Tesla and Selkirk Drop Controversial Pickleball Paddle

The Kitchen

Team The Kitchen

Last Edited

Dec 12 2025

How this collaboration actually happened

The origin story traces back to the 2023 USAP National Championships, where Selkirk’s Director of R&D, Tom Barnes, first connected with Tesla’s engineering team. That meeting stuck. Barnes later built a batch of custom black-and-white Tesla paddles and sent them to Tesla employees just for fun.

By March 2024, things escalated. Barnes and several Tesla designers — including Tesla’s Director of Product Design, Javier Verdura — started kicking around a bigger idea:

Could Tesla’s aerodynamic principles translate into a faster, more efficient pickleball paddle?

That led to co-design sessions, early prototypes built inside Selkirk’s Idaho lab, and multiple rounds of joint performance testing until both teams were convinced they had something real.

What makes the Tesla Plaid Paddle different

The Tesla Plaid Paddle pulls inspiration from Selkirk’s past models but layers on entirely new engineering.

Built in the USA
USAP-approved
Retail price: $350

Tesla’s contribution centered on airflow behavior — studying drag coefficients, turbulent wake patterns, and how slight geometry shifts affected acceleration during different swing paths. Those findings directly influenced the paddle’s:

elongated silhouette
edgeless perimeter
aerodynamic throat cutout (a feature Selkirk first introduced on earlier models)

Selkirk added its own tech stack:

PureFoam full-foam core
All-new TPU Power Ring, created specifically for this paddle to stabilize the face and dampen vibration
MOI Tuning System from the Boomstik for a cleaner, more forgiving sweet spot
Two-ply carbon fiber face for control and feedback
InfiniGrit Surface for enhanced, longer-lasting spin

According to Selkirk, the Power 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 personal side

“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.”