The story behind Elon Musk’s longest joke. Tesla S3XY.
"We’re literally bringing sexy back” -Elon Musk at Model Y reveal.
Well you have definitely heard the word S3XY if you are a fan of Tesla, or you have seen Tesla’s new electric car reveal, Model Y. The word S3XY obviously stands for their cars’ names: Model S, Model 3, Model X, and their recent car Model Y.
But you might not know the whole story behind this joke of Elon. Such as how long have Elon thought about this joke, or Ford Motor threatening to sue Tesla, if they use Model E as their next car line up.
Tesla had already named their first mass produced car, Model S, that stand for sedan. Also their second car Model X, which stands for crossover. Elon said that we have Model S and Model X, we might as well say Model E for our next car, as a joke. So it will be Model S, E and X. But the joke stuck with Tesla and became their intention.
At that time other companies tried to make life for Tesla horrible and slow them down. Since they could not accept a car company in California less than a decade old, competes and surpass car companies with over a century of experience in Detroit.
Alan Mulally the CEO of Ford Motors at that time threatened Tesla with a lawsuit, if they use the name Model E. Then Elon called up Mulally and said,
“Alan are you just fucking with us or are you really going to do a Model E? And I am not sure which is worse. You know? Like it would actually make more sense if they’re just fucking with us because if they actually come out with a Model E at this point, and we’ve got the Model S and the X and Ford comes out with the the Model E, it’s going to look ridiculous. So even though Ford did the Model T a hundred years ago, nobody thinks of ‘Model’ as being a Ford thing anymore. So it would just feel like they stole it. Like why did you go steal Tesla’s E? Like you’re some sort of fascist army Marching across the alphabet, some sort of Sesame street robber. And he was like, ‘No, no we’re definitely going to use it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think that is such a good idea because people are going to be confused because it’s not going to make sense. People aren’t just used to Ford having Model something these days. It’s usually called like the Ford Fusion.’ And he was like, no, his guys really want to use that. That’s terrible.”-Elon musk. As told by Ashlee Vance’s book about Elon musk.
After that Tesla named their next car Model 3, as their 3rd generation car. Also trademarked Model Y, so it would spell S-E-X-Y. And this is the story behind the word S3XY and Elon’s longest joke.
This is my first blog and I hope you liked it either by getting entertained or gained some information. Thank you very much for reading my first blog.
If you are a fan of tesla and like this joke, I hope you also like these designs by myself.
