"Teslaquila", co-founder of Tesla, reaches a regulatory slowdown

The co-founder and CEO of Tesla (but no longer its president) Elon Musk has many bold ideas. He has ideas about electric cars. He has ideas on rockets. He has ideas about radical mass transit systems that do not exist so far, but may well someday.

He also has ideas about tequila – a still hypothetical mind still dubbed "Teslaquila". Unfortunately, Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council (TRC), which regulates what can legally be considered tequila in the United States and Mexico, has heard about these ideas – and that's not good fun.

Like all the best ideas, Musk's tequila's vision was introduced for the first time with a tweet of April Fool's Day.

Then, because neither you nor I, but Elon Musk, Tesla filed an application in October with the US Patent and Trademark Office bearing the "Teslaquila" mark. According to CNBC, the mark concerns "distilled agave liquor" and "distilled blue agave". alcohol."

He then tweeted a "visual approximation" of what "Teslaquila" might look like, when and if such a product should exist.

At The Verge, Elizabeth Lopatto argues that while it's easy to make fun of him, it's actually not a terrible idea. "Merch is normal for high-end automakers," she writes, noting that Porsche sells headsets and that Maserati sells a bunch of leather oval keys priced at US $ 163. Tesla would be part of a great tradition. And starting a tequila brand is a popular hobby, as ordinary people knit. Justin Timberlake has one, Diddy has one and George Clooney has one until he sells it for about $ 1 billion.

The tequila sector is notoriously difficult – space is very crowded, waste is a problem, and the agave is sorely lacking – but that makes it an attractive choice for Musk, speculates Lopatto. He is a man who likes difficult things. For example, in addition to launching Teslaquila, he is trying to colonize Mars.

But now, there is a new difficulty: the CRT says that the "name" Teslaquila "evokes the word Tequila … [and] "Tequila is a protected word," reports Reuters, explaining that the council applies strict rules on what constitutes tequila, namely that the spirit must be produced in the Mexican states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, Nayarit or Tamaulipas. Timberlake, for example, worked with the Tequilera Newton Distillery in Jalisco; After a strenuous two-year search, Clooney worked with an anonymous "master distiller" in the same state.

"Yes [Tesla] wants to make the Teslaquila viable as a tequila, it should partner with an authorized producer of tequila, comply with certain standards and seek permission from the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, "said the CRT in a statement . "Otherwise, he would make unauthorized use of the original name of the tequila."

The CRT is concerned that the proposed name, "Teslaquila", may deceive people into believing that it is a true tequila, which by definition would not be without its authorization because the organization has the right to control the tequila designation in Mexico and the United States. If Teslaquila, which has not yet been approved by the patent office and which could also be a joke, would go ahead without approval, warns Fortune, the company could "be sued by the Mexican government" ".

Presumably, Teslaquila is not Musk's top priority, compared to other things, like making Tesla profitable and ending traffic jams in Los Angeles. But of all the reasons why this particular vision may not come true, Musk said regulation was not part of it. In response to an article on the problem, published by the InsideEVs website, he tweeted that he was ready to "fight Big Tequila!

This is the struggle to create the future.