints that Tesla placed on the car. And in 2008, Musk and the Tesla team looked in shock as Fisker started his own car company, Fisker Automotive, and unveiled the Karma, a hybrid vehicle that had all the makings of a well-designed green vehicle. It wasn’t until an established designer from Mazda, Franz von Holzhausen decided to take a leap of faith that project WhiteStar started progressing. Working with Musk on every detail of the car, the results of von Holzhausen’s work was the Tesla Model S, a car that would redefine not just electric vehicles, but cars as a whole.
Tesla’s next vehicles were no less challenging. The Model X was dismissed as an impossible vehicle to make due to its Falcon Wing Doors. While significantly delayed, the all-electric SUV nevertheless entered production, though it took extreme measures, such as Musk sleeping in the Fremont factory, to get the vehicle’s manufacturing underway. Fortunately for Tesla, it appears that the Model X became a lesson for the company, as evidenced by the more straightforward design of the Model 3, and later on, the Model Y. After coming to terms with its own hubris and creating what Elon Musk aptly described as the Fabergé egg of cars in the Model X, Tesla appears to have matured. This could be seen in the similarity of the company’s two mass-market vehicles.
Into the Future
Led by arguably one of the most relentless innovators alive today, Tesla remains engaged in battle every step of the way. Yet, despite the emergence of competitors that are generously dubbed “Tesla Killers,” and despite the persistently negative narrative surrounding the company, the electric car maker continues to grow. Tesla has even expanded its operations in China, where Gigafactory 3 is being built at a record pace. Once that is completed, Tesla could tap into China’s lucrative electric vehicle market without any unnecessary restraints. Other vehicles in the company’s lineup, from the new Tesla Roadster to the Tesla Semi to the Tesla Truck, are expected to be just as disruptive as every other electric car that the company has released.
Tesla’s electric cars are by no means the first EVs on the market. But they are the vehicles that forced the auto industry to recognize that there is a legitimate demand for compelling, well-designed electric cars. The presence of EVs such as the Porsche Taycan, which the German automaker expects will likely be practically as important as the 911, is proof that Tesla has and is succeeding in its mission to accelerate the world’s transition to renewable energy. A lot has happened in 16 years, but if Tesla’s character is any indication, it would seem that the company’s story is still just beginning.
Watch a Tesla enthusiast’s tribute video to Tesla’s 16 years in the video below.
A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.
“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.
Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.
Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.
He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.
Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.
The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
Tesla Theater might be getting plenty more streaming platforms
