It’s always fun to look back at the early days of electric vehicle adoption to see just how much the automotive landscape has evolved. Long before battery-powered cars dominated global sales charts, a dedicated block of trivia questions on one of America's most popular game shows introduced mass television audiences to the inner workings of a young California startup.
An episode of the prolific game show Jeopardy! that aired nearly 12 years ago on November 26, 2014, featured an entire board category called “A Visit to Tesla.” The segment, which has resurfaced online for fans looking to take a trip down memory lane, focused on testing the contestants with trivia questions about electric drivetrains and factory manufacturing.
Clue Crew at the Fremont Factory
To film the questions on location, Jeopardy! Clue Crew members Jimmy McGuire and Sarah Whitcomb Foss made their way to Tesla’s historic Fremont factory in California. Recording the answers directly from the factory floor, the duo covered topics ranging from the basic principles of all-electric driving to the composition of vehicle frames.
Sarah even climbed behind the wheel of a Model S to demonstrate its breakneck acceleration for the $200 clue, highlighting how an electric motor benefits from its lack of complex moving parts compared to an internal combustion engine. You can watch the full Tesla segment of the Jeopardy! episode in question below. Here’s a fun exercise: pause the video after each question and see if you can guess the answer (we got all five!).
Just How Far We Have Come
Watching the old television footage highlights the mind-boggling scale of growth that occurred over the next decade and change. Back when the episode originally aired, Tesla’s vehicle lineup was pretty limited. Customers could only buy the Model S or the Model X. The mass-market Model 3 was nothing more than a development project that hadn’t even been unveiled to the public, and the Model Y was even farther away. At the time, Tesla stock was trading at a split-adjusted $16 per share, giving the brand a modest $30 billion market capitalization.
Today, both Tesla and the broader automotive world look completely different. The Model Y has earned the crown of the world's best-selling vehicle of any kind. Even though Tesla officially discontinued the flagship Model S and Model X earlier this year, it is clearing the deck for newer platforms, and the ecosystem is larger than ever. With the long-awaited Cybercab robotaxi preparing to make its public debut, Tesla currently commands a massive $1.3 trillion valuation with a share price hovering around $388. It turns out the answer to the ultimate transport question was hiding on a game show board all along.
