‘Tesla Motors’ officially changes its name to just ‘Tesla’

Tesla’s General Counsel Todd Maron filed with the SEC today to officially change the certificate of incorporation of ‘Tesla Motors’ to ‘Tesla Inc.’. The move doesn’t come as a surprise since the company changed its branding throughout the last year, but it is now official.

In July of last year, the company moved its website from ‘Teslamotors.com’ to ‘Tesla.com’.

But Tesla started moving away from the ‘Tesla Motors’ branding a year before that when it introduced its new ‘Tesla Energy’ division for stationary energy storage.

The acquisition of SolarCity last year solidified the move away from just being an automaker and the name ‘Tesla Motors’ as the official company name started making less and less sense. Not unlike ‘Apple Computer’ becoming simply Apple.

SolarCity’s brand is being phased out and Tesla will start selling both solar and home battery packs under its own brand. When that will be completed, a clearer structure is expected to appear with ‘Tesla’ being the overall company and ‘Tesla Motors’ for vehicles and ‘Tesla Energy’ for energy products (solar, Powerwall, and Powerpack) representing separate divisions within Tesla.

While most people have been referring to the company simply as ‘Tesla’ for years now, today’s filing officially confirmed the change.

Here’s the SEC filing:

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