Diarmuid O'Connell

Tesla Vice-President of Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell was in Amsterdam yesterday for the AVERE E-mobility Conference. The long-time Tesla executive, and one of the company’s first 50 employees, gave a short presentation before doing a Q&A with the audience.

O’Connell shared a quick update on the increasing number of Model 3 reservations Tesla has been receiving since unveiling the vehicle last month. After a week, Tesla confirmed in a blog post having received 325,000 Model 3 reservations, another week later, O’Connell now says that “something approaching 400,000 people” have already reserved the vehicle.
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On Thursday, California’s Air Resources Board had a meeting and status update on the state’s ‘Zero Emission Vehicle’ (ZEV) program where industry actors expressed their views on the clean vehicle market and the ZEV credit mandate. During a presentation to the board, Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell argued that lobbying efforts from automakers effectively delayed fuel economy in the U.S. by about 20 years.

He added that the automotive industry used similar lobbying tactics to delay the commercialization of Zero Emission Vehicles. He said the effort delayed the state of California’s initial 1998 goal of 2% market penetration by 16 years – Zero Emission vehicles only reached 2% of the market in 2014.
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