Tesla Motors

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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SolarCity announced today a new project with the Temecula Valley Unified School District to install 6 MW of solar energy capacity and 2.6 MWh of energy storage at a total of 19 schools in the district. The solar installations will mainly consist of carports using the company’s ZS Beam system (see picture above).
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The Netherlands is an excellent market for electric cars, it’s not quite Norway, but when adding plug-in hybrids it’s getting close. As for all-electric vehicles, Tesla’s Model S is by far the best-selling in the country based on registration data.

Tesla confirmed last week that it delivered 11,580 vehicles worldwide from July through September and based on registration data, the Netherlands contributed to ~3.5% of the total with 409 Model S’s during the third quarter.
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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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Tesla Motors is set to release by early next week the number of Model S’s delivered during the third quarter 2015. Tesla’s sales are an important metric for the short and mid-term future of electric vehicles. Like any other industry, the automotive industry is driven by profit-making.  If an automaker solely manufacturing electric vehicles, like Tesla, can show growing sales while maintaining favorable profit margins, there is no better motivator for the incumbents to accelerate their electric vehicle programs.

Lets take a quick look at Tesla’s sales so far this year:
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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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Earlier this month when Audi unveiled its all-electric SUV, the quattro, some media were quick to dub it a “Tesla killer”, but now that Tesla officially launched its own SUV, I think it’s clear that it was a premature assessment. The quattro is set to have a similar range as the Model X, ~250 EPA-rated miles, but Audi is aiming at releasing the quattro in 2018, while Tesla delivered the first few units yesterday and already has between 25,000 and 30,000 reservations for the all-electric SUV.
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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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Tesla Motors is holding a launch event tonight for the Model X at the former Solyndra building near Tesla’s Fremont factory. The company will open the doors at 7PM local time (10PM ET) and the event will start at 8PM (11PM ET). Tesla will livestream the event on their website and we will be live-blogging it here:
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If you have been following news about Tesla Motors lately you know that the company is launching the Model X today, but you might have also heard that they will launch a “600+ miles vehicle” in about 2 years. Several publications have been publishing articles with a variation of the following headline: “Elon Musk says Tesla will have a 600 miles vehicle by 2017“.

These headlines, to no fault of Musk, are due to either a severe lack of knowledge about electric vehicle range or a malicious click-baiting attempt.
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Earlier today Forbes released its updated list of most influential young people in business – 40 Under 40 – and Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer and co-founder JB Straubel (39) took the second position.

The CTO is only outdone (according to Forbes) by Adam Neumann, the co-founder and CEO of WeWork, a provider of shared workspace and services to entrepreneurs and startups.

In his short profile, Forbes credits Straubel for being the person who convinced Elon Musk to invest in Tesla. 
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Tesla is set to launch the Model X today at the Fremont factory and CEO Elon Musk said there still are a few things we don’t know about the company’s all-electric SUV. Earlier this month we speculated that the Model X could have next generation headlights. Today we explore the likely possibility of the new vehicle being equipped with hybrid display/mirror for rear-view.
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This is part 2 of my report on the beta version of Tesla’s Autopilot. Please read part 1 if you haven’t yet. 

Most advanced commercially available autonomous features

The language about the responsibility around the ‘Autopilot’ is somewhat straight-forward. The system is clearly not intended to turn the Model S into a self-driving vehicle with a bunch of redundant autonomous features, but it’s rather an evolutionary step toward self-driving. It alleviates some tasks for the driver, but without ever taking any responsibility.

Tesla uses very clear legal language throughout the beta release to place all the responsibilities with the driver. The driver can and should take over control if he or she thinks it’s necessary.
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In mid-August Tesla sent out the first release of its beta v7.0 software update to early access testers all around the U.S. and parts of Europe. This particular update is an extremely anticipated one, not just because of the UI design overhaul, but because it includes several new ‘Autopilot’ features, which some Model S owners have been waiting for close to a year now.

We wrote a first look at the update when the release came out and we followed-up with Tesla’s second release of the beta v7.0 earlier this month.  Now this weekend I had the opportunity to fly out and have a complete (unofficial) walk-through of the new update and more importantly, I got to experience the new ‘Autopilot’ features.
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As images of the Tesla Model X are rolling off the assembly line, we are seeing a number of improvements to the car over prototypes that have been publicly shown. One such improvement was revealed in a video showing the front trunk or ‘Frunk’ of the Model X. Compare the size of the Frunk in the shipping model above to a Prototype shown off by CEO Elon Musk last year.

Another image of the Model X Frunk, straight on the assembly line, is below. 
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