Tesla Motors

Following the coverage of George Hotz’s new self-driving car project yesterday, the stock price of Tesla’s partner for the Autopilot, Mobileye, took a 7% hit during the day. Citron Research called the company “the short of 2016“.

[tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/677403793651175424 align=’center’]

But early this morning, Musk took to Twitter to say that Bloomberg’s article on the project was inaccurate and he shared a blog post from Tesla explaining why.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was at the AGU Fall Meeting today for the Presidential Forum and made some comments about Tesla’s battery factory under construction in Nevada.

Musk said that the battery cells the company will produce at the Gigafactory in partnership with Panasonic will feature some “moderate improvements” in technology over those in production today. 
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It’s the first time we hear about a Tesla Model S in Kazakhstan and as you can see, they are not making a great effort to distance themselves from Borat’s portrayal of the country. Indeed the first evidence we have of a Model S in Kazakhstan is from this video posted to Youtube yesterday of people trying to fit a sheep in the frunk of the car.
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Tesla released today a new update to some Performance Model S owners. The update includes some incremental improvements and an all new feature called ‘Launch Mode’. The new feature assists the driver to accelerate from a standing start, much like a launch control for a race car.
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Typically, Tesla forbids video and photo during factory tours, on occasion only granting permission to professional camera crews for preplanned shoots. Recently, however, an individual was allowed to capture some impromptu images during his visit.

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After Mexico yesterday, now it’s Scotland’s turn to get a new Tesla retail location, the first in the country. The automaker opened the showroom today in Edinburgh at the upmarket Multrees Walk shopping center in St Andrews Square, home to other luxury product makers including Louis Vuitton and Harvey Nichols.
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Tesla needs to deliver a record-breaking ~17,000 units in the last quarter of the year to achieve the low-end of its 2015 delivery guidance of  50,000-55,000 vehicles. Since the company now sells more cars in Europe than in North America or Asia, Model S deliveries in European markets are more important than ever.

Here’s our November 2015 look at Model S deliveries based on registration data in Tesla’s most important European markets:
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As Signature Model X reservation holders are still patiently (or impatiently) waiting for a delivery date from Tesla, one more Founders series owner managed to get his hands on the all-electric SUV. This time its the #36, a significant jump from the last reported #13 delivered to Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.
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Tesla launches in Mexico this week by opening a “Pop-up” store in the Mexican capital and we learn that the company hired Google’s longtime brand and communications manager for Latin American markets, Ricardo Blanco, to lead Tesla’s communications and marketing in the country.
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Earlier this week, the Reno Gazette-Journal published its latest progress report on Tesla’s Gigafactory. I suggest reading the entire lengthy piece to get a good idea of the impact of the Gigafactory on the region, but the paper can get obnoxiously whiny about the state and local government’s support of the project, so I compiled the bulletpoints and facts from RGJ’s document digging for a quick overview here:
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We recently reported on Tesla starting to push new Autopilot restrictions to some Model S owners last Sunday – about a month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned of upcoming constraints to limit some potentially dangerous use of the Autopilot as seen in videos posted online.

The Model S owners reporting on forums having received the update with new Autopilot restrictions have quickly removed their posts. We now learn through sources with knowledge of matter that Tesla started testing the new version 7.1 of its software with a select group of Model S owners this week.

The new update includes UI improvements, a new self-parking feature, ‘Driver Mode’ and Autopilot restrictions.
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Tesla announced today via Instagram that  the company now offers test drives out of Harrods, a popular upmarket department store in London. The company claims to be the first automotive manufacturer to offer test drives out of the store.
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After some confusion over Tesla registering thousands of Model S’s in Denmark in anticipation of a surge of electric vehicle sales over the phasing out of tax breaks in the country starting in 2016, the company confirmed having ordered 2,500 license plates in order for Tesla buyers to be able to complete their purchases by the end of the year.

With 113 Model S’s registered in October, the data didn’t reflect any demand increase due to the end of the tax breaks for electric vehicles, but the government published November registration data today and it now shows a significant increase in Tesla Model S registrations.
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We received some questions about the renderings of the Model 3 floating around lately. There’s been confusion since some reports failed to specify that the renderings were from an independent artist unaffiliated with Tesla and some even called it a “leak”.
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During the conference call to discuss the company’s third quarter financial results on November 3rd, Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned that the company will push software updates to add restrictions to the Autopilot.

Now we learn that Tesla started pushing these constraints to some Model S owners on Sunday – about a month after announcing it.

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Some Tesla Model S owners who are used to high-end luxury cars have complained about the vehicle’ interior not being up to the standards of a $80,000+ car. Andrey, a Model S owner in Moscow, was tired of complaining and took action. He completely changed the interior of his Model S to a BMW 6-series’ for about $30,000.
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NAIAS officials confirmed to local Detroit news that Tesla pulled out of the North American International Auto Show “at the last minute”. Tesla’s presence was confirmed on the NAIAS’ floor plan for months. The news comes while Tesla is still not allowed to sell cars in Michigan since the state government “clarified” a direct sale law in 2014 by removing one word from the bill, which now prevents Tesla from operating its own stores in the state.
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Based on registration data, Tesla delivered 225 Model S’s in Norway last month – up from 198 units in October and 202 in November 2014. The company recently ran in some troubles in Norway after Model S owners expressed concerns over the way Tesla is reporting the power output of the car, especially the Dual Motor version. Tesla is now in mediation with over 150 Model S owners in the country over these concerns.

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Green Mountain Power (GMP), an electric utility servicing 265,000 residential and business customers in Vermont, announced today the details of the different options they are offering for the Tesla Powerwall. The company will let customers either lease or outright buy the home energy storage system starting at $37.50 a month.

GMP expects the first shipment to arrive in January, with a total of 500 units arriving over the next few months. Tesla recently moved its home battery production to the Gigafactory in order to accelerate output in early 2016.
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Local news reports in Chile are stating that “senior Tesla executives” met with government officials to evaluate a partnership with state-owned mining company Codelco in order to source lithium in the country.

The agreement would presumably be to supply Tesla’s Gigafactory under-construction in Nevada.
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