Musk to Epstein on requests to bring Tesla to Israel

From:: Elon Musk
Date:: 2013 (Fortune gives only the year)
To:: Jeffrey Epstein

Partial text. Only these passages were published; [...] marks a gap.

Not a week passes without a request from someone important in Israel (and other countries) wanting to bring Tesla there. What they don't appreciate is that Tesla is production constrained, not demand constrained. When production has increased to the point of addressing the major markets, then we will start shipping to tiny markets.

About this email

After Epstein said former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak wanted to discuss bringing Tesla to Israel, Musk answered that Tesla was production constrained and would serve small markets later.

Notes

Released by the U.S. Department of Justice on 2026-01-30 as part of the Epstein files (about 3 million pages). The text here is only what news outlets quoted from the DOJ PDF; the DOJ file itself sits behind an age-verification page and could not be retrieved, and '=' characters are encoding artifacts in the released files. Being named in the files is not evidence of wrongdoing, and no record of Musk actually visiting the island appears in the reporting. Musk's public response on X (31 Jan 2026, as quoted by TIME): "No one pushed harder than me to have the Epstein files released and I'm glad that has finally happened" and "I had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island or fly on his 'Lolita Express'"; NBC also quotes him: "I have never been to any Epstein parties ever and have many times call for the prosecution of those who committed crimes." Epstein had written that Ehud Barak "is very clever about many things that you have in the past shown interest in, when you are next on my coast let me know."

Where it came from

Government release; attribution widely reported.

Personal, outside & personal. Tags: epstein-files, israel, tesla-production

Earlier email Search all emails Later email