Used Tesla Roadster

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, with Elon Musk arriving as lead investor a year later, on a bet that the electric car had failed only because nobody had made a desirable one. The 2008 Roadster, a Lotus Elise with laptop batteries, was the first attempt.

The Model S of 2012 changed the industry's mind. It was fast, beautiful, updated over the air and could cross a continent on the Supercharger network Tesla built itself. The Model 3 and Model Y then took the idea to the mass market, and the Model Y became the best-selling car in the world in 2023.

Today Tesla sells the Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X, builds the Model Y for Europe in Grünheide outside Berlin, and pours its ambition into Full Self-Driving software, robotaxis and the Optimus robot. Whether that ambition pays off is the industry's biggest open question, and the reason everyone still watches.