Elon Musk

Tesla is set to release its third quarter 2015 financial results later today, but we are already looking at the fourth quarter as registration data are coming in from some European markets. Tesla will need an impressive fourth quarter to achieve its 2015 guidance and it might get it from what we are seeing so far.

The company expects to deliver between 50,000 and 55,000 vehicles in 2015 and with the current official year-to-date total of 33,157 units, Tesla needs to deliver a record-breaking ~17,000 units in the last 3 months of the year to achieve the low-end of its own guidance. It would represent a ~73% increase over the fourth quarter last year.
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Tesla sent out an email this weekend to Model S owners on the waiting list for a retrofit of their Performance Dual Motor Model S to enable the ‘Ludicrous’ mode. In the email, Tesla explained that due to parts and process improvements, the company is now able to offer the upgrade at a reduced price of $5,000 instead of the previously announced $7,500.

The Ludicrous upgrade consists of two improvements to the electronics of the Model S’ battery pack. The first improvement is the replacement of a standard fuse to an “advanced smart fuse” which enables the monitoring of current to the millisecond, and makes it possible to cut the power with “extreme precision”.
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Mobileye is a relatively small Israel-based tech company, but it is rapidly positioning itself as a major hardware and software supplier for the implementation of driver assist and autonomous driving features. In a recent presentation at Citi’s 2015 Global Technology Conference, CEO Ziv Aviram claimed that 90% of automakers are using their products.

Mobileye is also a supplier for Tesla’s recently released Autopilot and during the same presentation, the CEO hinted at the company’s potential next generation hardware suite that could allow for a wider range of autonomous features and maybe even complete self-driving.
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Tesla is set to release its third quarter 2015 financial results tomorrow. The company already confirmed record deliveries of 11,580 cars globally from July to September and it marked the very first quarter with deliveries of two different models: the Tesla Model S and Model X.

The Model S remains Tesla’s main source of revenue – meaning there shouldn’t be too much of a surprise on the revenue side, but let’s take a look at what to expect in numbers:
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During the press conference for the release of the Autopilot, Tesla CEO Elon Musk referred to each Model S owners as an “expert trainer” – meaning that each driver will train the autonomous features of the system to feed the collective network intelligence of the fleet by simply driving the electric vehicle on Autopilot.

He said that the system should improve every day, but that improvements might only become noticeable every week or so by adding up. Just a few weeks after the release, Model S owners are already taking to the Tesla Motors Club forum to describe how the Autopilot is improving…
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After mostly flat sales during the first half of the year, Tesla experienced a 52% quarterly increased between the second quarter and the third ended in September by delivering 1,345 Model S units for a total of 3,025 so far in 2015. Tesla rarely discloses sales by segment, but CEO Elon Musk made an exception during a recent visit in China and later Tesla spokesperson Gary Tao confirmed the numbers.
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NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that he took delivery of a rare Tesla Model X P90D, presumably a ‘Founder Series’ since Signature Model X reservation holders have yet to be assigned a delivery date.
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DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Tesla Model S owner, had a car accident in Beverly Hills on Oct. 19. Little is known about the actual accident, but it was severe enough to break Katzenberg’s wrist, which required a surgery followed by a stay at the hospital.

Apparently the accident could have been much worse because Katzenberg felt the need to thank Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, for his car might have “saved his life.
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The so-called “poaching war” for top automotive engineering talent between Tesla and Apple gathered quite a few headlines in the past months, especially after Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the Cupertino company the “Tesla Graveyard” for hiring people he claimed were “fired” by the company. But after looking closer into the recent hires between the two companies, it looks like Tesla has little to fear from Apple’s recruiting effort, at least if we compare it to Faraday Future’s.

Faraday Future took a small step out of ‘stealth mode’ earlier this summer to announce that it is looking for a location for a manufacturing facility to build an electric vehicle. In the months since, the 1-year old startup ramped up its hiring effort and now has over 400 employees with an impressive percentage coming from Tesla.
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On Thursday, California’s Air Resources Board had a meeting and status update on the state’s ‘Zero Emission Vehicle’ (ZEV) program where industry actors expressed their views on the clean vehicle market and the ZEV credit mandate. During a presentation to the board, Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell argued that lobbying efforts from automakers effectively delayed fuel economy in the U.S. by about 20 years.

He added that the automotive industry used similar lobbying tactics to delay the commercialization of Zero Emission Vehicles. He said the effort delayed the state of California’s initial 1998 goal of 2% market penetration by 16 years – Zero Emission vehicles only reached 2% of the market in 2014.
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As expected, Tesla started releasing its Autopilot software update to European and Asian markets on Friday, except Japan which is still under review, after gaining regulatory approval. While announcing the worldwide rollout on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk already announced ‘Autopilot 1.01’ to improve the system’s autonomous features.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in China this week to personally oversee the release of the Autopilot in the country. Speaking at the Tsinghua University earlier today, he said that the company will have production capacity in the country within 2 years according to a Chinese report. The timeline matches the company’s planned release of its mass market $35,000 car, the Model 3.
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Tesla released its Autopilot software last week to North American Model S owners, but the company said that regulatory approvals were holding back the release in Europe. This morning CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to say that the company is hoping for an European release on Friday October 23.
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As is usual with Elon Musk’s Twitter habits, the Tesla CEO has come out this afternoon to tweet a series of interesting tidbits, including — most notably — a rebuttal of Consumer Reports’ recent report regarding Model S reliability issues. The CEO also mentioned that a big UI update is coming in version 7.1 of the cars’ software, announced plans to enter Middle Eastern markets as well as Mexico, and — of course — threw in a few jokes for good measure…
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Speaking today on CNBC, Ferrari chairman and Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne spoke affirmatively when asked if he believes Apple will make a car. The Ferrari boss explained that he believes the automobile space is one in which Apple can exhibit its skills, clarifying that he believes Apple will have a car assembled rather than building it on their own. Marchionne added that Apple has not approached Fiat for being its partner for assembling a car.
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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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