Elon Musk promises Tesla 'D' details on October 9
The CEO of the electric car maker tweeted a mock-up hinting at an upcoming Tesla Motors product announcement next week.
Elon Musk teased Twitter on Thursday with a cryptic message and graphic for an upcoming Tesla Motors announcement slated for October 9. "About time to unveil the D and something else," he wrote alongside a photo showing an opening garage revealing the front of a silver car emblazoned with the Tesla logo.
All the current evidence seems to point to a new vehicle announcement from the electric car maker, though it's unclear if the "something else" Musk mentions is a separate model entirely. Musk has hinted in the past that Tesla may produce smaller models of its upcoming $35,000 Model 3 sedan and Model X crossover SUV, so those two lines are likely contenders for Tesla to build out with size and price tag choices.
Tesla stock is up $10.53 a share, or 4.38 percent, following the news.
Tesla broke ground on a construction site outside of Reno, Nevada, in July to begin building the so-called gigafactory, a next-generation lithium-ion battery producing plant that Musk hopes will be providing the juice boxes for 500,000 electric vehicles per year by 2020. The Nevada site was confirmed in September among a list of candidates and the gigafactory, set to open as soon as 2017, is paramount to Tesla's plans to ramp up production of its own vehicles.
Though the hint of a new Tesla model roused excitement, it was Musk's choice of phrasing -- "unveil the D" -- that stole the spotlight.
Musk, who heads up space transport outfit SpaceX when he's not leading the charge at Tesla, is known for having a sense of humor. Despite having a net worth of more than $11 billion and being lauded as the next Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, Musk tends to fire off the occasional joke on Twitter -- when he's not tweeting about rocket launch tests.
So the Internet naturally reacted to the tweet with the cheekiness one saves for that variety of innuendo, the letter D being a shorthand reference to a slang term for a part of the male anatomy. Musk's response in a follow-up tweet: "I love the Internet. Comments had me literally ROFL. No, it wasn't intentional. Glad I didn't mention the other letter!"
It's important to remember that the CEO wanted to name Tesla's Model 3 the Model E, which would have spelled "sex" when placed between the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X. The company decided on Model 3 only after Ford threatened a trademark lawsuit over the Model E name.