Leading electric automotive company Tesla, which is primarily based in California, confirmed they are building a small research and development office in Athens to develop new electric motor technologies.
Several reports in the Greek media over the last few weeks claimed Tesla was ready to create a local presence in the country and this was confirmed by a company spokesperson in an interview yesterday with Electrek.
“Tesla is building a small research and development office in Athens, which will be comprised of a highly-qualified engineering team. This team will focus solely on limited research and development activities to accelerate electric motor technology development through close collaboration with our team in the US.”
This comes as no surprise as Tesla’s top three electric motor designers, Principal Motor Designer Konstantinos Laskaris, Motor Design Engineer Konstantinos Bourchas, and Staff Motor Design Engineer Vasilis Papanikolaou, all came out of the National Technical University of Athens.
The company now wants to tap even more into this local electrical engineering talent with an office in Greece's capital city.
Tesla's spokesperson added, “Greece has strong electric motor engineering talent and technical universities, offering tailored programs and specialised skills for electric motor technology.”
The team is said to be starting off small with just 10 engineers.
Tesla's co-founder Elon Reeve Musk, a South African-born Canadian American business magnate, investor, engineer, and inventor, is currently in Greece and took to his social media pages to let his followers know how much he is enjoying the Greek hospitality and lifestyle.
