Cars

A new report published today by Reuters cites an unnamed source in Korea with direct knowledge that LG Display has been selected to be “a sole supplier for the 15-plus inch center display of Model 3.”

The display is just 2 inches smaller than the center screen in Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV. Although we are talking about LG’s display division, Tesla already has a partnership with the Korean electronic giant through a battery supply agreement with its LG Chem division.
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Investors and Wall Street analysts are mostly happy with Tesla’s Model 3 event last night and the confirmation that over 150,000 reservations were placed in the last 24 hours – much more than some of the most optimistic predictions. The company’s stock (TSLA) surged about 10% in early trading before settling down to a 3% gain at ~$236 right after the opening bell.
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Last night Tesla unveiled the Model 3 at its design studio in Hawthorne, California and let attendees play with a few prototypes. Here’s our roundup of videos taken at the event for a better look at the $35,000 all-electric car:
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk walked on stage tonight with a smile on his face after over 100,000 people reserved his company’s new vehicle without even having seen it. After going through his secret master plan again to set up the Model 3 as the “next logical step”, he revealed a few specs before unveiling the car itself.

The car is absolutely stunning and exactly like we described in our exclusive leak yesterday:

“It looks like a smaller hybrid of the Model X and S. It is a bit taller sedan with a unique front that looks more like a Model X than a Model S. The car is shorter and narrower than either the model X or S but is described as “sexy and sporty”.

The fascia is indeed reminiscent of the Model X’s, but combined with the headlights, it gives the 3 its unique look.
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After a highly anticipated multi-steps reservation process starting with Tesla and SpaceX employees, followed by in-store reservations, which created long queues at Tesla’s retail locations, and finally online reservations just an hour before the unveiling, Tesla finally launched the Model 3 – its first mass market electric vehicle.

All those reservations were sight-unseen and yet, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company already had a staggering 115,000 Model 3 reservations with deposits and they are still coming in. At a base price of $35,000, it represent a future backlog of orders worth over $4 billion.
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Elon Musk often acts as the defacto PR department for Tesla Motors and in a Tweet today – in the mist of the Model 3 unveil – the CEO announced that Tesla would be expanding into at least 7 more countries. The expansion includes 6 continents and includes the BRIC countries of Brazil and India, South Africa (CEO Elon Musk’s birthplace), South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Ireland. The tweet left room for others that might not fit into the 140 character medium.
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“I’ll get there an hour early,” I thought to myself. “Maybe there will be ten or fifteen people in line, but I need some time to get photos before the doors open.” I arrive at 9:06 to a packed parking lot and a long line. I’m #56 in line at Tesla’s Cleveland location, one of three stores in my home state of Ohio, and it’s raining.

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Today Tesla will take an important step in CEO Elon Musk’s secret master plan by unveiling its first mass market car: the Model 3. The vehicle is touted as the first compelling and affordable long-range electric car. You can follow our live blog here with updates leading to the event and then our comments on the event itself.

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We were confident that Tesla’s reservation process would be fairly successful, especially in the US due to federal tax credit cap, but this morning we are blown away by the enthusiasm for a vehicle no one has seen yet.

If you have been following our live updates of the queues at Tesla retail locations this morning, you know that over 13,000 16,000 have been spotted waiting in line to reserve the Model 3 in the US and Canada alone.
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Update: It’s becoming hard to tell from the pictures below, but we are receiving reports of several hundreds of people waiting in lines at now a dozen locations. A tally of reports from people waiting in line in Canada and in the US accounts for over 6,000 10,000 13,000 16,000 20,000 people./

Yesterday we reported on a few brave people prepared to camp outside to be among the first people to reserve a Tesla Model 3 this morning. Last night they were joined by many others and today it is resulting in several long queues at Tesla stores around the world like in Frankfurt, Germany as seen above.

After India evaluating a scheme for all its fleet to be electric by 2030, now we learn that the Dutch government is discussing the possibility to ban gas-powered car sales and only allow electric vehicle sales starting in 2025.

Although the parliament is considering the possibility to implement such a drastic law, the house is divided and the liberal coalition in power does not see the rule being implemented any time soon.
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Due to its timezone, EV enthusiasts in Australia are the first to be able to reserve the Tesla Model 3 in-store. Reservations started in the last hour and long lines of people have been spotted in Sydney and Melbourne.
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Yesterday we shared a few pictures of the Gigafactory taken last weekend by Above Reno, but today we have the full 4k video of the company’s recent flight above Tesla’s battery factory located near Reno, Nevada. You can watch the video below:
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Late last year Ford announced a $4.5 billion investment in EV technology and 13 new electric models coming to its lineup by 2020. Today Ford’s EV chief Kevin Layden  sat down with Automotive News and discussed the company’s electric vehicle plans.
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Wired Germany recently got access to Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne, California, where the automaker will unveil the Model 3 tomorrow. Today the publication published an interview (German) with Tesla’s Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen and claims that the picture above is a cloaked Model 3.
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Financial news publication Valuewalk published an article earlier this week titled: “Tesla Gigafactory To Get Delayed By Three Years“. The publication has since completely changed the headline to “Tesla Gigafactory construction ahead of schedule” after Tesla issued a statement stating that the battery factory is “ahead of schedule on both construction and production”.
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Andreas Stephens from Sydney, Australia was the first person reported in line to reserve the Tesla Model 3 in store a whole 2 days before the doors open, but now that we are about 24 hours away from Tesla accepting reservations for its $35,000 long-range vehicle, we are starting to get reports of lines and tents at Tesla stores around the world.
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Earlier today, CNBC published a poll asking “Would you put down $1,000 for the new Tesla Model 3?”. After over 12,000 respondents, the results showed that a strong majority were going to place a $1,000 deposit for the vehicle. Then later in the day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk mentioned the poll on Twitter and said that it “looks like we may need to increase production plans for the Model 3”:

[tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/714963420316049411 align=’center’]

Musk probably made the comment half-jokingly, but as Jon mentioned in his post this morning: Don’t Wait: Why you should reserve the Tesla Model 3 on Thursday, we are indeed expecting a significant backlog of Model 3 reservations in the next few days – yet we should not take that poll seriously.
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A new report published today by Israel’s Globes suggests that Elon Musk visited Israel-based tech firm Mobileye to test a new system for the next generation Tesla Autopilot.

According to Globes, Musk visited Mobileye’s Israel operations earlier this month for a “demonstration of several breakthrough developments by Mobileye in [automated driving technology] installed on a trial Tesla Model S vehicle.”

The report suggests that Mobileye is testing its automated driving technology in two Tesla Model S test vehicles. Independently, a Model S being tested with a fully-autonomous hardware suite was recently spotted in California.
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Volkswagen recently confirmed (via Autoblog) that it is recalling certain model year 2015-2016 e-Golf vehicles manufactured between May 21, 2014 and March 1, 2016. We are talking about 5,561 units potentially affected. The problem is in the battery management system (BMS) which can falsely detect an electrical surge and shutdown the electric drive as a result.

The fix is fairly simple: a visit at your local dealership for a BMS software update.
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