Tesla Motors was incorporated in 2003 in Silicon Valley, USA, by a group of engineers: Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel, and Ian Wright. A year after it was founded, the fifth member, Elon Musk, joined the founding group; he is now the key person in everything that happens at Tesla. The company was set out to prove that electric vehicles could be “perfect”. They wanted to create a vehicle that was vastly superior, and didn’t just consume less gasoline. Tesla Motors would go on to revolutionise the whole industry of cars and they went against all odds, since the last succesful American car startup, Ford, was founded 111 years ago. As of 2013, Tesla has had revenues of over $2 billion.

Tesla Motors has raised over $823 million of funding in total, both through private and public investments. At one point in 2008, Tesla was in crucial need for investment and no one wanted to invest in them because the odds of success were minimal. However, the real risk taking entrepreneur, Elon Musk, invested all the money he had left from what he had earned from his buy-out of Paypal, which was at that time a solid $40 million. This investment aided Tesla in becoming huge and it ensured that Musk spent most of his time on Tesla instead of SpaceX (which he was also running at the same time).

Just a year and a half after Musk’s investment, Tesla managed to raise $465 million through their IPO, where the price of the stock has skyrocketed ever since. Tesla has so far only made