Key Takeaways Tesla released a limited-edition $350 pickleball paddle on Friday, and the paddle sold out in under three hours.
The pickleball paddle is Tesla’s first attempt at traditional sports equipment, but it isn’t the automaker’s first lifestyle product.
Tesla also offers $65 salt and pepper shakers and a $1,600 electric quadbike.
Tesla’s latest release isn’t a new electric car or a robot — it’s a limited-edition, $350 pickleball paddle called the Tesla Plaid.
Tesla introduced the paddle on Friday, announcing that it had partnered with paddle maker Selkirk on a premium product designed to improve durability and swing speed.
Popular Science notes that a high-end pickleball paddle is usually priced at under $150, making Tesla’s offering expensive by that standard. Despite the high price tag, the paddle sold out in under three hours, a Selkirk spokesperson told Business Insider, and was out of stock at the time of writing. Tesla will release more paddles next week, per the product page on its site.
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The paddle is built from carbon fiber with a foam core and is marketed as engineered for high-performance play rather than just a logo slapped onto an existing design. Selkirk’s research and development head, Tom Barnes, described the project as a “true engineering collaboration,” stating in a press release that Tesla’s design team and Selkirk spent over a year exchanging data, tweaking geometry and stress-testing prototypes before finalizing the product.
“This wasn’t simply a branding exercise,” Barnes said in the press release.
The idea for a Tesla pickleball paddle emerged after Barnes met Tesla engineers at the 2023 USA Pickleball National Championships. Selkirk executives later visited Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory, met Tesla’s global director of product design and pickleball player Javier Verdura and began the design process, per Business Insider.
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