Recently on Facebook a claim has gone around that Tesla is phasing out the J1772 adapter. This adapter is required for a Tesla car to charge at a regular charging station, since Tesla cars have a Tesla-specific charging port. There is a lot of history behind why Tesla has a…
The latest step in the marketing/sales chaos that is Tesla has the company on the one hand making it almost impossible to buy a $35,000 MSRP Tesla Model 3, on the other hand starting a lease program, while still continuing to display misleading pricing on the Tesla website. This follows…
Over the weekend Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a bunch of tweets including the above charging advice. At least these tweets did not get him in trouble with the SEC, as he has done so many times over the last year. But this particular advice seems (to me) to not…
How much is “peace of mind” worth on your daily commute? If you arrive at the office well rested, or arrive home well rested, even after a 50 mile grind through logjammed traffic, is that “well rested” state justification for paying a premium price for a car? Tesla’s CEO Elon…
Is Tesla operating by a plan, or by whim? A couple weeks ago Tesla announced they would be closing most of the stores, and convert many stores to be “galleries” in a move that would supposedly decrease costs and therefore allow Tesla the profit margin required to start selling the…
Last week Tesla announced they’d start selling the $35,000 MSRP Tesla Model 3, and achieving that goal required shifting sales to an online-only model and closing all Tesla retail stores. We were told to believe the shift in sales strategy meant Tesla would have enough profit margin to begin selling…
The long-awaited $35,000 MSRP Tesla Model 3 now is available via the Tesla website. This is the affordable mass production electric car Tesla has promised for several years, and it is now available. But was Tesla satisfied solely to reach that milestone? Nope, the announcement contained a nugget that I…
The electric car lap time record at Laguna Seca International Raceway is changing hands like crazy this summer. On September 14, 2018, Cameron Rogers took a Tesla Model 3 w/ Performance Package to Laguna Seca, seeking to reclaim the lap time record he’d set earlier this summer. Subsequent to Rogers’…
In May 2014 I asked “what happens when Tesla Motors’ sales equals that of major traditional car makers like Porsche?” At the time I saw a Porsche press release with quarterly sales numbers where Porsche had sold 55,000 cars worldwide for Q1 2014, for an annualized sales rate of 165,000…
On March 31, 2016, I stood in line with thousands of other people to give Tesla Motors $1000 in hard-earned cash to reserve the ability to buy a Tesla Model 3. The telecasted announcement was that evening, and over 100,000 of us (myself included) had put down a $1000 deposit…
In early August, Lucid Motors brought a Lucid Air prototype to Laguna Seca International Raceway and definitively smashed the standing lap-speed records set with the Jaguar I-Pace, Tesla Model S and Tesla Model 3. The record was set during testing sessions at the race track, it was driven by a Lucid…
Is Elon Musk going insane? Or has Elon Musk started believing his own press releases? Those suggestions come from two different news articles analyzing the fallout from Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s suggestion to take Tesla private, and his subsequent interview with the NY Times in which he admitted this year…
Layoffs are hard on a company, and Tesla Motors is going through a fairly large (9%) layoff. The “survivors” are often left with a kind of survivors guilt, and missing former colleagues, and can easily be demoralized. Those who are laid off must look for their next step in life,…
Should Tesla Motors be the leading or primary car manufacturer? Or should other car manufacturers step up to take a significant role in electric vehicle development, as Tesla is doing? Or should even other start-up car manufacturers participate in the undoing of the incumbent car industry? That’s a set of…
On the heels of Tesla’s quarterly financial results released earlier this week, the company notified us reservation holders of an update in our Tesla Model 3 reservation. Eagerly hoping the date had been moved up because they’re promising a 5,000/week production rate, I logged into my Tesla account and was…
