Tesla is on-going some restructuring at the upper management level over the past few months, especially since long-time executive and Vice-President of Worldwide Sales & Services Jerome Guillen took a leave of absence last year, followed by Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja’s retirement a few months later.
The automaker has since hired former Enservio CEO Jon McNeill as President Global Sales & Service and former Google VP of Finance Jason Wheeler as Chief Financial Officer.
Today Electrek has learned of the latest addition to Tesla’s upper management team: Karim Bousta, former GE Director and Symantec Vice President, now Tesla’s Vice-President of Global Services.
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As Tesla is planning for significantly higher volume products in the near future, the Model 3 and Tesla Energy products, the company is implementing a new custom end-to-end workflow system across the organization with a focus on “product platform, engineering and manufacturing efficiency, small teams and IT”, according to a presentation by Tesla Director of Engineering Applications Paul Lomangino obtained by Electrek.
The new system is called ‘Tesla 3DX’ and is based on the 3DExperience platform by the French software maker Dassault Systemes.
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During the conference call discussing Tesla’s fourth quarter financial results yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was quite vague about the Model X’s current production ramp, but he did confirm that the vehicle should reach its full production rate of 1,000 units per week during the second quarter in just a few months.
When asked about the current production rate and how the company plans to get to 1,000 units per week, Musk refused to comment but he added:
“Unless people actually understand how production works, they reach incorrect conclusions. We stick to what our projections are, and leave it at that.”
As Tesla’s management was starting the conference call to discuss the company’s fourth quarter financial results today, the company released a new SEC filing confirming that CEO Elon Musk exercised another $108 million worth of options just a few weeks after exercising over $100 million.
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As part of its shareholder letter posted ahead of its earnings call today, Tesla demonstrated its catastrophic affect on the US luxury car market with a simple table. If you start at the bottom, the market is at about 100,000 cars a year and it’s basically unchanged from 2014 to 2015.
The market is for “large luxury” cars and includes not only the Model S but Audi’s A7 and A8, BMW’s 6 and 7 series, the Jaguar XJ, Lexus LS Mercedes CLS and S Class and the Porsche Panamera. Each of these models has fallen in sales from almost 5%-over 15% from 2014-2015. Where did these sales go?
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As part of his current trip across Europe and Asia, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stopped by the automaker’s France headquarters in Chambourcy for a special event for Tesla owners. Musk delivered a quick speech thanking local owners for their support of Tesla and then stayed for a Q&A during which he shared a few new tidbits of information.
When asked about when we will get to see pictures of the Model 3, Musk answered:
“The first pictures of the Model 3 will be end of March… I am being a little coy here, we are not gonna show everything about the Model 3 until a lot closer to production time.”
An audience member asked for more details, but as it is often the case when it comes to future products, Musk refused to elaborate. In the past, the CEO said Tesla planned to start Model 3 production toward the end of 2017, while the “end of March” event has been referred to as an “unveiling”.
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In a new SEC filing published after market close today, Tesla confirmed that CEO Elon Musk exercised stock options to purchase 532,000 shares of Tesla’s common stock, which is worth a little more than $100 million based on today’s closing price of $191.
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From time to time, Reddit comes together and does something awesome. Whether it be gifting supplies to teachers or sending thousands of letters to a terminally ill man. Although quite different from the previous examples, the rLoop project is undoubtedly Reddit at its best.
Since SpaceX announced the Hyperloop Pod Competition last year, over 100 teams from universities and other organisations have created and submitted their design to compete for a chance to build and race their pod on SpaceX’s upcoming test track. rLoop is one of those teams.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave an interview to Channel 4’s Jon Snow last night during the Prince’s Trust Leadership Dinner in London. Musk said that Tesla plans to sell the upcoming Model 3 in the UK for “£30,000 or less“.
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(Update: A Tesla Spokesperson called this report “wrong” and that only 1 of the vehicles would be announced in March. Tesla is indeed working on [at least] 2 different Model 3 platform vehicles which we reported previously. Here’s something they were able to verify.)
We’ve seen the Chevy Bolt (not just seen, driven!) so, in March, it is Tesla’s turn to unveil its $30,000 long-range electric car. We’ve had a steady stream of whispers on the Model 3 but are unable to verify much of what we’ve heard.
The biggest tidbit I’ve heard from a second-hand source is that Tesla is readying at least 2 different versions of its Model 3 for the March launch. One version is a sedan and another is a small crossover built on the same platform. I can’t verify if the crossover is the Model Y that Elon Musk mentioned in a Tweetstorm last year, but that would make some sense. We’ve heard that this vehicle will be a smaller version of the Model X with its Falcon Wing doors. Again, it will have a premium price over the Model 3 similar to the $5,000 difference between the Model X and Model S.
I decided to hold off on publishing this info until I saw Tesla’s Hong Kong presentation this week, which included two cars under wraps (pictured above). Yes, obviously, the artwork is simply a Model X and Model S under digital covers, but the fact that there are two cars to be unveiled adds a little more credence to what I’ve heard.
We broke the news in March of 2014 that the Model 3 platform would be more than just a sedan with the leaked slide presentation below which first mentions “Crossover”.
My source believes that the plan around Christmas of last year was to launch at least two vehicles or configurations at the same time, but obviously things could change. Also, Tesla could have two projects happening simultaneously to contain/isolate leaks.
Other Model 3 info follows:
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Today Elon Musk sat down with CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout to talk about Tesla and some of his other projects at the StartmeupHK tech forum in Hong Kong. You can watch the video in full below.
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Tesla and CEO Elon Musk held a special event for Roadster and Model S owners in Hong Kong today. Musk revealed that he hopes to obtain approval to soon enable the ‘Autosteer’ feature of the company’s Autopilot system, which has been disabled in Hong Kong since November, just a few weeks after its release.
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A few weeks after Tesla Director of Global Communications Khobi Brooklyn confirmed that “Model 3 is on schedule” and that the company still plans to unveil the prototype in March, it’s now Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s turn to share his thoughts about the upcoming $35,000 sedan and he says he feels “pretty optimistic” about the vehicle.
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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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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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When Tesla’s Elon Musk tweeted that he expected to the company’s cars to be able to drive themselves across the U.S. from coast to coast within two years, my response was that I might believe the tech could hit that deadline, but not the law. It seems I may be wrong.
The WSJ reports that the Obama administration wants to invest $3.9B in crafting rules and policies to facilitate the rapid rollout of self-driving cars. This would take place at the federal level, ensuring consistent national laws rather than a patchwork of state-by-state regulations …
In its latest video, Drag Times demonstrated a potential application for Tesla’s latest feature. Drag Times used the new ‘Summon’ feature to autonomously move the Model S a few dozen feet to “save” the owner from the rain by picking him up under a porte-cochère.
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During an interview at Tesla’s design studio in Los Angeles, Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented on Apple’s rumored electric vehicle program, codenamed “Project Titan“. It was hardly the first time the CEO commented on the project, but it always interesting to hear about the possibility of Apple bringing an electric car to market. This time Musk called the project under-development an “open secret” and agreed that Apple is “serious about it.”
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Elon Musk held a press conference with Q&A yesterday for the release of Tesla’s software update v7.1 for the Model S and X. You can find a recording of the call below and a few highlights of the discussion.
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In a SEC filling published this morning, Tesla confirmed that Fidelity increased its stake in the company to just over 10% ownership.
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When Tesla CEO Elon Musk first announced the Gigafactory project, he said that even though the planned capacity of the factory is equal to the entire global production of lithium-ion batteries in 2013, the world would sill need around 200 more giant factories of similar size to support the auto industry’s transition from fossil fuels to electric.
Tesla named the factory in Nevada: “Gigafactory 1”, implying that the company plans to eventually introduce “Gigafactory 2” and so on. Late last year, German Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel confirmed being in contact with Elon Musk over the possibility of building a battery factory in the country. Now we learn that Tesla is also reportedly in talks to build another Gigafactory in South Africa.
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After the well-documented release notes of the 7.1 update for the Model S and X Saturday, Tesla published a short blog update on Sunday and held a press conference to reveal its ambitions for the future of the ‘Summon’ feature, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to describes what he calls the “first baby step” of the ‘Summon’ capability and its potential for the future.
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Tesla released today the version 7.1 of its software for the Model S and X. The new update includes everything we told you about when Tesla started testing the build with beta testers last month: UI improvements, a new self-parking feature, ‘Driver Mode’ and Autopilot restrictions, but the automaker is also introducing the “Summon” feature, which enables the Model S to drive itself without anyone in the car.
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