Seth Weintraub

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An amusing look at the 60 Minutes segment where editors added ICE engine sounds to the Tesla Model S and were later forced to omit/apologize for doing so.

In a post on the company blog, Tesla outlined its new leasing program for small to medium sized businesses.

…our customers in small and medium sized businesses have been asking for a leasing program for the ease and simplicity of being able to deduct the payments from their business taxes. We’ve been listening to those requests, and today we’re happy to announce the launch of leasing for business owners.

Our leasing program is straightforward and transparent, and we’ve designed it to be user friendly. To begin with, business customers can easily see upfront their monthly cost of leasing while configuring their car on our website.

While customers have become accustomed to lease agreements that run as long as 10 pages, we found that we could say all that needed to be said in less than three pages – and it’s written in plain language.

In keeping with the Tesla way of doing things, our customers can handle and sign their lease agreements completely electronically. Customers are able to view an electronic version of the lease agreement upfront before delivery. Even the signature process at delivery is simple: a one-button tap on the 17-inch touchscreen in their new Model S is all it takes.

The Tesla business lease is available through Tesla Finance, a subsidiary we’ve set up especially to offer this new product to business customers. The lease program completes a suite of products, including the Resale Value Guarantee and loans from our banking partners, that covers a comprehensive range of financing needs for Model S customers. These financing options, when combined with the fuel savings of Model S, provide an attractive value proposition compared to what’s available for a gasoline-powered car.

A new finance subsidiary makes Tesla more like the GMC Credit, Ford Credit, etcs of the world but again with Tesla’s simplification, use of plain English and ability to do almost everything online. There is a lot of innovation space available in the auto financing world with the bottom line being more people will be able to justify driving electric cars.

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It is fun to see Top Gear starting to let itself and its Shell corporate sponsor start to go electric. We’re really waiting for the Tesla Model S. vs. Maserati show though.

Dragtimes has a nice little rundown of the latest in hacking the Tesla Model S. It turns out that there is an exposed 4 pin connector on the left side of the dashboard that is actually a 100mb Ethernet connection. That connection was actually connected to with a laptop and after some port scanning and sniffing…

The car’s internal 100 Mbps, full duplex ethernet network consists of 3 devices with assiged IP addresses in the 192.168.90.0 subnet, the center console, dashboard/nav screen and one more unknown device. Some ports and services that were open on the devices were 22 (SSH), 23 (telnet),53 (open domain), 80 (HTTP), 111 (rpcbind), 2049 (NFS), 6000 (X11). Port 80 was serving up a web page with the image or media of the current song being played. The operating system is modified version of Ubuntu using an ext3 filesystem. Using X11 it also appears that someone was able to somewhat run Firefox on both screens as per the pictures. All of this technology certain brings up the question as to when and if Telsa’s internal systems will be hacked and jailbroken to allow 3rd party applications to run on the large 17″ touchscreen. Hacking your iPhone s one thing, hacking your car is quite another. We should also note that apparently Tesla engineers detected this hacking or exploring and sent a nastygram to the cars owner, “Tesla USA engineers have seen a tentative of hacking on my car.”, “can be related to industrial espionage and advised me to stop investigation, to not void the warranty”. Does Tesla have an network intrusion detection system installed on the cars? Do they have the right to not allow you to tinker with your own car?

All really good questions. Will Tesla eventually allow hacking. IT seems like the type of company that would want to encourage it from its extremely savvy customer base. Its APIs for the app are already being used by various companies for things like Google Glass interfaces and Chrome extensions.

See that big opening in the Tesal Supercharger map between Ohio and Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh? Tesla plans to put a Supercharger in Cranberry Township, PA (NW of Pittsburgh) to close the gap on the cross country Supercharger highway.

I just called the Residence Inn (724- 779-1000) where the Supercharger is located and they indicated it opened last night and Teslas were now charging there. As of this writing, Tesla’s Supercharger Map nor the very helpful supercharge.info website have it updated but this very important station is now confirmed operational.

Why is this so important? Tesla typically spaces its superchargers out about 100 miles apart so that the 60kWh Teslas can easily travel between stations (if the weather isn’t subzero and they drive reasonably). The Somerset PA- Macedonia, OH was the largest gap between chargers to cross the US and it is now filled, allowing 60kWh cars to make the trip without having to drive 40mph.

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And countless more gallons of gas from home electricity charging.

Fun stuff from the AP:

Electric-car company Tesla Motors has filed notice it intends to go to court to appeal New Jersey’s ruling that would stop it from selling its vehicles in the state within two weeks. The notice was filed last week to the state appellate division.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tesla says it was unfairly targeted last month when the state Motor Vehicle Commission amended its regulations.

The regulations require new-car dealers to have franchise agreements before they can be licensed. That prohibits companies from using direct-sales models as Tesla does.

Tesla says pressure from a state auto dealers’ association prompted the Motor Vehicle Commission’s recent action. Tesla just got a 2 week reprieve after the state banned Tesla at the behest of the Auto Dealers association.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie blamed others in his administration for the ban after CEO Elon Musk penned an open letter to the people of the state of New Jersey.

Tesla had an incredible month in Norway according to a report from Hegnar.no. The US electric automaker sold an incredible 1493 units for the month and almost 600 in the last week alone. The nation of 5 million is buying the Model S more than any other car to the tune of over 1 in 10 purchases.

During the last week, it registered 597 Tesla Model S in this country, which gave the car model a market share of 12.9 percent. Number two on the list, VW Golf, could boast of 169 vehicles.

In March there were registered 1493 Model S. It is all time high for a car model in Norway in a single month. The previous record in modern times was in December 2006, just before the big tax shift. Then there were registered 1328 Subaru Forester in this country.

Is this a glimpse of the future? Norway has strong electric car incentives, a green conscious and a wealthy population. But it doesn’t sound like it would be hard to replicate this success elsewhere once the word gets out.

Here’s a video from last week that foreshadowed Norway’s huge numbers:

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Amusing April Fool’s day gag from Tesla

Based on an in-depth study of YouTube videos, Tesla has decided against self-driving cars, because pets can do so much better and people already have them.

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I know it is April Fools but this aired last night. I’m not sure if Fox’s Oil lobby checks bounced or what but I’ll take an influential endorsement where I can get it.

I’ve queued up the video at 2:30 right where the Tesla talk begins. Caution that the rest of the video is vintage Fox News. Let the email forwards flow!

First Bill O’Reilly and now Walmart going green? It must be April 1st?

Seriously though, Walmart is debuting a new concept truck that will run largely on electricity.

On Friday, Wal-Mart unveiled its futuristic truck at the Mid-America Trucking Show, and it looks like a vehicle out of a Transformers movie. The tractor-trailer, which has taken the Internet by storm, is causing auto geeks to drool with its advanced turbine powertrain, electrified auxiliary components, leading edge aerodynamics, and more.

“When Wal-Mart began our sustainability journey, I never thought it would lead us to trucks like this,” said Doug McMillon, president and CEO at Wal-Mart.

Alas, it may never make it to market because it is ‘just an idea’. Bummer.

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My first experience driving the hair raising, breathtaking, game changing car from Tesla Motors. During high speed cornering some profanities were expressed but I’ve beeped them. I apologise in advance.

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It appears Tesla CEO Elon Musk and family are on their 3200-mile “elec-trek” cross country with his 5 children. Actress/wife Talulah Riley tweeted the above yesterday signaling that the trip has started and included what looks like the California Desert taken from the passenger compartment of a Model S.

Ran into Elon Musk's family road trip at our family spring break at Sorrel Ranch in Moab; 3 Teslas, 5 security guards, 1 chase Suburban.

— Michael White (@mineywins) March 30, 2014

Musk had previously tweeted some specs for the trip but those tweets have been deleted so they may not be up to date info.

Just finalized the LA to NY family road trip route in Model S. 6 day, 3200 mile journey with only 9 hrs spent charging.—
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 05, 2013

At 1.5 hrs/day, we will only ever need to charge when stopping anyway to eat or sightsee, never just for charging itself—
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 05, 2013

I wonder if Musk has the special 400 Mile battery in his car?

Update: It would appear that Musk and family are further along than thought?

Just stayed at the Rocket (yes!) Motel near Mt Rushmore. Sudden blizzard making road trip tricky pic.twitter.com/TRIPC7dKwK

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2014

Now having breakfast at … pic.twitter.com/8tGI3L0iGg

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2014

Update 2: It looks like Musk&Fam might have taken an even more posh ride to South Dakota. Musk’s Jet flew from LA to South Dakota yesterday:

Update 3: Tesla did confirm to me that Musk is indeed on his roadtrip. A spokesperson told me:

While we can confirm Elon is on his road trip, I cannot give any details about the journey, his timeline, or location. You may feel free to gather information from his personal twitter feed.

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The same outlet (Bloomberg)that brought you the story about Graphite pollution from China is now reporting that the Automaker will rely on “locally sourced” raw materials to fuel its Gigafactory plant.

Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), the electric vehicle maker co-founded by Elon Musk, plans to use only raw materials sourced in North America for its proposed $5 billion U.S. battery factory.

The Silicon Valley company won’t look overseas for the graphite, cobalt and other materials needed for its so-called Gigafactory, said Liz Jarvis-Shean, a spokeswoman.

“It will enable us to establish a supply chain that is local and focused on minimizing environmental impact while significantly reducing battery cost,” she said in an e-mail.

There are a lot of smaller materials that could be sourced internationally (like rare earths from China for instance) but the bulk of the materials can easily be found in N. America including Litium from a working mine in NEvada and another deposit in Wyoming.

During this evening’s 60 Minutes interview, anchor Scott Pelley asked Musk why his wife’s Tesla couldn’t get more than a 230 mile range. Musk replied that they could produce a battery that went 400 miles but it would cost too much to ship.

If you are saying to yourself, “I imagine a few people would be willing to pay for that”, you aren’t alone.

I’d heard this independently a few months back but I also heard that the ~110KWh battery would be an option for the Model X in 2015 or 2016. I’d also head that this new generation of batteries would be able to charge at a much faster rate with peak charging nearly double of the current Supercharger rates.

Tesla’s CTO JB Straubel said as much in an MIT Technology Review interview last year noting:

“It’s not going to happen in a year from now. It’s going to be hard. But I think we can get down to five to 10 minutes,” Straubel said in an interview with MIT Technology Review. He noted that the current superchargers, which deliver 120 kilowatts of electricity, “seemed pretty crazy even 10 years ago.” Conventional public charging stations deliver well under 10 kilowatts.

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Overall, not much new in this collection of videos and story by CBS’s 60 Minutes. If you follow this blog you’ve likely have heard all of this before….except maybe this bit.

I’m not seeing much new in the preview but will be good to see the Tesla story in front of a national audience.

Tesla Motors, which Musk tells Pelley he “didn’t really think would be successful,” is on a good roll currently. Its Model S was highly acclaimed and is selling, but for around $100,000 a pop. Investors hope he can come up with a more economical model for the company to really break out. For the visionary Musk, though, it’s more about changing the game by reducing greenhouse gases burned in fossil fuels. He envisions solar-powered recharging stations for his electric cars someday. “So you can drive for free, forever, on pure sunlight. That’s…the message we’re trying to convey. So even if…there’s a zombie apocalypse and the grid breaks down, you’ll still be able to recharge your car,” he says.

As it did just yesterday in Ohio and looks to be aiming for in New Jersey, Tesla compromised with the Car Dealer Association in New York and agreed to freeze its dealership expansion in the state at 5.

Under the agreement, Tesla Motors will maintain their five currently licensed retail locations in New York State. Additional Tesla retail locations will be established under a strengthened dealer franchise law. Legislation to implement the agreement will be introduced with the support of leadership in the Senate and Assembly.

Diarmuid O’Connell, Vice President, Corporate Development, Tesla Motors, said, “We’d like to thank Governor Cuomo for his leadership in architecting an agreement whereby Tesla will be able to continue to sell vehicles in its five retail stores in New York State. Under the Governor’s leadership, Tesla, the New York franchise dealers and other interested parties were able to engage in a productive dialogue which resulted in a compromise that protects franchise dealers’ existing business while allowing Tesla to continue to pursue its mission of catalyzing the market for sustainable transportation. We also appreciate that many members of the Legislature were open to our message and supported a constructive solution. In particular, we are grateful for the support of Assemblyman David Buchwald, who represents a district in which three Tesla facilities are located. Tesla looks forward to a future in which it can continue to create jobs and invest in New York’s economy while accelerating the transition to sustainable transportation.”

Full press release follows:
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Fun times. New Jersey is working on a compromise as

Tesla Motors will have at least 15 more days to sell its electric cars in New Jersey and legislation is in the works that may let the automaker sell directly to consumers for much longer. Tesla has been selling cars at its two company-owned stores in the state for 18 months. But the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission voted on March 11 to enforce an existing law that bans direct auto sales. Every other automaker sell only through independently-owned dealerships. Dealership associations across the country have been fighting to block Tesla’s direct sales. They argue that dealers offer car buyers competitive pricing and consumer protections…
The ban on Tesla sales was due to take effect April 1, but this week the state extended that deadline to April 15, according to Jim Appleton, president of the New Jersey dealer’s trade group. Appleton said dealers would support an even longer extension to keep Teslas on sale while the state legislature works on a compromise. But Appleton cautioned that dealers would not support Tesla being able to sell directly to consumers forever. “There needs to be a pathway for them to come into compliance with franchise laws,” he said.

Meanwhile, across the Hudson, the New York Times OpEds that Car Dealers should leave Tesla alone, and that it is a desperate and unfair way to try to defeat the upstart electric automaker.

The dealers’ associations say the laws against direct sales encourage price competition among dealers for a particular brand of car. While dealers do compete with each other, consumers can end up paying more when they buy through middlemen than directly from producers.

The fight with Tesla is not really about this niche company, which expects to sell just 35,000 cars this year. The dealers are afraid that if Tesla is allowed to sell directly to consumers, General Motors, Ford and other carmakers might be emboldened to do so as well.

Lawmakers should not be telling Tesla how it should sell its cars, especially since the company is not displacing existing dealers. There’s no reason to believe that independent dealerships would be better able to sell or service Tesla cars than the maker itself. Instead of fighting Tesla, dealers should be improving customer service.

I knew it. Immediately after Tesla offered up its triple underbody protection, the NHTSA closed the investigation into the Fires. CNBC:

“A defect trend has not been identified,” the regulator said on its website.  “The closing of the investigation does not constitute a finding by NHTSA that a safety-related defect does not exist.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement that Tesla was after, though it does seem to close the matter. Full statement below:
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Watch a trailer hitch, concrete block and alternator hit the new shield, above

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the technologist that he is, took to Medium with some animated GIFs today to announce that the company would now be offering triple protection to Model S buyers in the form of underbody plates and as a free add on to current owners. You’ll recall that the two overly highly-publicized fires involved puncturing of the battery protective plates.

…we felt it was important to bring this risk down to virtually zero to give Model S owners complete peace of mind. Starting with vehicle bodies manufactured as of March 6, all cars have been outfitted with a triple underbody shield. Tesla service will also retrofit the shields, free of charge, to existing cars upon request or as part of a normally scheduled service.

The shields is pretty impressive and sounds like something you’d see on the Space Shuttle:

The first of the three shields is a rounded, hollow aluminum bar that is designed to either deflect objects entirely or, in the case of a self-stabilizing, ultra high strength object, like a three ball steel tow hitch, absorb the impact and force it to pike upwards well forward of the battery pack. This pierces the plastic aeroshield and front trunk liner, but causes no damage affecting safety and the car remains in control and driveable before, during and after the impact.

This is followed by a titanium plate, which has exceptional strength-to-weight properties and is more commonly seen in aerospace or military applications. The titanium plate prevents sensitive front underbody components from being damaged and aids in neutralizing the road debris.

By this point, the vast majority of objects will have been deflected or crushed. For the rare piece of debris that remains intact, we added a third shield, which is a shallow angle, solid aluminum extrusion that further absorbs impact energy, provides another layer of deflection and finally causes the Model S to ramp up and over the object if it is essentially incompressible and immovable.

As Musk states, this is purely voluntary and not required by any regulations. The cost is Tesla’s to bear.

It might also help the NHTSA clear those fires however.

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