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.
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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Today is the 10-year anniversary of the official debut of the Tesla Roadster, Tesla’s very first vehicle, which also effectively launched the automaker out of ‘stealth mode’. The vehicle debuted on July 19, 2006 at the Santa Monica Airport with more than 350 people attending the event.
The Roadster was the first phase of Elon Musk’s ‘Secret Master Plan’ for Tesla. The automaker is now in the last phase of that plan and Musk is reportedly about to unveil a second part outlining the company’s future.
But while we wait for the second part of the plan, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane to remember the Roadster on its 10-year anniversary.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a little late to publish his ‘Part 2’ of the ‘Tesla Secret Master Plan’, which he hoped to reveal last week, but it looks like it was pushed to today. He was a little busy overseeing the successful Falcon 9 launch and landing in Cape Canaveral last night, and the ongoing Dragon mission.
Bit of a distraction yesterday. Working on plan today.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2016
The plan is expected to outline Tesla’s future product lineup as the company transitions from a transportation company to an energy company. In line with the transition, Tesla finally moved its main domain ‘teslamotors.com’ to its recently acquired ‘tesla.com’ over the weekend.
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The limits of the Autopilot under its current suite of sensors have been debated for a while, especially since Tesla has been discussing an upcoming second-generation hardware for the program to allow fully autonomous driving.
But last night, Elon Musk announced that “certainly moderate and maybe big advances” are possible with Tesla’s current sensors.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a statement last week confirming that it will investigate the recent Tesla Model X rollover accident in Pennsylvania after the driver claimed that the Autopilot was activated during the crash.
Last week, Tesla said that they couldn’t access the data logs remotely because of the damage on the vehicle, but a spokesperson also said that they “have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident”.
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Following the news of the fatal crash in a Model S in May, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) implied that Tesla could be planning to disable the Autopilot when drivers are not using it properly, but now Elon Musk gave a quick interview to the publication (Paywall) and says that the company has no plan to disable the Autopilot.
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Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s analyst covering Tesla, has been predicting a new “on-demand mobility service” program for the automaker ever since he had a very one-sided conversation with Elon Musk in which the CEO said a lot by refusing to answer a question about whether the company plans on offering a service like Uber or maybe partnering with the startup.
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Over the weekend, Tesla CEO Elon Musk clarified the automaker’s use of the word ‘Beta’ in reference to the Autopilot system after Germany’s Federal Office for Motor Vehicles (KBA) said that it wouldn’t approve a feature on German roads if it is described as ‘Beta’. The agency said that the ‘beta-phase’ could mean ‘an incomplete status of the software’.
Elon Musk claimed that the word “beta” is not used in the “standard sense” of the word, but to make sure drivers “don’t get comfortable” with the system.
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Tesla Model 3 reservation holders will be happy to know that Tesla apparently already fixed that small trunk opening issue seen on the Model 3 prototypes, which has been a big concern for several early adopters.
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Almost a decade ago to the day (August 2, 2006), Elon Musk laid out Tesla’s mission in an awesome blog post titled ‘The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)‘. Now he is apparently almost ready to release a second part to this Master Plan.
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Yesterday, we reported on a strange article in which Fortune Magazine tried to make the case that Tesla should have disclosed the fatal Model S accident on Autopilot before raising capital through a secondary offering a few weeks after the fact. The publication claims that the accident was material to Tesla’s stock and therefore, it should have been announced when the company learned of the event and not when NHTSA decided it would launch a preliminary evaluation on June 30.
Elon Musk argued against it being material to Tesla’s valuation in an email to Fortune, but now the publication is somehow trying to use a boilerplate statement from Tesla to prove that Musk and the company previously considered the accident a material event, which is not necessarily the case.
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The Economic Times released an interesting article with a reaching title ‘How Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors maybe killing flamingos with its electric cars‘ yesterday. The claim is so absurd that it prompted Musk to mock it on Twitter:
Because of course I hate flamingos…(maybe try eating fewer flamingo eggs in your salad)https://t.co/tUKsWqCobo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2016
While the endangerment of the Flamigos’ environment is not a laughing matter, the publication’s link back to Musk and Tesla certainly looks like one.
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Following the news of the fatal accident in a Tesla Model S on Autopilot, which happened in May but only came to light last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims that about half of the approximately one million people who died in auto accidents last year would have been saved if the Tesla Autopilot was universally available.
He made the comment in a somewhat strange email conversation with a retired journalist.
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Mobileye, an Israel-based tech company developing some of the technology behind Tesla’s Autopilot, commented on the fatal Model S crash reported yesterday. A spokesperson said that the company’s current Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) system is only meant for rear-end collision avoidance and since the crash was front (of the Model S) to side (of a truck), the system was not designed to avoid it.
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The Tesla Gigafactory 1 is the Chocolate Factory and Elon Musk is Willy Wonka!
Tesla quietly created a ‘Golden Ticket’ drawing for all the Model 3 reservation holders who placed a pre-order during the first day and randomly selected 12 winners to receive an all-expenses paid trip to the Gigafactory Grand Opening.
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