Kid,

Tesla motors was co-founded by Elon Musk who was CEO for awhile. Elon Musk also co-founded Pay Pal which is a way to make payments and make money transfers thru the internet. I think this is where he started to make big bucks. He also founded Space X. which is the first company to send a cargo rocket that docked with the international space station. I also believe he has been involved in the X Prize awards.

Nicolas Tesla at one time worked for Edison, but they had a big disagreement over whether DC current (Edison) or AC current (that Tesla came up with) should be the standard that the US should use, so Tesla started out on his own. Edison teamed up with JP Morgan and Tesla finally got support from George Westinghouse. Tesla/Westinghouse out bid them to light the Chicago worlds fair and the Niagrafalls project to put generators in Niagra falls. Anyhow Tesla was not a good business man and gave up his right to royalties for which there where many. AC became the standard. Morgan pressured Westinghouse with stock manipulation and treats of repeated lawsuits to break him. Whestinghouse eventually had to give his patents that he had from Tesla to Morgan who then converted all there generators to AC. He also renamed Edison Electric to General Electric, which Edison objected to, and said you need to get my agreement. Morgan replied - you are no longer the largest stock holder.

If you ever get a chance to see the Men Who Built America on the history channel, its worth the watch. It is something like 3 shows shown in 2 hour increments.

Link attached to wkipedia link for anyone interested in reading about Elon Musk.