I've always wondered how long will domain squatters wait before they negotiate. Surely Tesla Motors has approached tesla.com and apparently been turned down. Telsa Motors has shown they don't need that domain name to succeed. So when will the squatter, if ever, cave to Tesla Motors' offer?

Maybe never. The Homo Economicus model of human behavior as optimizing for expected economic return is only a first approximation. In some cases, human behavior is more accurately modeled as "Mine! My precious!"

Even if Tesla is not willing to pay the amount the squatter wants, he may be hoping that Tesla's competitor will.

By the way, the coolest thing Tesla could do, that would buy them a lot of love and good press, would be to buy tesla.com and donate it to Nicola Tesla Science Center.

Shouldn't that be tesla.edu rather than .com? Their current .org would also be more appropriate than a .com...

It can't be, unless time travel...

From Wikipedia: "Since 2001, new registrants to the [.edu top level] domain have been required to be United States-affiliated institutions of higher education, though before then non-U.S.-affiliated—and even non-educational institutions—registered, with some retaining their registrations to the present."

Yeah. I imagine if the offer and counteroffer are rebuffed, the squatter enters "well, now you're never gonna get it" mode.

Nissan.com is a great example. I am sure Nissan offered them a lot of cash for the domain name before going hostile on them.

You should probably read up on the case then.