Few companies have ambitions as lofty as Tesla, which engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded in 2003 in hopes of building a fully electric luxury sports car. While the company still makes electric cars — including, since 2019, the Cybertruck — it has also branched out into autonomous driving technology, robotics research and nonautomotive sustainable energy products including solar roof tiles for houses.
Not all headlines about Tesla have focused on the company's technological advances, however. For years, reports and rumors have swirled about Tesla vehicles' safety and the company's business practices.
The actions of CEO Elon Musk, who has led the company since 2008, have also spurred public scrutiny of and interest in the company. This has been especially true since late 2024, when Donald Trump, then the president-elect, announced Musk would play a major role in his administration's government cost-cutting initiative. Musk has since made frequent appearances in Washington, D.C. — including a March 2025 news conference in which Trump picked out a Tesla on the White House driveway.
In no particular order, here's a selection of 15 stories about Tesla that Snopes has looked into.
