What a win! Tesla takes on Apple with this brilliant April Fool's joke, sees stock spike

Electric car maker Tesla on Wednesday succeeded in fooling everyone with a press release proclaiming the launch of a new product. And if you held stock in the company then it was a briefly a profitable one. The April Fool’s joke about  Tesla releasing a watch called the ‘Tesla Model W,’ sent the company’s stock up about 0.75 percent on Wednesday. “This incredible new device from Tesla doesn’t just tell the time, it also tells the date. What’s more, it is infinitely adjustable, able to tell the time no matter where you are on Earth. Japan, Timbuktu, California, anywhere! This will change your life. Reality as you know it will never be the same. Studies have shown the Model W will dramatically improve your health. If you work out. And it’s available in platinum! No longer will you need to rudely examine your phone to read text messages. Now you can politely stare at the tiny screen on your wrist without anyone noticing,” t he release said. [caption id=“attachment_2183311” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  The Telsa Motors Model[/caption] Below the picture of the new Model W, Tesla inserts: “Warning, current version requires wrist strength of an orangutan.” Despite what seemed like a very evident April Fools’ prank,  the company’s stock jumped about $1.50 or about 0.75 percent from its level the moment before to $188.50 as several news organisations published the release as a news item.   Nearly 400,000 shares traded in that time, and it was the heaviest one minute of trading volume in the stock since the opening 60 seconds of trading on 12 February. But here’s why the joke works: At the end of the blog post, Tesla writes, " “This is in no way a competitive response to what some other company is doing.” [caption id=“attachment_2183323” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]  Picture courtesy: Telsa blog[/caption] This is surely a parody of the recent announcement by Apple that it was launching a computerized wrist watch product later this month called the Watch. Coincidentally, the joke comes at a time when rumours surfaced that Apple is working on an electric car after Tesla open-sourced all of its patents. The announcement was just one of the two April Fool’s Day pranks by Tesla. The other includes a video promoting a new self-driving car that helps owners of its Model S vehicles evade traffic and parking tickets. ( Watch the video here). With inputs from Reuters