OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of Tesla, revealed today the purchase price of the domain name Tesla.com. He paid $11 million to buy Tesla.com in February 2016 from its previous owner.
The purchase price was not known until today.
The domain name Tesla.com was owned by a Stuart Grossman of California since at least the year 2002 and possibly since 1992.
Tesla had been using the domain name TeslaMotors.com before the purchase of Tesla.com.
At first Elon Musk replied to a tweet by “60 Minutes” before revealing the $11 million purchase price:
Tesla history trivia: we didn’t actually come up with the Tesla Motors name. Bought trademark off Brad Siewert for $75k in late 2004. He’d originally filed for it in 1994. Our alternative name was Faraday, which was used by a competitor several years later. https://t.co/zPnrrVash1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2018
He then said that “Buying http://Tesla.com took over a decade, $11M & amazing amount of effort. Didn’t like http://teslamotors.com even when we were only making (cars).”
Buying https://t.co/46TXqRrsdr took over a decade, $11M & amazing amount of effort. Didn’t like https://t.co/BsRfMrY9Gm even when we were only making 🚘.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2018
Elon Musk also talked about some some trademark problems he had back in 2004:
Yeah, we wanted to name our company after Tesla, the great scientist/engineer, but use of the Tesla name in automotive was already trademarked in the US, Europe & later China.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2018
Update: Read here a few important observations about the Tesla.com sale.
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.com is dead
That’s great amount for the seller. Definitely life changer!
Thanks for sharing Konstantinos 🙂
Stuart Grossman is he an individual domain investor or was there any product he was selling on it?
Thanks for sharing Kostantinos.If your name is short and brandable.Dont sell cheap or too fast.Someone is watching and likes it if its .com.
Well at least he is courteous enough to buy it rather than steal it like most low class companies
I have lots of tesla stock
The blueprint of Tesla motor is open source….amazing
$11 million is cheap when you consider the deal could have included stock. For example, the original guy behind cool.com turned down $8 million in cash plus $30 million in stock.
All .Com names will eventually be selling for high prices like this. The .crapollas will all soon be .gone
Read here a few important observations about the Tesla.com sale:
https://onlinedomain.com/2018/12/10/domain-name-news/a-few-important-observations-on-the-tesla-com-sale/