Tesla

Tesla is an American company founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning; Elon Musk joined as its main early investor and later became CEO. It makes electric cars, such as the Model S, Model 3 and Model Y, plus large batteries for homes and power grids. It earns money mostly by selling cars, and also from energy storage, charging and software features sold as upgrades or subscriptions.

The heart of an electric car is the battery. Tesla's packs are built from thousands of small lithium-ion cells, similar in shape to oversized AA batteries, wired together and lying flat in the floor of the car. Software constantly manages their temperature and charge, which matters for range and for how long the battery lasts. Tesla builds its own large battery and car factories, and its fast-charging network, the Superchargers, uses a plug design that other carmakers in North America have since adopted.

Tesla also changed how cars get better over time. Most of the car is controlled by its central computer and software, so Tesla sends over-the-air updates, like a phone's, that can add features or fix problems without a visit to the workshop. Its driver-assistance systems, sold as Autopilot and "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)", use cameras and neural networks to steer, brake and change lanes, but they require an attentive driver ready to take over; regulators in several countries have examined how they are used and marketed.