This news comes at the same time that Tesla takes strides toward entering the Israeli electric vehicle market. The Calfornia-based EV manufacturer reportedly registered Tesla Motors Israel Ltd. in November, which is thought to be a wholly-owned import subsidiary.



According to Globes' sources, Tesla's Israeli R&D representative office will be headed up by Adi Gigi - an Israeli-born Tesla Staff Product Manager with degrees from Stanford and Bar-Ilan University.

It's unknown what specific technologies Tesla Motors is hoping to capitalize on with its new Israeli R&D office, but given the crop of high-profile machine vision startups that have launched in the country, that is one potential area of interest. Tesla is trying to stay at the fore of the automotive industry with its autonomous Autopilot system, and CEO Elon Musk most recently set a release date around mid-2020 for "full autonomy".

