Ford Motor Co.’s use of Model e as the name of its new electric-vehicle unit comes eight years after dashing Elon Musk’s hopes for a provocatively named lineup of cars from Tesla Inc.
“A friend asked me at a party, ‘What are you going to name the third-generation car?’ Well, we have the S and the X, so we might as well make it the E,” the Tesla CEO told CNNMoney in 2014.
But when Tesla attempted to register the E trademark for a model, Ford stepped in to block it, according to Automotive News. Ford hauled out a 2010 agreement between the companies that prevented Tesla from using the letter for a car name.