Elon Musk

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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Tesla unveiled the Model X last week and first impressions have been extremely favorable across the board. From safety and performance unmatched by any SUV to the unique windshield and Falcon-Wing doors, the Model X impressed quite a few people including tens of thousands of reservation holders who placed $5,000 to $40,000 deposits to be among the first to get the vehicle. Some of them have been waiting for 3 years to get the all-electric SUV.

But even after the official launch of the vehicle, most reservation holders (estimated 25,000 to 30,000) don’t know when they will get their car or even what it will cost.
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According to a new report from the Reno Gazette-Journal, Tesla acquired several permits for multi-million dollar interior construction work at the Gigafactory located just outside Reno, Nevada. One of the permit is for a $10 million project of “architectural interiors”.
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Tesla Motors released its delivery results today for July through September 2015 and confirmed that the company delivered 11,580 cars during the quarter. For the first time, the number includes two different models in the same quarter: Model S and Model X.

Presumably, only the 6 Model X’s delivered during the launch earlier this week are accounted for in the third quarter results, meaning Tesla delivered ~11,574 Model S’s beating its previous record of 11,532 units achieved during Q2 2015.
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SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive and Chairman Elon Musk are officially announcing a new high-efficiency solar panel today at the Inside Energy conference. During an interview at the conference, Elon Musk was talking about his other venture, Tesla Motors, and he revealed that the recent launch of the Model X caused a big uptick in orders for Tesla’s other vehicle, the Model S.
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SolarCity announced today that it has built the most efficient rooftop solar module with 22% efficiency according to a third party tester: Renewable Energy Test Center. Until now, SunPower’s X-Series panel was considered the most efficient rooftop panel with 21.5% efficiency.

SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive says that the new modules will produce between 350 to 360-watt compared to the company’s current 260-watt panels.
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One thing a lot of us were wondering as Tesla delivered the first few Model X’s yesterday is what software version would the Model X be using considering Tesla is still beta testing the upcoming v7.0 with new Autopilot features.

It turns out the Model X is running a unique update of v7.0 without the new Autopilot features: Autosteer and lane changing.

DragTimes published a quick video of the UI at the Model X launch event. You can watch the video below the break:
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Tesla launched the Model X last night in Fremont. You can read our quick overview of Elon Musk’s walk-through of the vehicle here, but here’s the video of the event and a roundup of the videos shot during the press day leading up to the event.

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Some reservation holders have been waiting for over 3 years for the Model X, and now it’s finally here. Tonight Tesla launched its all-electric SUV in Fremont, California in front of a crowd of reservation holders, employees and journalists. We already knew a lot about the Model X prior to the launch – 0 to 60 mph in 3.2 secs, AWD, up to 257 miles range – but Tesla CEO Elon Musk still had a few surprises…
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