Tesla Motors

Early today, Tesla Motors announced that they have delivered 11,507 Model S units during the second quarter 0f 2015. This is a 52% increase over the same quarter last year and beats the company’s own expectation of 10,000 to 11,000 units.

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Last week Tesla activated 5 more Supercharger stations to bring the total to 453 stations and 2,519 Superchargers. Since introducing its network of fast-charging stations in 2012, Tesla has been expanding the network at an impressive pace, making it the largest and fastest manufacturer-owned network in the world.

Here’s a look into the growth of the Supercharger network:
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During a presentation at the 2015 EIA Conference earlier this week, JB Straubel, Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer, confirmed the Model 3 is “planned for 2018”.  There’s been a lot of speculation around Tesla’s upcoming vehicle, which is set to be priced at around $35,000 before any EV incentives and have at least 200 miles of range. Just a few weeks ago at Tesla’s shareholders meeting, Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, said the Model 3 could be ready by 2017, but Straubel’s presentation indicates that 2018 might be more realistic. 
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Self-driving cars are a popular topic of discussion and the times of Google singlehandedly spearheading the effort seem long gone with what feels like every tech company on earth working on their own autonomous driving projects. One thing that inevitably comes up when talking about self-driving vehicles is predictions, but as the tech comes closer to reality, predictions and reality are blending to create misconceptions.

During Tesla’s recent shareholders meeting, Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, confirmed that the company will be pushing a new software update by the end of the month to their early access customers that will enable new autonomous features to their Model S. This could soon lead to the most advance autonomous capabilities to date in a vehicle currently on public roads. 
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Recent SEC filings revealed that Tesla Motors entered into an agreement with 7 major banks to create an asset-based revolving credit facility of up to $500.0 million and Tesla has the option for an additional $250 million in financing which would bring the total credit available to $750 million.

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A few months after SolarCity bought the former headquarters of the defunct solar panel manufacturer, Solyndra,  Tesla is now announcing that they signed a lease for the 500,000 square feet plant Solyndra used to operate. The building is located just a few minutes away from Tesla’s Fremont factory.

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During Tesla’s 2015 Annual Shareholders Meeting today at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, confirmed that Deepak Ahuja, Tesla’s longtime Chief Financial Officer, will be retiring. The automotive industry veteran joined Tesla in 2008 when the company was in a difficult financial situation. He is believed to have been instrumental to Tesla’s survival at the time.

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Head over to Tesla’s IR Website to follow along the livestream of the yearly shareholder meeting. We’ll be jotting down notes here of information of interest.

1. Shareholder doesn’t like leather. Doesn’t think the non-leather option is enough.

2. Full autopilot will hit some customers by end of the month. Elon says he has been testing the latest builds of Autopilot on his own vehicle.

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We recently learned that Tesla Motors has been unofficially selling a new charging station which looks just like a Tesla Supercharger, but with a limited output of 60KW versus the 120KW regular Superchargers are capable of.

Tesla operates two different types of charging networks, the “Superchargers” and “Destination Charging“. Supercharger stations can charge a Model S at a rate of more than 300 miles of range per hour and they are mainly located next to popular routes to facilitate road trips.

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The deal is to supply “Powerpacks”, the commercial and utility scale version of Tesla’s Powerwall, to Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS). The startup, which offers technology-agnostic services to deploy energy storage systems, said the deal was the first battery supply agreement and more will come.

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The LA Times published an article over the weekend titled “Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by government subsidies”. The publication compiled data from government programs and estimated that Tesla Motors, SolarCity and SpaceX, three companies Musk is involved in, have benefited from “$4.9 billion in government support”. Saturday, I wrote an opinion piece about how I thought the article is grossly one-sided. Since then, the LA Times released a breakdown of the $4.9 billion figure.

Here is the complete breakdown with my comments on each government incentive and information that wasn’t included or simply glanced over in the LA Times article:

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The Times published an article over the weekend titled “Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by government subsidies”. The article is well-researched and mostly accurate, but it conveys a clear disdain for the fact that Musk’s companies are taking advantage of the government subsidies available to them.

The publication compiled data from government programs and came to the conclusion that Tesla Motors, SolarCity and SpaceX, three companies Musk is involved in, have benefited from an “estimated $4.9 billion in government support”. I will not dispute the actual amount, but I’d like to bring up a few points which weren’t discussed in the article and that are highly relevant to the subject.

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Gaelectric Group CEO, Brendan McGrath and Gaelectric Head of Energy Storage, Keith McGrane at the Tesla Energy event last month

Ireland’s Gaelectric Group entered into an agreement with Tesla Motors to build a 1 MW demonstration utility-scale project. The project is expected to be deployed in 2016. The company is among the firsts to sign a “utility-scale” deal with Tesla. Executives from Gaelectric were among the electric utility industry specialists invited to the event introducing Tesla Energy at Tesla’s design studio in Los Angeles. Here’s Brendan McGrath, Gaelectric Group CEO, on the deal:

We are delighted to be associated with Tesla in introducing its battery systems to Ireland. As a renewable energy group with a pipeline of 500 MW of wind power in Ireland and energy storage projects in Ireland and Europe, Gaelectric has an obvious incentive to drive the adoption of technologies that facilitate the economic dispatch of wind and other renewable sources.

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There has been a lot of uninformed banker-speak in the media about Tesla’s battery including by Bloomberg here. The problem is these folks don’t understand the new market that Tesla is opening up.

But I’m also turning to Bloomberg for the first smart analysis and that’s not surprisingly from Solar City’s Lyndon Rive (who happens to be Elon Musk’s Cousin – perhaps you noticed the accent?).

The complaints have been that the battery wall doesn’t make economic sense – that for the average household to go off the grid with these combined with solar (or wind), it would be incredibly expensive.

That’s correct…
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Bernard Tse, a former Tesla Motors Vice President and board member, founded Atieva in 2007 after leaving Tesla.  The company was first setup to make software to manage battery packs and package their tech for a cell agnostic battery pack technology, but they evolved while operating in “stealth mode” for the past few years, now we learn they have been working on not only the batteries, but a complete electric vehicle.

The company describes the vehicle as a “breakthrough electric car”. They don’t want to elaborate and It’s hardly a confirmation, but looking at the animation on their website, their vehicle might be a 2-door sport car.

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A video uploaded to Youtube during the weekend shows a Model X being tested near the Tesla headquarters in Palo Alto. The video gives us a rare glimpse of the Model X’s interior. On rare occasions, Tesla has been showing a Model X prototype at events. This particular model has been presumably the same for the past 2 years, first showed at Tesla’s store in Palo Alto in late 2013 and more recently at the Panasonic booth at CES 2015.

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During the conference call discussing Tesla’s Q1 2015 financial results, JB Straubel, Tesla’s CTO, revealed that they were operating a fleet of “hundreds” of Model X prototypes.  Generally, these prototypes, when testing on open roads, are covered by wrapping to camouflage the body in order to keep the final design somewhat secret. Today, a picture of a Model X with almost no wrapping emerged.

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Today Tesla announced their first quarter 2015 results and during the conference call discussing the results, Elon Musk confirmed Tesla plans to unveil their third generation vehicle, the Model 3, in March 2016.

Tesla already revealed their plan on starting the production of the Model 3 in 2017, but today Elon Musk said that he sees “late 2017” as more realistic.

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Today Tesla announced their first quarter 2015 results and during the conference call discussing the results, Elon Musk revealed that Tesla received more than 38,000 reservations for the Tesla Powerwall. Musk called the reception of the battery packs “crazy”.

They expect 1.5 to 2 battery packs to be sold per installation. This would mean 57,000 to 76,000 packs, or over 0.5 GWh, just for the battery packs currently under reservation. Musk said they are likely already sold out through half of next year.

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Last week, Tesla unveiled their new battery packs for residential, commercial and utility scale use. During the event, Elon Musk talked about the “Powerwall”, a battery pack aimed at residential and small commercial projects, and the “Powerpack”, for bigger commercial and utility scale projects. Trademark fillings revealed today that Tesla obtained multiple trademarks for the use of the word “Powerwall” related to the sale, leasing, installation and monitoring of battery packs, but they also obtained the trademark for “Superpack”, which wasn’t mentioned during the presentation.

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Redditor silasoverturf spotted an interesting Tesla test vehicle at the Corte Madera store. 
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