Elon Musk

Tesla’s 2016 Shareholders Meeting yesterday was an unusual one. CEO Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel were on stage for close to 4 hours and went through the bulk of Tesla’s history – recounting stories from the early days with longtime employees of the automaker.

We already reported on important nuggets of information the execs released about the Gigafactory and the Model 3 during the event, but what probably stands out the most from the event – from my perspective at least – is Musk’s rant about the importance of the “machine that makes the machine.”
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla (TSLA) 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “2016 Annual Meeting”) will be held tomorrow on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. If you can’t attend, don’t worry because as usual Tesla will be live-streaming the event on its website.

The meeting generally starts with a formal part for shareholders to vote on a few things. Last year it was a little more complicated because of two shareholder proposals about the use of leather in Tesla’s vehicles, but this year it should be fairly straightforward. Shareholders will vote on the reelection of two board directors, the reappointment of Tesla’s public accounting firm and on a stockholder proposal to eliminate limited supermajority voting requirements.

After the formal part, CEO Elon Musk should make a short presentation followed by a Q&A session. The Q&A is most entertaining part of the event and Musk generally releases a few interesting nuggets of information. This time will be a little different though as Tesla will apparently take questions voted by the community ahead of time.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Earlier this week, Tesla confirmed having closed its recent secondary offering with $1.7 billion in net proceeds to finance its Model 3 production program, but part of the offering was also a significant set of transactions in order for Elon Musk to exercise 5,503,972 stock options and then sell 2,782,670 shares to pay taxes.

In a SEC filing issued last night, Tesla confirmed that Musk sold the shares at $213.22 for a total of just over $593 million. After the transaction, Musk’s stake in Tesla stands at 31,100,644 shares worth just over $7 billion.
Expand
Expanding
Close

It’s a well-known fact at this point that Tesla has a very unusual way to communicate new information for an automaker. The company shares more news through Elon Musk’s Twitter account than with press releases and this latest instance is a perfect example.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is scheduled to speak at the Code Conference next week. The Code Conference is an exclusive event for “top industry influencers” to gather and have in-depth conversations about “the current and future impact of digital technology on our lives.”
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla co-founder and CTO, JB Straubel, was one of the keynote speakers at the Ontario Centres of Excellence’s Discovery conference yesterday. He sat down for a public conversation with journalist and current RBC Sr. Vice President John Stackhouse. You can watch a video of the conversation below:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Following Tesla’s announcement that it plans to double its total production output to 500,000 vehicles in 2018 and 1 million in 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked by analysts how and where he plans to manufacture those vehicles.

While the company has been talking about plans to build more vehicle factories in Europe and China, Tesla’s Fremont factory remains its only full-fledged car manufacturing facility. Company officials have always referred to the Fremont plant’s total capacity to be around 500,000 cars per year once optimized, which is what Toyota and GM were producing when they owned the factory, until now.
Expand
Expanding
Close

During his talk at the World Energy Innovation Forum (WEIF) today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk called for people to revolt against the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry and he even described a tactic he believes the industry used to smear his companies.

“We need to appeal to the people – educate people to sort of revolt against this and to fight the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry which is unrelenting and enormous.” – Musk said.

The CEO implied that the LA Times article from last year that misleadingly asserted that Musk’s companies received $4.9 billion in subsidies originated from the fossil fuel industry.
Expand
Expanding
Close

The World Energy Innovation Forum (WEIF) managed to secure not only an impressive lineup of industry leaders to speak at the event, but also quite a venue for this year’s conference. The forum will take place Wednesday and Thursday at the Tesla Fremont Factory in Fremont, California.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Elon Musk went on another Tweetstorm last night and although it was mostly about SpaceX’s upcoming missions (not that we mind – it’s just not what we cover), he did reveal a few tidbits of information involving the Tesla Model 3.

The CEO said that the higher-end version of the Model 3 will have a ‘Ludicrous’ mode option, like the Model S and X.
Expand
Expanding
Close

The impact of the Model 3 is being felt in the automotive industry long before it actually hits the market in about 18 months. Since the reveal last month, GM has hinted that the range of the upcoming Bolt will be closer to Tesla’s, Ford announced that it is developing a vehicle to compete with the Model 3 and Fiat-Chrysler might even copy Tesla’s platform.

During his recent visit to Norway, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he was surprised by the number of reservations the company received for the $35,000 all-electric sedan and referred to the event as a “wake up call” for the industry.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Norwegian media are reporting that Tesla’s Norway operations have been hit with 240 payment demands from creditors over NOK 2 million (~$250,000) in unpaid bills and as a result, the company has received a ‘C’ credit rating – the worst credit rating it can get in Norway.

The reports suggest that the most recent unpaid bill claims coincide with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s visit in the country last week.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla recently confirmed that the base version of the Model 3 will be able to travel over 215 miles on a single charge with a battery pack “smaller than 60 kWh”. The relatively small battery capacity makes it clear that the vehicle’s aerodynamic performance is crucial to achieving the range, much like it is for the Model S and X, even with their higher capacity battery packs.

It became clear that Tesla knows the importance of aerodynamics after both the Model S and X achieved the lowest drag coefficient (Cd) in their respective segments. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he expects the Model 3 to achieve an incredibly low 0.21 Cd, which should be enough to make the Model 3 the most aerodynamic mass production car ever made.

Tesla is said to use Exa’s digital simulation tools to design its vehicles and Exa’s Vice President of Ground Transportation Applications, Ales Alajbegovic, shared his thoughts on the Model 3’s aero innovations.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Last year, Tesla announced a restructuring of its sales leadership after it reassigned its Vice President of Global Sales and Service, Jerome Guillen, to a new role leading customer-satisfaction. Guillen later took a leave of absence from Tesla and the company hired Jon McNeill as President of Global Sales, but Tesla kept looking for new executives to lead sale operations in each of its main markets (NA, EU and Asia).

While Tesla filled the North American and Asian roles last year by hiring former Burberry executive Ganesh Srivats as Vice-President for North America Sales, and Ren Yuxiang as Vice-President for Asia-Pacific, now Electrek has learned that Tesla just filled the European role by hiring Willem Haitink, O’Neil CEO and former long-time Nike executive, to lead sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla CEO Elon was in Norway today where he gave a keynote address at a government sponsored conference on ‘Future transport solutions’. Musk gave a quick presentation and then sat down for a public talk with Minister of Transport and Communications, Ketil Solvik-Olsen (picture above).

His presentation was titled:”How to reduce global warming through renewable energy production and consumption“. He shared his views about the necessities to accelerate the transition to a post fossil fuel economy in a similar way as he did during his Paris talk last year.
Expand
Expanding
Close

In a weird Twitter conversation, Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered a wager to former SUN Microsystems CEO and co-founder, Scott McNealy, on whether Tesla received less in government subsidies than McNealy’s SUN.

For some reason, today McNealy decided to reply to a tweet Musk sent out two weeks ago. The Silicon Valley executive claimed that Musk’s supporters were unwilling taxpayers and he referenced a LA Times article from last year that mistakenly implied that Musk’s companies, especially Tesla and SolarCity, received $4.9 billion in subsidies.
Expand
Expanding
Close

In order to limit any negative impact following some reported misuses of the Autopilot, Tesla pushed more constraints to its semi-autonomous driving system through a software update late last year. The automaker made it clear that it was only a precaution and that it wasn’t aware of any accident caused by the system.

On the other hand, we learned of a few accidents that was prevented by the Autopilot (here and more recently here). When releasing the feature, Tesla made it clear that drivers should keep their hands on the steering wheel while using ‘Autosteer’, but of course Tesla owners would naturally want to push the limits of the feature, and of course we now see that even Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s wife is not using it as recommended.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has an affectionate nickname for Apple: The ‘Tesla Graveyard‘. “They have hired people we’ve fired,” Musk said. “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple”. He made the comment after being asked about the so-called “poaching war” between the automaker and the consumer electronic giant following the start of Apple’s electric car program: ‘Project Titan‘.

We follow who’s coming and who’s going at Tesla pretty closely here at Electrek and it’s clear that the two companies share a lot of former colleagues. Tesla’s senior engineering staff and leadership are full of former Apple directors and VPs, while the Cupertino-based company hired quite a few former Tesla engineers, but rarely any senior leadership… until now.

Electrek, in collaboration with our sister-site 9to5Mac, has exclusively discovered and confirmed respectively that Apple hired former Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering and former Aston Martin Chief Engineer, Chris Porritt, to work on “special projects”, and we know that “special projects” is where Apple’s Titan car project lives.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla announced after market close on Friday that its 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “2016 Annual Meeting”) will be held on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

During the meeting, shareholders will vote on the reelection of two board directors, the reappointment of Tesla’s public accounting firm and on a stockholder proposal to eliminate limited supermajority voting requirements. Following the formal part of the meeting, CEO Elon Musk generally makes a short presentation followed by a Q&A session.
Expand
Expanding
Close

While we’ve seen the exterior of Tesla’s Gigafactory from almost every angle – we even shared a time-lapse of its construction yesterday – we haven’t seen much of the interior of Tesla secretive battery factory.

A select few local media outlets were allowed to take pictures last month and then leaked pictures gave us a decent look at the Powerwall assembly line, but now we should be about to get our first official look inside the plant.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: The screenshot above is no longer available and the base price was updated to $83,000

Tesla today opened its Model X configurator a day after CEO Elon Musk had planned for yesterday. The Model X Recall probably delayed plans slightly.

Besides the configurator, it appears at 1st glance that the Model X will get a new 75kWh battery option (though initially there is some confusion on the website, see above).
Expand
Expanding
Close