Tesla Inc. Business Operations
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Tesla Inc. Business Operations Report
Webster University
PROC 5820
TESLA INC. BUSINESS OPERATIONS 2
Abstract
The electric car has been around since the 1830’s but all the electric car companies went out of
business during the Great Depression. Tesla has been able to demonstrate that an electric vehicle
can be just as capable as an internal combustion engine car, if not better, by delivering some of
the first production electric cars with more than 200 miles of range. The company has also had
to make many advances in engineering and production operations to keep costs low and the
quality and technology high. Tesla under the leadership of Elon Musk hopes to help the world
transition off petroleum-based fuels and onto renewable sources of energy by providing solar
panels, solar power storage and mass-produced electric vehicles.
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Tesla Inc. Business Operations Report
Tesla Inc. started out as Tesla Motors in 2003 and has relatively quickly grown to be the
most innovative and dominant auto company in the industry. Tesla has shown that they care
about serving their customers and their stakeholders. The auto industry is struggling to catch up
to Tesla and their paradigm shift that has completely caught the legacy car companies off guard.
Think Blockbuster after Netflix. The company has not been afraid to take risks and invest
heavily in new technology from manufacturing to batteries and solar. Many of those risks have
paid off and being innovative is what has kept them growing so far but now Tesla is ramping up
their day-to-day business operations and building relationships with their suppliers. Tesla’s
yearly production of electric vehicles continues to soar, increasing the economies of scale and
helping to reach their goal of making the electric car affordable to the average consumer.
Tesla Founding
The company was founded in California by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc
Tarpenning in the early 2000’s shortly after General Motors had recalled all their EV1 electric
cars and destroyed them (Kolodny, 2021). They believed that they could make an electric sports
car with safer batteries that could be more efficient that fossil fueled vehicles. Soon after their
founding Elon Musk, the current CEO, and main driving force behind the company, believed in
the technology and decided to invest heavily into Tesla Motors.
Tesla was named after Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American inventor known best for
inventing the electric induction motors used with alternating current. It is appropriate that they
name the company Tesla, after all Tesla’s invention was significant enough to start an industrial
revolution and make it possible to send electricity over long distances. Similarly, Tesla Inc. has
also proven that it’s possible to start a car company and dominate the big manufacturers. That’s
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not all, Tesla also changed their official name in 2017 to Tesla Inc. to reflect their expansion into
other industries such as solar power and batteries technology.
Innovations
The huge innovations of Tesla and leadership of Elon Musk have helped the company
accelerate their employment of top graduates around the country. A survey conducted by
Universum Global in 2020 ranked Tesla as the most desirable employer for engineering students
in the U.S. and Elon Musk’s SpaceX was number two (Lambert, 2020). This is a huge
advantage and will help Tesla continue to stay on the cutting edge.
Tesla now has a car with a range of 402 miles, which is greater than many other gas-
powered cars on the market. This is especially amazing considering the largest fully charged
