Elon Musk

Three months ago Tesla announced a referral program for Model S owners. By referring someone who ends up buying a Tesla Model S, the owner gets $1,000 credit from Tesla to put toward accessories, service or a car, and the new buyer gets $1,000 off his new Model S. The program is only in a “trial phase” until October 31, but the deadline is also a competition for top referrers.

Today, less than two weeks before the end of the trial, the automaker upped the ante by announcing that those who make 5 referrals will receive a Tesla Powerwall for free…
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Tesla Motors uses quite a few robots on its assembly lines. Earlier this summer, the company was completing its second assembly line and CEO Elon Musk confirmed 542 robots will be working on it, including 15 operating simultaneously at the central assembly point.
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Tesla Motors is known for hiding easter eggs in its software and the recent Autopilot v7.0 update is no exception. A year ago, a Model S owner figured out that by entering “007” in the access code of his car, the rendering of the Model S on the screen changes into James Bond’s submarine Lotus which Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought at an auction in 2013. Earlier this year, it was a Space Balls reference with the Ludicrous update and now it is an allusion to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
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Tesla Motors, SpaceX and SolarCity – three companies influenced by Elon Musk – are currently on a massive hiring spree around the US. They already have a combined headcount of over 32,000 employees and the total is set to increase significantly in the coming months. We learned that Musk’s companies are holding joined private recruiting events, the latest of which held last weekend at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

Recruiters from each company select students recommended through university programs and invite them to the relatively secretive events to interview with SolarCity, SpaceX or Tesla.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk held a press conference a couple of days ago to explain the Autopilot features included in the company’s 7.0 software update, but LIDAR, one of the remote sensing technologies that Google uses in its self-driving car, also came up briefly. Elon Musk had some bold comments about to use of LIDAR in autonomous vehicles, in response to one inquiry from a WSJ reporter, which questioned whether the Model S would need more sensors for greater levels autonomy…
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Stephen Colbert, on his popular Late Nite television show, discussed the Tesla V7 software update and the ability of the car to “drive itself”. Colbert noted driving his Tesla into Manhattan and how the autopilot would improve that. Additionally he noted that a lot of billionaires are working on self driving cars including Google’s founders and guests Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk of course and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

The spot was a great one for Tesla, shining a light on its ability to upgrade cars through software and  putting a very positive and funny spin on autonomous driving. Watch the video clip on Youtube below:
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Hyperloop Technologies Inc. recently inaugurated its Innovation Campus in Los Angeles and at the same time, celebrated the hiring of its new CEO, Cisco veteran Rob Lloyd. At the event, the company hosted hundreds of affluent investors, artists, engineers and politicians, including LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. The mayor voiced his support for the company’s project to make a reality of the new mode of transportation first detailed in a white paper by Elon Musk  and teams of engineers at Tesla Motors and SpaceX.
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6XS6HE178I&start=20]

We test drove the Model S Autopilot a year ago (above) with Tesla VP of Engineering Doug Field. Today, the final v7 product is hitting cars and the first reviews of the final product are hitting YouTube. We’ll keep updating as more reviews hit the web.  Head below for those videos. 
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Tesla has been the best-selling electric vehicle in Switzerland for over 2 years now, but recently it’s been doing so well that it is not only outselling all EVs, but also every gas-powered vehicles in its class.

Based on registration data, Tesla delivered 513 Model S’s in Switzerland during the third quarter 2015 (July to Sept.), a 450% increase over the same period last year.
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Following last week’s announcement to invest $1 million in battery research with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Tesla Motors opened its Gigafactory internship program for applications while visiting the University of Nevada, Reno earlier this week.
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Media organisations will be disappointed to learn that Tesla CEO Elon Musk plans on cutting back on media appearances. In the past week, Musk mentioned on two occasions, on the Marketplace report and at the New Establishment Summit, that he wishes to reduce time spent on “press stuff” from “2 or 3 percent” of his time to only 1%.

We did the math. 1% of 24 hours is roughly 15 minutes a day or 100 minutes a week – assuming Musk includes sleep in his time.

The CEO says that he already spends most of his time on engineering and design, but he plans to use the time freed up by making less media appearances to focus even more on the products.
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Jim Chanos is a famed billionaire hedge fund manager known for short selling companies. He is also a regular market commentator for CNBC and Bloomberg. Chanos recently disclosed having a short position on solar installer SolarCity (SCTY) and although he refused to disclose his position on Tesla Motors (TSLA), he doesn’t have good things to say about the company.

During an interview with Bloomberg on Monday morning, Chanos explained why he thinks both companies are overvalued, but the “facts” he used to support his opinion are misleading.
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Earlier this year, Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) and Tesla Motors, under its ‘Tesla Energy division’, inked a massive 500 MWh supply deal for battery packs to power AMS’ “hybrid-electric buildings” concept. Today AMS announced a new project under the agreement with Tesla to install a first phase of Powerpacks at up to 24 office buildings owned by The Irvine Company, a real estate company with properties throughout coastal California.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter Saturday night that his company will release its software v7.0 with Autopilot for the Model S on Thursday (October 15th). In mid-August Tesla sent out the first release of the beta update to about 600-700 early access testers all around the U.S. and parts of Europe. This particular update is an extremely anticipated one. It includes an important UI design overhaul, but also and more importantly several new ‘Autopilot’ features, which some Model S owners have been waiting for over a year now.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit earlier this week for a talk with Sam Altman, the President of Y Combinator.  New York Times and CNBC contributor Andrew Ross Sorkin moderated the conversion on topics from sustainable energy to artificial intelligence.
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Apple’s so-called “poaching war” with Tesla has been a hot topic for the company’s CEO Elon Musk and in a recent interview, Musk fired even more shots at Apple. Speaking to German newspaper Handelsblatt, Musk voiced his lack of concern regarding Apple’s tendency to hire Tesla engineers and executives. Musk recently finished a trip around Europe, speaking with politicians and Tesla employees.

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When Tesla Motors negotiated with the state of Nevada to build its battery factory in the desert east of Reno, the state government agreed to give the automaker up to $1.3 billion in tax incentives over 20 years to build the $5 billion project.

But the deal came with several requirements the company needs to meet to get access to the tax breaks. Most of which have to do with employment – Tesla is expected to create up to 6,500 jobs through the Gigafactory once it operates at full capacity in 2020 – but a lesser known requirement was for Tesla to invest in educational research in the state and this week the company fulfilled the commitment by signing an agreement to invest $1 million in battery research with the University of Nevada in Las Vegas (UNLV) over the next 5 years.
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Fred did some excellent work sorting out the Model X pricing but I was surprised to hear that I’d be able to buy a Model X for $75K  before incentives and $65K with…next year.  But how does Tesla get to the $75K price point without going against CEO Elon Musk’s “Model S +$5000” pricing scheme? After all a Model S 70D is currently listed at $75,000.
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As we recently mentioned, there’s been some confusion in the media about the price of the Tesla Model X. The confusion even spread to Wall Street where analysts have been reducing their target price on Tesla’s stock because of the expensive $132,000 price tag circulating in the media.

To be clear, $132,000 is the starting price of the Signature Model X which is already sold out. The Signature comes standard with the performance package (P90D) and several options which increase the price. For example, a maxed out Tesla Model S cost $138,000, but the base version  starts at $70,000. Yesterday Elon Musk confirmed at a Vanity Fair conference that the Model X will have a similar price structure starting next year (when Tesla can actually catch up to demand).
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There’s been some inconsistencies and very little information about the Model X’s availability and pricing, but it could change in the coming weeks as Tesla says it will invite the next group of reservation holders to configure their cars in the “next few weeks”. The company sent out an email this morning to people who have a reservation for the production version of the Model X (see email below).
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