Haydn Sonnad

Post-pitch story

Haydn Sonnad was just 16 when he launched Tesloop in 2015 — the teenager who famously bought a single Tesla share so he could get into a shareholder meeting and question Elon Musk. His idea: shared Tesla rides between Southern California cities and Las Vegas, cheaper and nicer than driving yourself. Tesloop ran routes linking Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and Palm Springs, logging around 2.5 million fleet miles and becoming a go-to source of data on how Teslas hold up over huge distances. But a stalled permit with California regulators and limits on charging forced it to suspend the shuttle service in September 2018, while it focused on Carmiq, a connected-car software spinoff. Tesloop came back in 2019 with a pared-down model of one-way Tesla rentals, and was still adding LA-to-Vegas options as late as 2022, with Sonnad giving interviews about battery longevity and robotaxis. In the end, though, it didn't last: its Santa Monica location is now listed as closed. Tesloop never became the EV transport network its young founder imagined, but it proved a teenager could build a real company, put millions of miles on electric cars, and get the industry's attention along the way.