EVANNEX celebrates five years serving the Tesla community

On March 9th, 2013 the Tesla community was in its infancy. The Model S was a brand new car with no more than 3,000 vehicles on the road. Model X was something that would arrive “in the future,” and Model 3? It was a cypher—no more than a hazy element of Elon Musk’s grand strategy to change the automotive world.

Above: The Father of EVANNEX Roger Pressman (center) and his sons Mike (left) and Matt (right) at our recent Tesla Model 3 event (Image: EVANNEX)

For those of you who weren’t part of the Tesla scene back on March 9th, 2013, it might sound a bit surprising that a start-up company dedicated to serving the Tesla community launched its website on that day. After all, the existing market was tiny, and the future of Tesla Motors (and electric vehicles in general) was still very much in doubt. Starting a company that served such a small and uncertain market was risky business, but as the lead character played by a young Tom Cruise said in the classic 1983 movie with the same name, “Sometimes you just have to say WTF.”

On that day in March, 2013 EVANNEX launched its business with a single product for Model S—our now famous Center Console Insert —the CCI. Prior to the launch, a small community of Tesla enthusiasts followed my journey of design and construction as I built the first CCI prototypes in my garage. On the forums, enthusiasts followed my posts and critiqued early work, making suggestions that often found their way into the evolving product prototype. EVANNEX’s first product was very much an idea that grew out of the early members of the Tesla community.

Above: Our Center Console Insert was designed for early Model S owners long before Tesla decided to include a console in the car (Image: EVANNEX)

From its early beginning as the very first company to serve the Tesla ecosystem, EVANNEX has grown to become the largest aftermarket supplier of Tesla accessories on the planet. We continue to develop an array of custom-designed products for Model S, Model X, and Model 3, as well as offering third party products that pass our rigorous requirements for quality and functionality. We continue to be dedicated to the Tesla community.

EVANNEX offers the best, most comprehensive customer service provided by any company that serves that community. The EVANNEX blog offers daily Tesla news, commentary, and analysis that is often picked up by the automotive media; our free Electric Vehicle University (EVU) helps EV beginners understand the tech; our instructional videos have been uniformly praised for their completeness, and our robust website content helps our thousands of customers better understand not only our products, but Tesla vehicles themselves.

Above: The founders own three Tesla vehicles that serve as our in-house "labs" in order to continuously test new products (Image: EVANNEX)

I certainly can’t compare our journey to Tesla’s over the past five years, but I can say that both companies have developed brands that they can be proud of. 

My sincere thanks to my sons and business partners, Matt and Mike, who do more to make EVANNEX a success than I ever could. My gratitude to the dedicated employees on the EVANNEX team. Without them, none of this would have happened. And finally, our collective thanks to every one of the tens of thousands of customers who have supported us over the past five years. We hope to be around to serve each and every one of you and many thousands of new customers in the years to come.

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Written by EVANNEX® founder Roger Pressman, author of Getting Ready for Model 3, and professor at Electric Vehicle University.