In March 2018 a horrible and sad crash occurred in Mountain View CA, when a Tesla Model X being driven on Autopilot drove itself into the gore point of the left hand exit from US-101 to CA Hwy 85. The driver had the car on autopilot mode, and at the…
Obviously my opinion about the Tesla Cybertruck is missing something that a lot of people are seeing. I think the Cybertruck is a stupid design that will not appeal to the people we need to switch from gasoline and diesel pickup trucks. But the level of excitement over the Cybertruck…
In China, Tesla built the Gigafactory 3 in 10 months, which may cause some in the USA to slam policies here about environmental reviews and the like. Be that as it may, the Tesla Model 3 is now manufactured in China, fulfilling a long-term goal of Tesla to have a…
The news site Motor1 rendered this concept vehicle – a recreational vehicle (RV) based on the Tesla Semi. This looks interesting, sure, and could be done obviously. It would require extending the frame perhaps, which surely seems possible to do. The thing is this doesn’t strike me as fitting the…
In some circles Patriotism is a big deal, and it seems Patriots are routinely bashing electric vehicles, solar power, and this sort of thing. The video below is by an American living in North Carolina, who makes YouTube videos about hunting with guns and arrows, and presents himself as a…
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…
