Tesla and Selkirk Made a Pickleball Paddle

Years in the making, the USAP-approved, limited-edition collab nobody saw coming drops today and comes packed with a slew of new tech and features

If you thought your 2025 pickleball paddle budget was maxed out, we've got bad news for you: Selkirk and Tesla just teamed up for a collab paddle nobody saw coming – but many are likely to want (us very much included).

That's right: the Tesla Plaid Pickleball Paddle by Selkirk is a very real thing – and it's not designed to sit on a shelf and collect dust; it features new-age tech tested in a wind-tunnel to bring advanced aerodynamics and precision performance to a court near you.

The limited-edition paddle is only available on the Tesla Shop website.

How this collaboration came to be

At the 2023 USAP National Championships, Selkirk Director of R&D Tom Barnes first encountered Tesla’s engineering team. Inspired by their meeting, Tom created a batch of custom black-and-white Tesla paddles to deliver to Tesla staff.

It wasn't until March of 2024 that Tom and a handful of Tesla designers, including Tesla’s Director of Product Design Javier Verdura, started discussing how aerodynamics used in Tesla vehicle development could be applied to a pickleball paddle. 

A series of shared design sessions led to early prototypes producedin Selkirk's Idaho-based lab, where both companies then conducted repeated rounds of performance testing. 

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“This wasn’t simply a branding exercise. It was a true engineering collaboration,” Barnes said.

“Tesla’s design group and our R&D team spent more than a year trading data, refining geometry and stress-testing prototypes.” 

What makes this paddle different

The Tesla Plaid Pickleball Paddle borrows design cues from past Selkirk paddles while also introducing a host of new tech.

It's assembled in the United States and is USAP-approved. It retails for $350.

On Tesla’s end, they focused their rigorous testing efforts on airflow behavior around the paddle during various swing paths, evaluating "drag coefficients, turbulent wake patterns and how specific geometry adjustments affected acceleration."

Those findings translated to the paddle’s elongated silhouette, edgeless perimeter, and throat hole – a signature feature first found in Selkirk's earlier models.

The Selkirk team combined its PureFoam core technology with a new TPU Power Ring developed specifically for this paddle.

According to Selkirk:

"The ring’s lightweight perimeter structure was tested to dampen vibration and stabilize the paddle face, working to prevent the long-term crushing common in polymer honeycomb cores."

The paddle also includes a few of Selkirk’s recent paddle innovations:

• The core is full-foam
• The MOI Tuning System introduced in the popular Boomstik model, perfectly tuned for a larger sweet spot
• A two-ply carbon fiber face for control
• Their patent-pending InfiniGrit Surface for enhanced, longer-lasting spin 

“This project is personal to me,” Barnes said. “I’ve always admired Tesla’s approach to engineering. What started as a fun idea between friends evolved into a full collaboration with their design and aerodynamics teams.

"The Plaid Paddle reflects the best of what both companies do. It’s engineered for players who want equipment that performs at the highest level.” 

John Kew's full review

Paddle reviewer John Kew has been playing with this paddle for a couple weeks, and ran it through a fully battery of tests.

A few of his findings:

• The spin is quite literally off the charts – pushing nearly 2,500 RPM
• The swing weight of 124 left it feeling slightly heavy in the hand
• Power levels put in the all-court category, similar to an 11Six24 Power, Vatic Saga Flash, and CRBN TruFoam Genesis
• It's got a solid sweet-spot for an edgeless paddle, but still feels lacking in this category compared to most full-foam paddles on the market today
• The paddle looks fantastic, but the hurdle for most people will be the price tag

How you can get your hands on one

If you're reading this, it might be too late. This paddle was made in extremely limited quantities, we're told.

For more information and to purchase the paddle while supplies last, visit the Tesla website.

Just be ready for a touch of stick-shock: it retails for $350. 

"This is one of the top-tier paddles that we provide. A lot of work was done with the composites to make sure it not only looks unique, but also offers peak playability," Tom Barnes told us.

"It follows the design languages of Tesla and Selkirk simultaneously, and along with the Boomstik, this is our only other full foam paddle currently on the market." 

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