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…
According to Tesla, the company mission is to hasten the adoption of electric vehicles, and in general the renewable energy ecosystem. Hence Tesla is developing what are regarded as extremely awesome cars that happen to be electric, have managed to build a manufacturing asset base allowing them to approach a…
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…
Today Cleantechnica posted a news scoop that Tesla and GM are working together on a fully electric pickup truck using a Tesla drive train. It’s known that Tesla is working on an electric pickup truck, but we’d all expected Tesla to build their own rather than work with an incumbent…
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…
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…
If you “own” something but cannot “repair” it, do you really own the thing? The legal concept is the Right to Repair, that we all should have the right to fix or even upgrade the widgets we buy. Unfortunately many technology companies put up roadblocks in the way of the…
Tesla could be in a world of hurt from the brewing trade war with China, suggests a NBC News report. The Trump Administration is launching a trade war against the rest of the world (more or less), where China is a primary target, a move which is upsetting business plans that…
The layoffs recently announced for Tesla is especially focusing on residential sales through what had been Solar City outposts in Home Depot stores. Solar City had famously sold its systems through both direct sales and through sales partners stationed in Home Depot stores. According to reports, Tesla will close about…
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,…
A few days ago I wrote about a pair of crashes, one involving an autonomous Uber vehicle that struck and killed a pedestrian, and another involving a Tesla Model X that apparently swerved into a lane divider killing the driver. Yesterday an SF Bay Area TV station, ABC 7 news,…
Clearly folks are eager to have self-driving cars TODAY if not sooner. I’m seeing a constant chatter online of folks excited about the prospect of letting their car take over the driving chores. A few weeks ago, a new Tesla Model 3 owner giving a presentation about his newly-purchased car…
