Tesla Motors

Update: The screenshot above is no longer available and the base price was updated to $83,000

Tesla today opened its Model X configurator a day after CEO Elon Musk had planned for yesterday. The Model X Recall probably delayed plans slightly.

Besides the configurator, it appears at 1st glance that the Model X will get a new 75kWh battery option (though initially there is some confusion on the website, see above).
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Tesla’s stock (TSLA) was up over 4% in early trading this morning after CEO Elon Musk spent his weekend answering questions on Twitter about the newly revealed Model 3 and sending out updates about the number of reservations Tesla is accumulating.

Since Tesla unveiled the vehicle last week, 8 financial analysts issued new notes updating their analysis of Tesla’s outlook and currently the general consensus is a “buy”, but with an average price target of $253 – representing only a ~6% upside.
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There have been a lot of Tesla Model S/X drag races, some more ridiculous than others. But today’s might take the cake.

Australian Airline Qantas put their 737-800up against Tesla’s Model S  along the three kilometre runway at Avalon Airport southwest of Melbourne, Australia. Nevermind that the Tesla Model S can’t even do 181 mph which is the take off speed of this aircraft.

Plane versus car… pilot versus driver. We raced our Boeing 737 against a Tesla Model S to celebrate innovation and sustainability with Tesla Motors.

Who won? My 1st reaction was “certainly not the environment” – they probably used the same amount of petrol that all of Tesla Model S/X in Australia saved together in a year on this stunt. But Qantas says they’ve offset that somehow and have some exciting tie-ups with Tesla Motors. Head south for details…and the drag video… 
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Elon Musk often acts as the defacto PR department for Tesla Motors and in a Tweet today – in the mist of the Model 3 unveil – the CEO announced that Tesla would be expanding into at least 7 more countries. The expansion includes 6 continents and includes the BRIC countries of Brazil and India, South Africa (CEO Elon Musk’s birthplace), South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Ireland. The tweet left room for others that might not fit into the 140 character medium.
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Thursday evening, Tesla will unveil, perhaps, their most important vehicle in company history, the $35,000 Model 3. Tesla certainly will not be taking their time getting an eye on the demand. Pre-orders begin at the company’s brick-and-mortar storefronts Thursday morning and online Thursday at 8:30pm Pacific (3:30am UTC), during the unveiling event.

You’re reading that correctly: Tesla will be allowing public pre-orders for the Model 3 hours before anyone even sees it. So why would anyone put down $1,000 to reserve a car, sight-unseen, that is probably 2 years away from delivery?
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In just the past few weeks, Tesla lost 2 Vice-Presidents. Last week, we reported on Tesla’s Vice President of Global Communications Ricardo Reyes leaving the company, and now we learn that the automaker’s VP of Finance and Worldwide Controller is leaving to return to Amazon as VP of Finance.

Michael Zanoni joined Tesla from Amazon in 2014.
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Tesla’s stock (TSLA) is down almost 5% today following a downgrade from S&P Global Market Intelligence. S&P analyst Efraim Levy issued a new note today downgrading Tesla to “sell” with a new price target of $155, while the stock currently trades at ~$223.
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Around the same time Tesla allowed its employees to place an early reservation for the Model 3 last night, the automaker also sent out the official invites for the Model 3 unveiling event on March 31st.

650 Tesla owners have been chosen at random to attend the event in Los Angeles. It will be a much smaller, more intimate event than Tesla is used to with around 800 people in total in attendance. The company also confirmed that rides will be available not only for the press, but also for the Tesla owners in attendance.

The invites seem to confirm that the “3” in “Model 3” will be stylized with 3 horizontal lines just like the “E” in Tesla’s logo.
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Tesla last night posted 11 “howto” videos showing how to use the giant capacitive touch display in the middle of the center console as well as the smartphone app. Veteran Model S owners will find them mostly repetitive but there might be some nuggets of wisdom inside. However, new and prospective owners need to see all of them to understand how the car works.  See all embedded below:
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If there’s indeed a poaching chess game going on between Tesla and Apple, it would appear the automaker is winning in acquiring quality pieces. Just a few week after we exclusively reported that Tesla hired legendary chip architect Jim Keller as new “Vice-President of Autopilot Hardware Engineering”, we now learn that Keller is joined by former DEC Alpha, PA Semi and until earlier this year Apple Director Peter Bannon.

Before Keller left Apple for AMD in 2012, he and Bannon were leading Apple’s processor development since the Cupertino-based company bought their chip making firm PA Semi in 2008. The duo lead the development of Apple’s A4 and A5 processors, which powered most of the company’s mobile devices from 2010 to 2012. Keller then left to develop the Zen architecture at AMD, but Bannon stuck around and developed several other chips for Apple until leaving for Tesla to join Keller last week.
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Update: A reddit user hopped over to the new Tesla location, and it looks like the company already has a sign up. See the bottom of the post for the image.

According to a report from New York real estate news site The Real Deal, a Tesla store will be the anchor for a new office conversion in Red Hook, New York City. Sources for the site say that the Palo Alto company signed a lease for a new space of roughly 40,000 square feet that will serve as an office, a service center, and a showroom for the company’s many EV offerings…

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Tesla is on-going some restructuring at the upper management level over the past few months, especially since long-time executive and Vice-President of Worldwide Sales & Services Jerome Guillen took a leave of absence last year, followed by Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja’s retirement a few months later.

The automaker has since hired former Enservio CEO Jon McNeill as President Global Sales & Service and former Google VP of Finance Jason Wheeler as Chief Financial Officer.

Today Electrek has learned of the latest addition to Tesla’s upper management team: Karim Bousta, former GE Director and Symantec Vice President, now Tesla’s Vice-President of Global Services.
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Tesla Motors recently acquired premium domain name ‘Tesla.com’ and it now forwards traffic to ‘Teslamotors.com’. The seller, Stuart Grossman from California, signed a non-disclosure agreement and therefore couldn’t disclose the amount he received to let go of the domain, but estimates range from high 6 figures to low 7 figures.
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Like most luxury automakers, Tesla offers accessories made from automotive-grade leather, sometimes even leftovers from making the interior of its vehicles, which is an interesting way for the manufacturer to promote its brand while reducing upholstery losses.

The company rarely updates its collection since launching it in 2014 with travel bags, gloves and purses, but a few months back, the automaker added iPhone cases/wallets, and now we are told that Tesla added leather jackets to its ‘Design Collection’.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally released more details about the reservations process for the upcoming Model 3 launch and it gives us an interesting opportunity to discuss the implications of the vehicle’s introduction on Tesla’s limit for the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles.

We’ve heard some discussion in EV industry about the implications of GM advertising the Bolt’s pricing as “$30,000 after incentives” and in contrast, Tesla is talking about the Model 3’s starting price as being “$35,000 before incentives”.
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As part of its shareholder letter posted ahead of its earnings call today, Tesla demonstrated its catastrophic affect on the US luxury car market with a simple table. If you start at the bottom, the market is at about 100,000 cars a year and it’s basically unchanged from 2014 to 2015.

The market is for “large luxury” cars and includes not only the Model S but Audi’s A7 and A8, BMW’s 6 and 7 series, the Jaguar XJ, Lexus LS Mercedes CLS and S Class and the Porsche Panamera. Each of these models has fallen in sales from almost 5%-over 15% from 2014-2015.  Where did these sales go?
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Fan rendering of the Model 3

Tesla announced this evening that the Model 3 will be unveiled on March 31. No further details about the event were provided, but the company did reiterate that the mass market car is “on schedule for production & deliveries in late 2017.”

Tesla also mentioned, in its letter to shareholders, that installation of Model 3 production machinery will begin this year.

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Building on the momentum Tesla is currently experiencing in Sweden with 271% growth in sales in 2015 based on registration data, the automaker is announcing an interesting partnership with Swedish electric utility Skellefteå Kraft to supply the Supercharger network in Sweden with 100% renewable energy and offer Tesla owners completely free charging at home.
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Dragtimes has its first P90D Ludicrous 0-60/100 MPH video up and the numbers they got beat Tesla’s already impressive estimates…

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