No horse hide or animal products wanted by Tesla motors in at least one of their cars. The luxury car firm are seeking a Vegan car.
- Tesla Motors have already ditched gasoline, but now some shareholders want the electric-car maker to stop using animal products, too.
At the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, Mark and Elizabeth Peters, shareholders from Hurst, Texas, urged Tesla’s leadership, including Elon Musk, to stop using animal-sourced materials for interior components such as leather seats. One of their proposals included Tesla Motors going completely vegan by 2019. Another asked the company to explore becoming the first “cruelty-free” premium car brand. Unfortunately, both proposals were rejected.
Currently, the Tesla Model S is available without leather seats, but not without leather trim.
“Tesla does offer a vegan option to customers who express that this is a priority for them,” Khobi Brooklyn, a company spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “If they want no leather in their car, the customer would choose the Multi-Pattern black seats which have a synthetic leather trim and then custom-order a vegan steering wheel.”
However, the Peters counter that it’s pretty difficult to get a vegan Model S. Mark went through “extreme measures” to get his wife a vegan Tesla as an anniversary gift.
“Tesla can continue to fill cars with the skins of sentient beings that suffer unspeakable horror,” said Peters, who revealed she grew up on a veal farm. “Or, Tesla can adopt one of the many faux-leather interiors used by Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, BMW, Infiniti and others, that are cruelty-free.”
Seeing as that Tesla is a favorite among those who live green, we hope that the company reconsiders the Peters’ proposals. An electric, cruelty-free car just makes good sense, after all.
No animal hides in the Vegan Tesla rules out Corinthian leather which is in fact horse hide.
The term Corinthian leather was coined by the advertising agency Bozell to describe the upholstery used in certain Chrysler luxury vehicles and first appeared in advertising in 1974. Although the term suggests that the product has a relationship to or origination in Corinth, there is no relationship. It is is merely a marketing concept.
Corinthian leather was originally supplied by a company outside Newark, New Jersey.
Buyer beware — if you care. Today Corinthian leather is still used in luxury cars such as Maserati’s GranCabrio, but probably most commonly used to make furniture such as leather sofas and interior decorating items. Horse hide Corinthian leather is also used to make high end footwear.
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