He was a man of firm convictions, had influential friends and enemies, made a lot of money, and could get upset about ignorant investors. So far, this description sounds suspiciously like Elon Musk, but it also fits the inventor and futurist from whom Musk’s electric car and energy company got its name: Nikola Tesla. The electrical inventor, who was born in what was then Austria (now Croatia) in 1856, emigrated to the United States at the age of 30, made a name for himself and money with AC machines, but failed financially due to wireless power and data transmission and died penniless in New York in 1943.
How Tesla Motors became Tesla
In spite of his early contributions, Tesla might have been forgotten. But in the 1960s the scientific unit for magnetic flux density was named after him, which at least made his name immortal for the time being. And so the tech entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning referred to him when they founded the company in California in 2003, which today is mostly equated with Elon Musk: Tesla, at that time with the addition Motors, which was deleted in 2017.
Almost by the way, the electric car startup at the time should have gone on the market with a completely different name, because the Tesla Motors brand had already secured another person in 1994. By the time the negotiations started, Musk had already gone into the start-up, took care of the naming rights and initially came across granite, as he told in late 2019. But with tenacity and friendliness, the future Tesla CEO got the owner to talk and then sell it for $ 75,000, which seems cheap today.
Tesla the “nicest geek ever”?
And so Nikola Tesla could finally become the namesake of the company, which, under the leadership of Musk, has meanwhile achieved high billions in sales of electric cars and energy products and worldwide importance. The US cinema rights to a feature film about the electrical pioneer before Elon Musk has now been secured by IFC Films, as industry services reported in early April.
The documentary drama of the same name (with which Tesla is now available as a surname, as a unit, as a company and as a film title) was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in the USA in early 2020 and was recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, among others. According to a review in The Verge, he doesn’t quite present Nikola Tesla as the “nicest geek ever” like other biographies about him. But even in the film he was portrayed as largely disinterested in people, but still deeply humanistic. According to IFC, Tesla with Ethan Hawk in the lead role will hit US screens in August.
Similarity between Tesla and Musk
It was initially unclear whether the film would also be shown in European cinemas. But interest in the electric cars and other products from Tesla (the company) and its CEO is also increasing on the old continent. In this respect, it would not be a surprise if there were enough viewers to document the Tesla namesake, which the Tesla boss is apparently not unlike in some respects.
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