After Starting as a Joke, Tesla Tequila Is Here (and Already Sold Out)

By Brendan Menapace

At this point, Tesla is less a car company with amazing branded merchandise than it is an amazing merchandise company that happens to make cars. And Elon Musk is sort of an eccentric genius when it comes to marketing with branded merchandise. There have been surfboards, hats that raise absurd amounts of money, flamethrowers and plenty more, and they all sold out almost immediately.

After Musk joked on Twitter about releasing a Tesla-branded tequila almost two years ago, he finally made good on it. And, wouldn’t you know it, it sold out quickly.

If you’ve ever gone into the liquor store without knowing exactly what you want to get, you’ve probably gotten sucked into buying something because it had a cool label or cool bottle. Even if it wasn’t the best tasting, you probably still enjoyed the experience when you show it to your friends at a party. You might’ve even overpaid for it.

Playing into that idea, the $250 Tesla tequila comes in a lightning bolt-shaped bottle, complete with a little stand with the Tesla logo on it.

"Teslaquila" has arrived. https://t.co/rGmxyKDp9s

— HYPEBEAST (@HYPEBEAST) November 6, 2020

Musk filed to trademark “Teslaquila” right after his original April Fool's tweet about the tequila, but it didn't come to fruition until now.

Visual approximation pic.twitter.com/sMn3Pv476Y

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2018

In 2018, there were reports that he didn’t get the “Teslaquila” trademark, and Musk responded that he was fighting that. “It’s real,” he said this year.

We will fight Big Tequila!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2018

Coming soon, our battle with Big Tequila! It’s real.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2020

The “small-batch, premium 100 percent de agave tequila made from sustainably sourced highland and lowland agaves” is set to ship later this year, and will only be available in select states in the U.S.

It still doesn’t have the “Teslaquila” name originally teased in the joke, so maybe Musk couldn’t win that one. But, he did sell out of $250-per-bottle branded tequila. So, did he really lose in the end?