Elon Musk

There are few interesting tidbits of information coming out of Tesla’s SEC filing in regard to the proposed merger with SolarCity, like the fact Tesla is currently planning another round of financing, but now we also have a detailed timeline of the behind the scene work for the merger and it includes an interesting information.

CEO Elon Musk first brought up the idea of buying SolarCity to Tesla’s board 6 months ago (Feb 2016), but the board turned him down at the time. The automaker only started considering the merger 3 months later.
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When SolarCity first launched its Solar Bond Program, it was presented as an interesting way for people to invest in solar with minimum cost requirements and without having to install panels on their roof. It ended up looking more like SpaceX’s private investment platform after Elon Musk’s rocket company bought most of the bonds over the last year – about $255 million worth.

Now Elon Musk is also personally investing in the Solar Bonds, along with SolarCity co-founders Lyndon and Peter Rive, ahead of SolarCity’s merger with Tesla.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk just confirmed that Tesla is about to make a product announcement at noon California time – 3pm ET – 7pm UTC:

Tesla product announcement at noon California time today

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2016

We don’t know what it is yet and there are a lot of possibilities. Let the speculation begin!
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was on SolarCity’s conference call for its second quarter financial results today, which is unusual for the Chairman, but understandable considering the impending deal for Tesla to acquire the solar installer. During the call, Musk announced that SolarCity will unveil a “solar roof” as opposed to “solar modules on a roof”.

While Musk didn’t elaborate on the product itself, he made it clear that Tesla/SolarCity will go after the roof industry with its new products, rather than only installing solar modules on existing roofs.
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There’s no doubt that Tesla has suffered several delays on its product launches (heck, even its events rarely start on time). From the Roadster to the Model X, and now even Tesla Energy products are being slightly pushed back a few months. But what about its most important product to date and arguably the most time sensitive: the Tesla Model 3?

Tesla says it will arrive in late 2017, but in its latest issue, the popular automotive magazine Car and Driver claims the Model 3 will not arrive until late 2019, 2 years late, and it backs its prediction with a set of formulas.
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In a conference call with analysts today, Elon Musk gave more details on the expected timeline for two major programs he announced last month: ‘Tesla Minibus‘ and ‘Tesla Semi‘.  The CEO originally said that we should expect an unveiling of these products next year, but now he clarified and said that we should expect the events to happen in the next 6 to 9 months.
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During a conference call today, Elon Musk talked about Tesla’s progress in level 4 fully autonomous driving and while he didn’t want to make an announcement on the call, he said that it is coming sooner than people think:

“What we’ve got will blow people’s minds, it blows my mind …it’ll come sooner than people think.”

Musk’s most recent prediction placed the technology being ready in Q4 2017, around the time Model 3 will enter production.
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During a Monday morning Tesla Motors conference call Elon Musk, in response to several questions regarding designing a new system wide (solar, storage & car) inverter, said –

We don’t want to jump the gun on future (hardware) announcements, but we are internally betting on the merger. If it doesn’t go through, It would a bit awkward…we are betting on the merger for integrated power electronics.

This and other comments essentially answered the question we posed Saturday, ‘Will TeslaSolar continue to outsource the brain of its solar systems – the inverter – or develop in house?’ That design of this inverter occurred as part of the behind the scenes work of a merger, is testament to the importance of this piece of hardware in Musk’s vision of Tesla Energy’s future.

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Since unveiling his ‘Master Plan Part Deux’ and Tesla’s future vehicle lineup earlier this month, Elon Musk has been quietly revealing more details about how Tesla plans to leverage its vehicle platforms to release more models. For example, he confirmed that the upcoming ‘Tesla Minibus’ will be built on the Model X chassis.

Now he reveals that Tesla will also likely build a cargo van on its upcoming pickup truck chassis.
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Tesla had made it a goal to vertically integrate long prior to the current offer to purchase SolarCity. SolarCity took action purchasing a solar panel and solar racking company. A looming question becomes – how exactly will TeslaSolar protect itself in the solar inverter market? TeslaSolar could purchase a close technology partner like SolarEdge or design in house like it does with Tesla automobiles. With powerful options like these, arguments of value of cash, availability of in-house focus, risk of inaction/value of action and control over data are probably the driving considerations.

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Elon Musk has been on a quest to bring ‘S3XY’ back with Tesla’s vehicle naming convention. First with the Model S, ‘S’ for sedan, and Model X, ‘X’ for the look of the Falcon Wing doors, and now with the upcoming Model 3 and Y.

But now it looks like Telsa might drop the ‘Model’ plus ‘letter’ naming scheme after the Model Y completes the ‘S3XY’ vehicle lineup, according to Elon Musk.
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Following last week’s announcement that Tesla will bring to market a self-driving ‘minibus’, CEO Elon Musk now confirmed that the vehicle will be built on the Model X chassis – hinting at the vehicle potentially coming to market sooner than anticipated by leveraging the work already done for the automaker’s SUV.

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Tesla is undoubtedly pushing its Autopilot program quickly, but the company says that its focus is safety. CEO Elon Musk is on record saying that he sees the current version of the program as safer than a human driving without all of Tesla’s semi-autonomous driver assist features – adding that not releasing the system is “killing people with statistics”.

Yet, some Tesla Autopilot engineers are reportedly uncomfortable with the pace of the deployment of the program, according to a new report from CNN.
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Yesterday was quite a day in Reno. While we weren’t able to fire off our livestream as we’d hoped, we were able to gather a ton of information on the “Coolest Factory in the world” I’ll break down the new info, videos and imagery below:
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At a special media event for the opening of the Tesla Gigafactory today, CEO Elon Musk made a few comments about the upcoming Model 3. He confirmed the pencil down on the design as reported two weeks ago, and he also elaborated on its financial sustainability as a vehicle program.

With already over 373,000 reservations (Tesla hasn’t updated this number in a while), the vehicle already proves to be in demand, but industry analysts want to know if Tesla can make money selling them in order to finance its other ambitious goals, like a pickup truck and ‘Tesla Semi‘.
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We reported this morning that Mobileye confirmed that it will end its partnership with Tesla for the development of the Autopilot program. The company’s EyeQ3 chip, which is currently in Tesla’s vehicles, will still be supported but the company will move away from the system in future iterations of the Autopilot.

Now Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented on the move saying that “it will not have any material effect on [Tesla’s] plans” and that the company will focus on a more integrated system.
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Elon Musk’s highly anticipated “Master Plan Part 2” is chock full of interesting new, but vague details on Tesla’s plans but probably one of the most exciting is the new SUV and pickup consumer vehicles included… 
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As part of the reveal of his ‘Master Plan Part 2’, CEO Elon Musk elaborated on the automaker’s plan for the role of car ownership and ride-sharing in the future of the company.

Musk confirmed that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and it is approved by regulators (2 to 3 years based on his previous statements), the automaker plans for Tesla owners to be able to loan their car to a ‘shared autonomous fleet’ and make money while they are not using it.
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As promised last week (albeit a little late), Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the second part of his ‘Master Plan’ for the company almost a decade to the day (August 2, 2006) after releasing what we now know was only the first part of Tesla’s mission in an awesome blog post titled ‘The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)‘.

The second part is appropriately titled ‘Master Plan, Part Deux‘ and you can read it in full below.
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Despite the strong negative media reaction to Tesla’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity and subsequent 10% stock price decrease, Elon Musk now says that he is convinced the merger will pass after talking to the companies’ major investors.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been working on the second part of his ‘Master Plan’ for the past two weeks and he is now a little late. While flying back to California after spending the past few days in Florida for a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, the CEO said that he will be focusing on the Tesla Model 3 and Autopilot today, consequently pushing the ‘Master Plan’  again:

Will be working at Tesla on Autopilot & Model 3 today, then aiming to pull an all-nighter and complete the master product plan

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2016

It’s the tenth anniversary of the debut of the Roadster today. Some hoped it would coincide with the release of the plan, which Musk hoped to publish last week, but it looks like it will be pushed to at least tomorrow.

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