Selling people on a different kind of car is more than selling them a car. It’s about selling them on a different way of driving, or rather a different propulsion system. Tesla “Recharge” from Über Content on Vimeo.
In Murfreesboro Tennessee yesterday a drunk woman crashed her Tesla Model S into a telephone pole. She told police she was “messing with the radio.” It was a clear day, hers was the only car in the crash, so I’m guessing a combination of inebriation and driver distraction caused the…
Just how afraid of Tesla is GM? I’m asking this because of a pair of events, one where Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk laid out the company’s roadmap making it clear they can and will bring a 200+ mile range electric car to market in a couple years, and another…
Tesla continued to increase Model S sales, significantly beating their estimates, while accounting rules meant the company is showing a slight loss. Tesla Motors is continuing its streak of sales growth, selling 5,150 Model S’s during Q2 2013 up from 4,900 in Q1 2013. The company announced Q2 2013 financial…
After garnering criticism from the first version of the Model S financing program, Tesla Motors has tweaked the offering, giving even more guaranteed value. Moving to correct a few, uh, mistakes in the Tesla Financing plan, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced on Friday some refinements to the Tesla Model…
Can electric cars be successful as a Taxi? Taxi’s seem to drive lots of miles a day, which would be many more than the 70-100ish mile range of typical electric cars. Where New York City has launched use of Nissan Leaf as taxi’s ahead of deploying the electric e-NV200 minivan,…
A somewhat surprising is that fast charging (for electric cars) can reduce the cost of electric cars. Because electric car cost is a major factor delaying electric car adoption, if fast charging support would allow a cheaper electric car then it’s important to get fast charging infrastructure out there as…
Electric cars are a major focus of what I write about, but are not the be-all-end-all of solutions for the full range of transportation problems our society is facing. Electric cars offer a great solution for noise pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and peak oil, but they do not…
Is the Tesla Supercharger network a big money pit that will sink the company, or is it an uber-cool strategy that will propel Tesla to greatness? That’s a big question we’re pondering, and in the balance hangs not just a scrappy start-up electric car company, but the whole project of…
Tesla’s stock price popped today after an obtuse Elon Musk tweet promised a big announcement and implied a bigger investment in the company. Elon Musk’s obtuse tweets have gone to the next level with a promise, on Monday, of a big announcement on Thursday. The tweet gives us less to…
Now that Tesla Motors is producing the Model S, that car has passed from the realm of hype to reality. It means we can now start judging the Model S and Tesla Motors based on the actual results rather than on what we hope they’ll be building in the future. …
Because of other manufacturing delays, the 40- and 60- kilowatt-hour versions of the Tesla Model S will be delayed by 2 months, but in the grand scheme the company still intends to reach a 20,000 car/year manufacturing rate for 2013. Some Tesla Model S reservation holders will have to wait…
Quietly released today was the EPA certification of the 60 kilowatt-hour Tesla Model S, showing it to be more efficient than the 85 kilowatt-hour model. On Friday the EPA quietly released the EPA certification of the 60 kilowatt-hour Tesla Model S, giving the middle car in the Model S range…
Saying that it has not increased the Model S price in three years, Tesla Motors announced an across-the-board $2500 price bump along with a few tweaks to standard equipment, options, and maintenance plans. The last couple weeks rumors have circulated that Tesla Motors was about to raise the price of…
