Tesla Motors
Get the best local deal from Electrek

We get our first good look at the Model X’s range while towing at near full capacity courtesy of Signature Model X owner Max Kennedy. Max is one of the 208 Model X owners who had the chance to take delivery of the all-electric SUV before the end of the year, and he decided to start an interesting Youtube channel documenting his experience with the vehicle, especially with its towing capacity.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Tesla announced deliveries for the fourth quarter 2015 today and as we predicted earlier this month, the company hits the low-end of its ambitious goal of 17,000 to 19,000 deliveries, with 17,400 total deliveries from October to December.
Expand
Expanding
Close
A Tesla Model S caught fire while plugged-in at a Supercharger in Norway, and almost completely burned down to nothing. The event happened at 14.30 Friday afternoon (local time) at a Tesla fast-charging station in Gjerstad, Norway
Expand
Expanding
Close
It’s a feature Model S owners have been asking Tesla to implement for a while now. We know it’s possible since the company displays available stalls in real-time on the “Supercharger Dashboard” located in its design studio in Hawthorne, but the feature is not available in real-time in the car itself, where it could actually be extremely useful.
A third-party app is looking to fix the problem, or at least pressure Tesla to finally release the feature.
Expand
Expanding
Close
The second trial period for Tesla’s referral program will end tomorrow with no word about a possible renewal, although it’s likely considering the success of the program. The top referrer currently has 188 referrals – breaking his own record of 100 during the last period from August to October.
Expand
Expanding
Close
We recently reported on Tesla being on a hiring spree, and now the Wall Street Journal corroborates the news with its own report this week. WSJ specified that the automaker is outgrowing its Palo Alto headquarters and it might be building a consolidated headquarters at an undetermined location in the near-future.
Expand
Expanding
Close
If you thought that the love story between Consumer Reports and Tesla was over, you were wrong. The magazine published a top 10 list of the cars it tested in 2015 and the Tesla Model S somehow managed to get the first and second positions.
Consumer Reports lists the “Tesla Model S” as the second best car tested and the “Tesla Model S P85D” as the first. It is the only vehicle with two different versions on the list – both Mercedes and Audi have two cars on the list, but they are different models (E250-S550 and A8-A6).
Expand
Expanding
Close
T Sportline is a car tuner exclusively focusing on Tesla vehicles. The company must be ecstatic to finally have a new vehicle to work on since 2012 and they didn’t lose any time. They recently took delivery of a Signature Model X, making them one of the few lucky owner of the all-electric SUV.
Expand
Expanding
Close
As 2015 is coming to a close, we decided to review Tesla’s year in pictures. We gathered some of the best photos of Tesla’s most important events of the year and some less-known interesting moments – all in chronological order…
Expand
Expanding
Close
An 85-year-old man died in Houston yesterday after crashing a Tesla Model S through a brick wall and into a swimming pool. The accident happened just a week after another reported fatality in a Model S crash, which until recently was a rare occurrence.
Expand
Expanding
Close
An audit of the Tesla’s job creation and value of its investment was due on Oct. 1, but Tesla asked for an extension and now the report was finally made available during the holidays.
Independent auditors concluded Tesla met all conditions for the first eight months after lawmakers approved the incentive package (Oct. 17, 2014, through June 30)
Expand
Expanding
Close
Even though Tesla has been producing stationary energy storage products at the Gigafactory 1 in Nevada for a few months now, we haven’t had the chance to see any pictures from inside the plant since the walls of the first section of the factory are up.
Today we get our first modest look via professional photographer James Lipman’s Instagram (first spotted by Evannex).
Expand
Expanding
Close
Model X deliveries are picking up as evidenced by numerous new videos and pictures posted to social media websites. We gathered a few of our favorites.
The Tesla Model X, which is the first electric car with a significant towing capacity, reportedly can tow at impressively high-speeds. Trip Chowdrhy, a financial analyst who covers Tesla for Global Equities, says he witnessed Tesla testing a Model X towing at “very high speeds” at the Fremont factory.
Expand Expanding CloseTesla certainly seems to be in good holidays spirit today. After Santa getting a Model X with jet engines this morning, we now have footage of a very cool light show the company made using the Model X.
Expand
Expanding
Close
It’s Christmas and Tesla feels generous. The flying reindeer will get a break this year as the company decided to let Santa Claus borrow a Model X equipped with jet engines.
Expand
Expanding
Close
A man tragically died last night after his Tesla Model S got hit by a dump truck in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The accident is likely the first instance of a death in the Model S under “regular traffic conditions”.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Update: Just 1 day left to get a chance to win a Model S and promote carbon pricing awareness – CXC’s website.
The Model S is becoming a popular raffle prize and this raffle in particular is for a very good cause in-line with Tesla’s mission. Climate XChange (CXC) is a nonprofit organization with the goal to reduce global warming pollution and strengthen the economy through comprehensive market-based carbon pricing in Massachusetts.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Since the reveal of the Model X in September, there’s been a persisting rumor that Tesla will give the Model S a “facelift” in order for it to have the same front-end as the Model X – as seen on the rendering above. We normally don’t cover rumors with little to no source, but this one makes some sense and has been persisting long enough to be worth mentioning.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was at Stanford’s FutureFest recently and he described how he evaluates the progress and a timeline for artificial intelligence:
“If any given year you find your predictions are going further out or coming closer in, that actually one way to think of acceleration [of progress] because otherwise what’s the quantitative measure of AI?”
During the same talk, which took place in October, Musk said that fully autonomous cars are about 3 years away, a prediction he made several times in the past year or so. But today we learn that Musk updated his prediction to just 2 years.
Expand
Expanding
Close
As the end of the year, and consequently the end of the fourth quarter, is getting closer, investors and analysts are debating whether or not Tesla can achieve its ambitious delivery goal of 17,000 to 19,000 cars in the last 3 months of the year for a total of 50,000 to 52,000 in 2015.
Achieving the lower-end of the guidance would mean a 46% quarter to quarter increase and a 73% increase over the same period last year. We’ve already reported on registration data for October and November for Tesla’s most important European markets, but now with more data coming from California and Denmark, as well as new information about the Model X and demonstration vehicles, it looks like Tesla is poised to achieve at least the lower-end of its guidance.
Expand
Expanding
Close
After recent reports of Signature Model X’s making it across the country, we knew it was imminent, but now it’s official. Tesla delivered the Signature Series Model X #1 to the first reservation holder at the Tesla Fremont factory yesterday.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Tesla published a new video on its Youtube channel of a Model S traveling down the assembly line at its plant in Tilburg, Netherlands. The automaker opened the new 78,000 square-meter (840,000 sq-ft) plant in the city earlier this year.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Local South African news is reporting that Tesla is planning to open an office in the country in early 2016. The company will first aim at developing the market for its ‘Tesla Energy’ products: the Powerwall and Powerpack.
There’s currently no word on Tesla bringing its vehicles to South Africa.
Expand
Expanding
Close