Elon Musk

Earlier today, CNBC published a poll asking “Would you put down $1,000 for the new Tesla Model 3?”. After over 12,000 respondents, the results showed that a strong majority were going to place a $1,000 deposit for the vehicle. Then later in the day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk mentioned the poll on Twitter and said that it “looks like we may need to increase production plans for the Model 3”:

[tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/714963420316049411 align=’center’]

Musk probably made the comment half-jokingly, but as Jon mentioned in his post this morning: Don’t Wait: Why you should reserve the Tesla Model 3 on Thursday, we are indeed expecting a significant backlog of Model 3 reservations in the next few days – yet we should not take that poll seriously.
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A new report published today by Israel’s Globes suggests that Elon Musk visited Israel-based tech firm Mobileye to test a new system for the next generation Tesla Autopilot.

According to Globes, Musk visited Mobileye’s Israel operations earlier this month for a “demonstration of several breakthrough developments by Mobileye in [automated driving technology] installed on a trial Tesla Model S vehicle.”

The report suggests that Mobileye is testing its automated driving technology in two Tesla Model S test vehicles. Independently, a Model S being tested with a fully-autonomous hardware suite was recently spotted in California.
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Following the persisting rumor that Tesla is planning a “facelift” or at least new options for the Model S starting this spring, we learn that the automaker could also increase the price of its flagship sedan in the US as soon as next month, right after the Model 3 unveiling set for March 31st.

We are hearing several reports of Tesla representatives reportedly warning prospective customers that the Model S will see a price increase by the end of April.
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SolarCity’s Solar Bond Program is looking more and more like SpaceX’s private investment platform. After market close yesterday, SolarCity revealed in a SEC filling that it expects Elon Musk’s rocket company to buy $90 million of the $105 million in new Solar Bonds issued.

Last year, SpaceX already purchased solar bonds from SolarCity on two separate occasions: another $90 million followed by $75 million. SpaceX’s involvement in SolarCity’s Solar Bond Program is set to total around $255 million, which should help finance a lot of solar installations.
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Last year, famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early Tesla investor Steve Juvertson recalled a conversation he had with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick:

Travis recently told me that in 2020, if Telsas are autonomous, he’d want to buy all of them. He said all 500,000 of estimated 2020 production, I’d want them all, but he couldn’t get a return call from Elon.

Well apparently Kalanick couldn’t wait any longer and reportedly already placed an order for 100,000 autonomous Mercedes S-Class sedans, according to sources inside Daimler and Uber talking to German magazine Manager Magazin. 
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A Tesla Model S test vehicle with a new suite of sensors has been spotted in the San Francisco Bay Area last night, as reported by a Redditor on the Tesla forum.

The vehicle appears to be equipped with LiDAR sensors on the side mirrors, a new front-facing camera, and additional sensors around the car. Although it’s definitely a Tesla Model S, it doesn’t necessarily means the car is owned by Tesla or that the automaker is testing this particular hardware suite.
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In an effort to lobby Nevada lawmakers for the development of solar energy following the Public Utilities Commission’s decision to slash net metering, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive organized an event Wednesday night at the Gigafactory for Nevada politicians and top government officials.

Tesla and SolarCity executives held presentations meant to be “forward-looking and educational” and the whole event also included a tour of the Gigafactory.
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Earlier this week we reported on emerging signs of a production ramp up for the Tesla Model X after several reservation holders who turned their reservations into orders are now receiving Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN) as high as 5,000 and up. Now Tesla is adding to those signs by sending an email blast to everyone with a Model X order to update their delivery schedule.

In the email, Tesla’s President of Global Sales and Service Jon McNeil says that the automaker has been working through performance testing and that CEO Elon Musk has been personally testing Model X’s as they come off the assembly line.
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Since coming out of stealth mode last December, Notorious hacker George “geohot” Hotz’s self-driving car/machine learning startup “comma.ai” hit a few roadblocks, including a cease-and-desist letter from the California Department of Motor Vehicles for operating a “level-4” autonomous vehicle.

Though Hotz is contesting the DMV and says his prototype is currently only a “level-3” semi-autonomous car, but the cease-and-desist is still slowing him down as he now can only test the vehicle in a private parking lot.
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We have been wondering why only a few people have received an invitation for the Model 3 unveiling, which is now only 3 weeks away. As of now, only the winners of the referral program have reported having received the invite for the event taking place in Los Angeles.

The last event Tesla held in Los Angeles, the “D event”, was at the company’s design studio and over 4,000 people were in attendance, including hundreds of Model S owners and Tesla employees, but this time around, long-time owners who usually get invited to these events have yet to hear from the company.
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Update: Elon Musk said in a tweet today that the American Enterprise Institute meeting was not secretive and that he was not there to talk about Trump.

The AEI meeting wasn't secret and I was only there for a few hours to talk about Mars and sustainable energy. Nothing to do with Trump.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2016

According to a report from the Huffington Post, Elon Musk was among a handful of tech CEOs and Republican establishment members who recently met at the American Enterprise Institute’s World Forum to discuss how to best stop Donald Trump.

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Update: Tesla responds to Singapore’s Model S CO2 emissions test, and could it be as simple as poor math?

If you think it’s difficult to buy a Tesla in Texas due to direct sales law, wait until you learn what consumers in Singapore have to go through to buy a Model S. Singaporean Joe Nguyen reportedly spent months trying to get a licence for his car to be driven on local roads and instead of having access to the Carbon Emissions-based Vehicle Scheme (CEVS) rebate of $15,000 SDG (~$11,000 USD), he was charged a tax of the same amount after the government determined that the car is not “fuel-efficient”.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke directly with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who assured him that he would investigate the issue.
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Elon Musk shines in MIT Technology Review’s recently published top 10 list of technology breakthroughs of 2016. According to the MIT, the list “identifies innovations from the past year that solve difficult problems or create powerful new ways of using technology”.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is directly involved in 3 of the 10 projects identified by the MIT.
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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.”

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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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