Cars

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is currently in Hong Kong to participate in the StartmeupHK tech forum. While in the country, the CEO took some time to share a few new information about how Tesla is doing in Hong Kong and mainland China, as well as the automaker’s future plans in the country.
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Unless you had the chance to be at the unveiling event in September or you know one of the lucky few early ‘Founder Series’ or ‘Signature Series’ Model X owners, you probably never had the chance to sit or drive Tesla’s new all-electric SUV.
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With a slow production ramp up and over 25,000 reservations, it was inevitable that a few early Model X owners would try to make a quick buck by flipping their new all-electric SUV, and this listing appears to be the first attempt.
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Software developer MOSAIC put together a quick demo of their latest project; a new ‘Alexa Skill’ that lets you connect your Tesla Model S to your Amazon Echo in order to perform the same functions the Tesla App can do, but through Alexa’s voice commands.
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We are about two months away from the unveiling of the Model 3, Tesla’s upcoming mass market car, and we can hardly wait. In the meantime, we can only make educated guesses on what the car will look like, but renderings from amateur designers can also help us imagine it.

We gathered some of our favorite renderings and sketches below to try to figure out which ones could end up looking similar to the final product.
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After its recent investment in Lyft and its acquisition of Sidecar, General Motors announced today its own new car-sharing service under a new “mobility brand” called “Maven”.

The company says Maven will incorporate multiple programs with the single mission “to give customers access to highly personalized, on-demand mobility services”.
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The FTC held a conference yesterday titled “Auto Distribution: Current Issues & Future Trends” with a particularly interesting panel about direct distribution. The panel discussed the laws in certain sates which restrict the ability of car manufacturers to sell their vehicles directly to the consumer, and instead force them to go through independent franchised dealers.

Panelists included two automaker representatives, Tesla Motors’ General Counsel Todd Maron and Elio Motors’ Vice President of Government Affairs Joel Sheltrown. Both companies are trying to established their own network of stores and don’t want to use the dealership model.
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Car Magazine claims to have unveiled BMW’s long-rumoured third “i” electric vehicle; the BMW i6 – the magazine published the rendering of the vehicle featured above. The report is somewhat odd and it should be taken with a grain of salt in my opinion.
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The on-demand valet parking service Luxe is partnering with Tesla Motors to launch a pilot program in New York and San Francisco for an exclusive parking and charging experience for Tesla owners.
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Since its inception less than 2 years ago, Faraday Future managed some impressive high-profile hires for a startup still in stealth mode until very recently. From Tesla executives to successful designers and veterans auto industry engineers, we have been scratching our heads figuring out how the company is able to attract so much talent so quickly ($?), and it’s not over.

FF’s latest hire might be its most high-profile to date. Electrek learned that Faraday recently tipped Bosch engineering director and leading automated driving expert Jan Becker to lead the startup’s own effort in vehicle automation.
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A few months back, reports came out of BMW looking to introduce a new battery pack for the i3. The new pack was believed to enable up to 124 NEDC-rated miles of range on a single charge, which would represent a ~25% increase in range over the current battery pack offered by BMW.

Now we learn from a BMW official that the increase could be closer to 50%.
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A blog post titled “How Elon Musk Stole My Car” went viral on Tesla forums earlier today. In the post, a “Florida man”, who goes by “Marty”, writes in details about a poor customer experience he had when trying to buy an inventory Model S from Tesla.

To summarize the situation, Marty claimed he placed a deposit on an inventory Model S in California, but then Tesla CEO Elon Musk used the car to test the latest version of Tesla’s Autopilot and as a result, the company couldn’t sell him the car anymore because it was now “so aftermarket”.
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The Model X suffered several delays during its development. Tesla first unveiled the car in 2012 and planned to start deliveries in early 2014, but after several issues, low volume production only started in September 2015 and we are seeing a slow ramp up in the past few weeks with more deliveries.

The difficulty with producing and/or designing the second row seat and the Falcon Wing doors were the recurring main suspects for the cause of the delays, and now we learn that Tesla is suing a German supplier over delays in designing the Model X’s Falcon Wing doors.
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France is among the many European markets that greatly helped Tesla grow its fleet in 2015. The automaker delivered a total of 50,580 cars globally last year, which represents an overall 60% increase over 2014, while the company’s deliveries grew 115% in France in 2015.
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Amnesty International and Afrewatch published a new investigative report (embedded below) explaining in details the global supply chain of cobalt and the use of child labor to source the mineral in Congo.

The report highlights the failure of certain electronics and electric car companies to ensure that the cobalt used in their batteries is not sourced using child labor. It names several automakers like Mercedes, VW and BYD, as well as several battery manufacturers known to supply automakers, like LG Chem (GM and Nissan). The report also goes after electronic giants Apple, Samsung and others.
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Tesla has some impressive retail locations around the world, but this one in Shenzhen, China looks particularly awesome. Located in Longhua District, the store is in a mall specialized in auto sales called “Longhua Auto City”.
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According to a new report from the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Tesla Gigafactory is still ahead of schedule, but it is falling short on job creation and capital investment projections for the project. It would be important to note that RGJ is making these claims based on the most recent data available – dated September 30 and June 30 – while comparing the numbers to the state’s projections for the end of 2015.

In its analysis, RGJ assumes that Tesla is still falling short in the fourth quarter because it was lagging so far behind in September. 
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Since its unveiling, the Model X wowed quite a few people with its all-glass panoramic windshield, which Tesla claims is the largest in production. Even though Tesla manufactures a surprising number of components in-house, the company doesn’t make its own glass parts, as it would be expected.

The automaker tipped Peru-based speciality glass maker AGP to make the windshield, which Tesla calls “Big Sky”.
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