Cars

Faraday Future’s manufacturing leadership is now headed by not one, but two former Tesla executives. Faraday’s Global Vice President of Manufacturing, Dag Reckhorn, was Director of Model S Manufacturing at Tesla from 2009 to 2013.

He was one of the early members of the electric vehicle startup set to compete with Tesla in the luxury segment, and now he apparently brought on board Andrew De Haan, Tesla’s Director of Global Supplier Industrialization, who we learn left Tesla’s Fremont factory last month to join Faraday as manager of its upcoming plant in Nevada just last week.
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In a weird Twitter conversation, Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered a wager to former SUN Microsystems CEO and co-founder, Scott McNealy, on whether Tesla received less in government subsidies than McNealy’s SUN.

For some reason, today McNealy decided to reply to a tweet Musk sent out two weeks ago. The Silicon Valley executive claimed that Musk’s supporters were unwilling taxpayers and he referenced a LA Times article from last year that mistakenly implied that Musk’s companies, especially Tesla and SolarCity, received $4.9 billion in subsidies.
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In order to limit any negative impact following some reported misuses of the Autopilot, Tesla pushed more constraints to its semi-autonomous driving system through a software update late last year. The automaker made it clear that it was only a precaution and that it wasn’t aware of any accident caused by the system.

On the other hand, we learned of a few accidents that was prevented by the Autopilot (here and more recently here). When releasing the feature, Tesla made it clear that drivers should keep their hands on the steering wheel while using ‘Autosteer’, but of course Tesla owners would naturally want to push the limits of the feature, and of course we now see that even Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s wife is not using it as recommended.
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Tesla Model X Founder series are fairly rare vehicles. Tesla CEO Elon Musk owns one (picture above), NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang also has one, and few other investors and early Tesla supporters, like Steve Jurvetson, were able to buy the limited-edition vehicle.

Founder series are not only limited-editions, but they also were delivered early in the production process. The Model X remains difficult to get considering every car delivered up to until very recently had been reserved months or years prior to delivery. The process makes it difficult for competitors, like Audi, to get their hands on the Model X to benchmark it or reverse-engineer it, which can then increase the short-term resale value and add a significant markup.
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AutoExpress published its annual Drive Power owner satisfaction survey and declared the Tesla Model S its clear winner. Nearly 50,000 people filled the survey and the Model S topped 7 of the 10 categories for a total overall score of 97%.
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Update: Check out the full announcement video.

Earlier today, LeEco (previously known as LeTV) announced its first set of China-bound phones since its rebranding, but the company also used today’s event in Beijing — attended by more than 10,000 people — to unveil its first all-electric concept car dubbed LeSee…

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Several executives in BMW’s electric vehicle leadership, including 20-year BMW veteran Carsten Breitfeld who reportedly developed the i8, left the German automaker to join a Chinese EV startup, according to a new WSJ report.

The startup in question is Future Mobility Corp, a newly formed EV company backed by Tencent Holdings.

Tencent is an important holding company in China with significant investments in several of the country’s biggest internet, video game and social media companies.
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Tesla’s stock price ($TSLA) surprisingly tumbled following a new report from the review magazine Consumer Reports highlighting some quality issues with early Model X units. The stock fell over 4% after the report was published this morning, but gained in the afternoon and it is now down only 2%.

I say the tumble is surprising due to the report hardly containing any new information. The magazine cites one particular case of a Model X owner having some issues needing a few service center visits and then add some data point by also citing “message boards” complaints about the vehicle.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has an affectionate nickname for Apple: The ‘Tesla Graveyard‘. “They have hired people we’ve fired,” Musk said. “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple”. He made the comment after being asked about the so-called “poaching war” between the automaker and the consumer electronic giant following the start of Apple’s electric car program: ‘Project Titan‘.

We follow who’s coming and who’s going at Tesla pretty closely here at Electrek and it’s clear that the two companies share a lot of former colleagues. Tesla’s senior engineering staff and leadership are full of former Apple directors and VPs, while the Cupertino-based company hired quite a few former Tesla engineers, but rarely any senior leadership… until now.

Electrek, in collaboration with our sister-site 9to5Mac, has exclusively discovered and confirmed respectively that Apple hired former Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering and former Aston Martin Chief Engineer, Chris Porritt, to work on “special projects”, and we know that “special projects” is where Apple’s Titan car project lives.
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Tesla’s new and updated Model S unveiled last week is set to make its Chinese debut at the company’s new Jingang store today in Beijing. The new Model S is borrowing two new important features from its younger (but bigger) brother, the Model X.

The most obvious being the similar front fascia, but a feature that is likely to be particularly popular in China, where extreme smog is a recurring problem, is the HEPA air filtration system with ‘bioweapon defense mode’.
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Audi plans to release an all-electric luxury SUV, the e-tron quattro, in 2018. The vehicle is expected to become the first all-electric competitor to Tesla’s Model X. Earlier this year, we reported on one of the first Model X in Europe spotted near to Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt (pictures above), where the german automaker is believed to be reverse-engineering or benchmarking Tesla’s SUV – something it also did with the Model S.

Now a Model X reportedly driven by an Audi engineer has been spotted again over the weekend, but this time in a more interesting context.
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While everyone had their eyes glued to the Model 3 at the unveiling event last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made an important announcement regarding the automaker’s two networks of charging stations. He said that Tesla will double the number of Superchargers to 7,000 units and quadruple the number of Destination chargers to 15,000 units within the next 2 years.

If the close to 400,000 Model 3 reservations (and still counting) end up turning into orders, Tesla will certainly need all those stations to allow its customers to make roadtrips and travel long-distances. We now learn that the company is already getting to work. Tesla secured permits or started construction at 11 new locations (~90 new Superchargers) since the unveiling event.
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Vokswagen sent out a press release this morning with new images to tease an upcoming electric plug-in hybrid SUV concept to be unveiled at the Beijing Auto show next week.

The company describes the concept as a “premium SUV’ and it will release the concept under its VW brand – even though Volkswagen as another premium electric SUV, although all-electric, coming out under its luxury brand: Audi.
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We reported last week that following the unveiling of the updated Model S and its new high amperage charger, Tesla released a new cheaper and upgraded ‘Tesla Wall Connector’. Despite being listed as “currently unavailable”, it seems like Tesla has already shipped at least one as the first unboxing video is already available.
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German publication Frankfurter Allgemeine is reporting that Apple may be planning to use Austrian-based automotive contract manufacturer Magna to manufacture the Apple Car. The publication also says that Apple has created a ‘secret lab’ in Berlin where it has head-hunted a small cross-disciplinary team of 15-20 upcoming engineers from a number of German car companies.

Magna specialises in making limited-edition models for major car manufacturers, having made the Mini Paceman and Clubman for BMW, as well as the BMW X3. It is expected to make hundreds of thousands of vehicles for BMW over the next 6-7 years …

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Tesla officially unveiled the updated Model S last week, but only released a few promo shots and updated the renderings on its online design studio. Now that the new vehicle is making its way to showrooms and service centers across the world, we get to see the vehicle in more details.
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We had a good look at the Model 3 during the unveil event last month, and Tesla shared a few promo shots afterward, but it’s always interesting to see a product in a non-staged environment and where it is intended to be utilized. In the case of the Model 3, that would be on the road.

At the unveiling event, Tesla officials described the Model 3 units used for test rides as “engineering validation cars”. While Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company was still working on the vehicles and a few design details will end up more refined than what we are seeing right now, it does sound like those Model 3’s are close to what will go into production next year.
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Tesla has been installing its Autopilot hardware suite in all its vehicles manufactured since October 2014. While all active safety features utilizing the hardware, like auto emergency braking and side collision avoidance, are included in the price of the vehicle, Tesla charges $2,500 for the convenience features like active cruise control and automatic highway steering.

If a Tesla buyer decides not to choose the option when configuring the vehicle at the purchase, since the hardware is already in the car, the person can decide to activate it later through an over-the-air software update for $3,000. Now it seems that Tesla is trying to capitalize on this market by offering a 1-month Autopilot trial to those who didn’t choose the convenience features.
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Tesla announced after market close on Friday that its 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “2016 Annual Meeting”) will be held on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

During the meeting, shareholders will vote on the reelection of two board directors, the reappointment of Tesla’s public accounting firm and on a stockholder proposal to eliminate limited supermajority voting requirements. Following the formal part of the meeting, CEO Elon Musk generally makes a short presentation followed by a Q&A session.
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The promise of autonomous cars is not that it can handle your highway commute but complete the full journey from point A to B.  When that day comes, it will not only dramatically change road safety, but also open up new business models beyond the current vehicle ownership model to mobility on demand service model.

Elon Musk recently reduced his timetable for full autonomy from 3 years down to 2 years.

“We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.”

The Model 3 is expected to be the first Tesla vehicle to be equipped with the automaker’s self-driving system.
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