Tesla Motors

In a recent interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt, BMW CEO Harald Krüger reiterated the company’s intention to phase out diesel models and introduce more electric vehicles in order to comply with increasingly strict emission regulations.

The CEO also commented on Tesla’s Autopilot, which he doesn’t see as the lead semi-autonomous option on the market at the moment. Of course, this comment shouldn’t come as a surprise since you rarely hear an executive admiting that a competitor’s technology is more advanced than his own company’s, but Krüger’s comments went beyond boasting BMW’s tech.
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According to the registration data coming in for November in European markets, Tesla delivered 157 Model S’s last month in the Netherlands – up from 145 units in October. The Netherlands continue to be an important market for Tesla. It is the second biggest European market for the company with Norway being the first.

Year-to-date, the company delivered 1,613 cars in the country, which represents a 44% increase versus the same period last year.
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According to Nasdaq’s latest short interest update, the total short position on Tesla’s stock increased to 27,367,931 shares – its highest since March 2014. The short position is almost as important as Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s own stake in the company: 28,371,342 shares or about 29% of the float.

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Update: A source close to the company tells us Rose is not working on Google’s car project. We are also hearing that he might have been let go at Tesla.

Robert Rose has an impressive resumé as a software engineer. He worked at HP while completing his MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oregon State University. He then developed award-winning PSP games at Sony such as Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror and Resistance: Retribution.

In 2009, he moved to California to be the lead software engineer for SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 and Dragon flight. He quickly became Director of Flight Software, a position he held until July 2014. After a brief stint at machine learning firm Vicarious, he joined Tesla last May to lead the Autopilot team into the release of v7.0 update, which enabled ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Rose left Tesla right after the release of the Autopilot in October and a month later, we learn that he joined Google.
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It’s no secret that Tesla’s retail strategy is inspired by Apple’s. In 2010, the automaker hired George Blankenship as VP of Store Design & Development. Blankenship was a GAP veteran who led Apple’s real estate business from 2000 to 2006 and to whom Apple Store’s early success has been largely attributed. 

Blankenship retired in 2013, but apparently it wasn’t the end of the connection between the retail strategies of the two companies. We learn that earlier this month, Tesla hired the team leader of the architectural team for Apple Stores at Callison, an international architecture firm.
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DragTimes took delivery of its Tesla Model S P90D with Ludicrous mode just a few days ago and it already posted its first race. They raced the 5,000 lbs electric sedan against a 3,500 lbs Ford GT supercar.

Watch the full video below the fold:
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Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya announced via Twitter that he took delivery of his ‘Founders series’ Model X #13, which he described as the “sickest car on the planet”. He joins a select group of Model X ‘Founder’ owners including, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, Tesla board member Steve Jurvetson and Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself.
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Sonnenbatterie is the leader in home energy storage in Europe. The company is expected to represent a serious competitor to ‘Tesla Energy’ in Germany, which the automaker sees as an important market for energy storage due to the popularity of renewable energy in the country. Tesla’s head in Germany, as well as several managers, defected to Sonnenbattarie earlier this summer – hinting at a possible rivalry between the two companies.

At a press conference in Berlin today, Sonnenbatterie announced a new home battery pack, as well as a new solar panel/battery package and everyone want to know how it fares against Tesla’s Powerwall.
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In a new note issued this morning, Credit Suisse analyst Dan Galves reiterated an ‘outperform’ rating and $325 price target on Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) . The analyst considers the fourth quarter guidance to be “achievable” and he sees a “reasonable path” to $4 EPS in 2016 – compared to the ~$2.30 annualized loss per share in the last quarter.
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According to PlugShare’s quarterly report, Tesla added 858 charging stations across the US from September 2014 to September 2015. The increase is largely due to Tesla’s “Destination Charging” program, which now accounts for over 80% of Tesla’s charging points in the US.

The automaker 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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Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company can’t offer the Autopilot as a retrofit. There are a few aftermarket options available to add driver assist features to a car, but nothing close to Tesla’s ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’ features… until now.
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When Tesla first unveiled the Model X in September, the vehicle was widely reported to cost $132,000, but a lot of publications failed to understand that it was the sale price of the limited “Founders series”. Then Tesla opened orders for the “Signature series” – for people who reserved the vehicle with a $40,000 deposit – and now Tesla finally opens the order book to the reservation holders for the production version.

There’s no surprise. The base version is the “Model X 70D”, which starts at $80,000 ($5,000 more than the Dual Motor version of the Model S) and has an EPA-rated range of 220 miles. Tesla says that new orders will start shipping in “mid to late 2016”.

You can see a screenshot of the Model X design studio below:
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Between established automakers accelerating their electric vehicle programs and the newcomers in the EV industry – like Apple, Faraday Future or Atieva – engineers with battery experience are not short on employment opportunities. Earlier this year, Apple poached several battery tech experts from A123 Systems and we also reported that about 1 in 8 of Faraday Future’s ~400 employees is formerly from Tesla Motors.

From an executive’s standpoint, retaining talent in a specific field can be challenging on its own, but for Elon Musk, CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, it can be even more complex when both companies he’s managing require talent in the same field…
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On November 20th, Tesla completed the Supercharger route between Melbourne and Sydney by opening a location in Gundagai. The company now operates 7 Supercharger locations in Australia and they are all located between Victoria’s coastal capital and the capital of New South Wales.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel were in Korea this week and they attended the Energy Korea Forum 2015. Local South Korean news reported on comments made by Straubel during a Q&A session at the forum, the CTO said that Tesla is “committed” to the South Korean market and that he sees a “great potential” there. Although he didn’t offer a concrete timeline on when the company plans to start selling cars in the country.
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Tesla Vice President of Corporate and Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell often represents the company for official government presentations. Last month, he spoke before California’s Air Resources Board to lobby for the acceleration of the state’s zero emission mandate. And this week, he joined several industry representatives in Washington to appear before the Subcommittee on Information Technology and Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets for a hearing on “The Internet of Cars”.
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According to Reuters, Tesla issued a voluntary recall for all of its Model S sedans on Friday. The cause of the recall appears to be a seatbelt assembly.  

Nov 20 (Reuters) – Tesla Motors Inc said Friday it is recalling all 90,000 Model S sedans produced to check for a possible defect in the front seat belt assemblies.

The cost of the worldwide recall will be “immaterial,” the company said. The problem was discovered after a single report to the company in early November of a seatbelt assembly breaking when a customer in the front passenger seat of a Model S on the road in Europe turned to talk with passengers in the rear seat.

TSLA’s share price is dipping 5 points or 2.5% currently as a result.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter Thursday night to announce that Tesla is ramping up the hiring for the Autopilot software team in order to achieve “generalized full autonomy”. Under its current version, the Autopilot can steer the car on highways and change lane by simply activating the turn signal, but to get to full autonomy, Tesla will need to update its software and suite of sensors.

[tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/667516705116065792 align=’center’]

Musk describes the project as “super high priority”. The CEO added that the Autopilot team reports directly to him and no prior experience in the automotive industry is required, but he is looking for “hardcore” software engineers.
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Tesla is temporarily disabling the ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’ features of the Autopilot for Model S owners in Hong Kong after a formal request from regulators at the Transport Department . The features were recently introduced to the Model S with the version 7.0 software update. 
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Acciona, a Spanish conglomerate in renewable energy and infrastructure, created last year the first team to compete at the Dakar rally with an electric vehicle. Unfortunately, they didn’t last long, but they are coming back for Dakar 2016 and they feel more confident than ever after coming out of the Morocco Rally last month as the first team to finish it with an electric vehicle.

The company seriously upgraded the vehicle this year with a focus on efficiency and a brand new battery pack. At Dakar 2015, Acciona’s car could achieve 125 miles (200 km) on a single charge with a 140 kWh battery pack under the race’s difficult road conditions. The upgraded car has a 150 kWh pack, which is only a 7% increase, but the team says it can now travel 217 miles (350 km) on a single charge under the same racing conditions, which is a 75% increase.
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