How Do You Say Tesla in Chinese? Nobody Knows; One possibility is 拓速乐,with its positive connotations of “expanded speed and happiness.”

December 21, 2013 Leave a comment

Dec 19, 2013

How Do You Say Tesla in Chinese? Nobody Knows

Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc.TSLA -4.91%’s new Chinese-language website has been creating buzz online—but not because of the merchandise. The recently launched site has the same look and feel as the company’sAmerican site, apart perhaps from the preponderance of red cars. The color is auspicious in China.What’s feeding the chatter is the URL for the Chinese site—tuosule.cn.

Because the site doesn’t give a Chinese-character equivalent, Tesla has left it largely up to website users to conjure up what the characters in Chinese might be.

One possibility is 拓速乐,with its positive connotations of “expanded speed and happiness.” That’s the official Chinese name of Tesla’s China sales unit.

But some wags online have devised other Chinese character combinations for tuosule, including 脱俗了. That is commonly translated as “refined” but literally means “shedding vulgarity” to “leaving vulgarity behind”—a name that suggests new money or commoners putting on airs.

Tesla’s URL has elicited some ribbing on popular microblogging websites such as SinaCorp.SINA +1.10%’s Weibo.

“A high-end, gracious, classy car is positioned as diaosi,” wrote one blogger, using a puerile term that roughly translate into “loser.”

“The name is improper. It makes a premium car with prices starting from 500,000 yuan sound like a luggage rack worth a few thousand yuan,” wrote another.

Tesla still hasn’t revealed its Chinese-character name for its car. That could partly be because Chinese businessman Zhan Baosheng already registered the transliteration of Tesla (特斯拉), which doesn’t have any obvious meaning or connotation. Tesla does use the characters on its Weibo account.

A Tesla spokeswoman declined to answer questions, saying only that the company began taking reservations from customers in August via email and said it had plans to open a store in Beijing this year.

Mr. Zhan also registered the domain names tesla.cn, tesla.com.cn and teslamotors.com.cn.

Chinese buyers can order Model S and Model X versions of the Tesla  by placing a down payment of 250,000 yuan (around $41,000). Delivery is scheduled for next year.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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