Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. 's new Chinese-language website has been creating buzz online—but not because of the merchandise.

The recently launched site has the same look and feel as the company's American site, apart perhaps from the preponderance of red cars. The color is auspicious in China.

What's feeding the chatter is the URL for the Chinese site—tuosule.cn.

Because the site doesn't give a Chinese-character equivalent, Tesla has left it largely up to website users to conjure up what the characters in Chinese might be.

One possibility is 拓速乐,with its positive connotations of "expanded speed and happiness." That's the official Chinese name of Tesla's China sales unit.

But some wags online have devised other Chinese character combinations for tuosule, including 脱俗了. That is commonly translated as "refined" but literally means "shedding vulgarity" to "leaving vulgarity behind"—a name that suggests new money or commoners putting on airs.

Tesla's URL has elicited some ribbing on popular microblogging websites such as Sina Corp. 's Weibo.

"A high-end, gracious, classy car is positioned as diaosi," wrote one blogger, using a puerile term that roughly translate into "loser."

"The name is improper. It makes a premium car with prices starting from 500,000 yuan sound like a luggage rack worth a few thousand yuan," wrote another.

Tesla still hasn't revealed its Chinese-character name for its car. That could partly be because Chinese businessman Zhan Baosheng already registered the transliteration of Tesla (特斯拉), which doesn't have any obvious meaning or connotation. Tesla does use the characters on its Weibo account.

A Tesla spokeswoman declined to answer questions, saying only that the company began taking reservations from customers in August via email and said it had plans to open a store in Beijing this year.

Mr. Zhan also registered the domain names tesla.cn, tesla.com.cn and teslamotors.com.cn.

Chinese buyers can order Model S and Model X versions of the Tesla by placing a down payment of 250,000 yuan (around $41,000). Delivery is scheduled for next year.

--Colum Murphy and Fanfan Wang, with contributions from Rose Yu. Follow Colum on Twitter @Colum_M.

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