The Tesla logo history: from car badge to global tech brand

The Tesla logo represents one of the world's most famous and potentially innovative brands – a company that's shifting its focus from electric cars to robots. But what's the history of the Tesla logo? Who made the Tesla logo, and what is it anyway? We'll reveal all below.

Like many of the best car logos, the Tesla logo was originally conceived to look good on the front of vehicles, which it why it took the form of the badge. The company's change in focus led to a tweak in design. Since then the Tesla brand has been plagued with controversies (see the Cybertruck design disaster), but the logo has stood the test of time. Let's dive in and see how the Tesla logo evolved.

The Tesla logo history

To clarify, we're talking here about the logo and branding of Tesla, the US-based electric car company-turned-humanoid robot developer, not the Czech radio maker of the same name, although we'll take a look at their logo too just out of curiosity.

Tesla Inc was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning and is now run by South African CEO Elon Musk. It has only had one major change in its logo, and that accompanied a change in its name.

Original Tesla Motors logo – 2003 to 2017

The company was originally called Tesla Motors since it was conceived as an electric carmaker, and the first Tesla logo looked much more like a traditional car badge. It sported the same wordmark and symbol as today, but these were placed in a shielf shape. The brand also used a separate wordmark displaying the full brand name in a different font.

The logo was designed by the New Jersey-based creative agency RO Studio, which would also design the logo for Space X. It's been said that the use of a shield was intended to evoke security and safety, areas where Tesla has since seen a spot of controversy, but it's just as likely that the shield was chosen simply because that's the traditional form of a car logo.

As such, the design combined an element of traditional car branding with the more minimalist and futuristic-looking custom Tesla Slab typeface and that spiky 'T' shape (we'll see what that's supposed to represent shortly). The design achieved what Tesla was aiming for, seeking to convince doubters that electric vehicles could be serious luxury vehicles while emphasising its focus on innovation.

The Tesla logo – 2017 to today

The original Tesla logo remained unchanged for nearly 14 years, through the release of the Roadster – the first Tesla car in 2008 – as well as the subsequent Model S, Model X and Model 3.

But in 2017, Tesla rebranded, dropping the 'Motors' part of its name. The aim was to reflect a broader focus on tech innovation than cars. This also meant a corresponding logo design change. The shield was removed, and the Tesla name was placed below the symbol. The change made the logo look more minimalist and less like a traditional car brand.

Tesla logo meaning

Believe it or not, the intention was not to make the Tesla logo look like an IUD. Nor is it merely intended to be a futuristic-looking, pointy letter 'T' from the brand's name. The logo is more inspired than that.

The 'T' is based on the shape of a segment from the cross-section of an electric motor. The main body represents a poles protruding from the rotor while the curved lines at the top represent the air gap and stator. This creates a visual link to the brand's original impetus: electric motors.

Tesla logo memes

Unfortunately for the brand, despite the clever Tesla logo inspiration, most people fail to recognise the abstract reference, leading to all kinds of other theories. People have compared the design to an IUD, a cat's nose, Thor's hammer and a push dagger. The confusion is perhaps proof that a clever idea isn't always great brand design in practice if nobody gets it.

And the original Tesla?

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There was already a company called Tesla before Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Inc in the US in 2003. Tesla AS was originally a state monopoly producer of electronic appliances and components in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet era.

It seems that, like the US Tesla, the company was named after the Serbian engineer Nikola Tesla, but after the USSR broke off relations with Yugoslavia in 1948, it would be claimed that the name was an abbreviation 'TEchnika SLAboproudá' – low-current technology. The brand logo reflects its focus on radio electronics.

The brand is still used today. In 2011, the Czech company Inter-Sat acquired the licence to use it to sell household appliances and consumer electronics, mainly in central and Southeastern Europe.