The Motley Fool organization is generally pretty smart, but they’ve often written crazy things about electric cars. The latest is to equate Tesla Motors with Amazon.com, driving me to utter WTF’s. The two companies couldn’t be more different. Tesla Motors makes one main product (the Tesla Model S) and some…
Tesla Motors today released results for Q3 2013 showing they exceeded sales estimates by a big margin, but as a business they’re still running at a loss (on a GAAP basis). Tesla’s management is taking pains to show both non-GAAP and GAAP financial results, the only ones that count, hence…
Nearly two years ago, Envia Systems wow’d the electric car world claiming to have developed lithium-ion battery technology that would slash battery pack costs, while giving a huge boost in energy density. Ever since, GM’s CEO Dan Akerson talked about how GM would be building a 200+ mile range affordable…
Tesla Motors is getting ready to nearly double its production capacity. The company is buying new manufacturing equipment worth up to $415 million, for its factory in Fremont, that will bump capacity from 21,000 cars a year to 35,000 cars a year. Tesla is expanding sales to Europe, China, Japan…
Tesla Motors is the poster child for the whole project of electric car adoption. They make what may be the best car ever, the Tesla Model S, whose sales are growing to the point where it has a significant market share in luxury car sales. But if Tesla were to…
Yesterday another Tesla Model S fire occurred on the heels of Tesla Motors’ Q3 2013 financial results which had disappointed Wall Street who sent the stock down 14% on Wednesday. News of the Model S fire came too late in the day to affect the stock on Wednesday, so it’s…
Recently, Tesla Motors appointed Doug Field as a Vice President to lead development of new vehicles. Their press release presented him as an employee of Apple Computers, having led development of their computers. This makes us think of him as a consumer electronics guy, and this points to Tesla’s product…
The first prototype version of Tesla Motors’ Gen3 car, the affordable mass market electric car, should be shown to the public in the first quarter 2015, according to Elon Musk. Tesla Motors’ long-term plan is to develop an affordable mass market electric car with a target price of $35,000 US, and manufactured in volumes around 200,000…
By rapidly building out the Supercharger network, service centers, and increasing the Model S top speed for the Autobahn, Tesla Motors hopes to wow Germans that are known for appreciating automotive engineering prowess. Tesla Motors is expanding its sales network into Europe, and one of the targets is Germany. Describing…
At first blush it seems ludicrous to think GM would be afraid of Tesla Motors. GM manufactures a zillion vehicles a year, has operations in dozens of countries, and a long history of automobile and truck manufacturing. But, in an interview with the Detroit News last week, it seems that…
As I noted a couple weeks ago, Tesla Motors is looking to hire engineers to develop automated driving features for their cars. That was based on finding a job posting that flat out said, Tesla looking to develop autonomous driving. Since then the job posting caught the attention of the…
Tesla Motors recently filed for a patent on a hybrid battery pack design that enables joining metal-air and lithium-ion battery cells into one battery pack, to implement a much larger total energy capacity and therefore a longer driving range. The idea is “just” a patent at this moment, and metal-air…
In early August I noticed a job listing on Tesla’s Careers area looking for RADAR expertise in the kind of systems (LIDAR etc) used in autonomous vehicles. Now the company is flat out looking for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) Controls Engineer to develop fully autonomous driving. I’ve written up…
Tesla Motors, with plans to be making 400,000 cars a year or more by 2018, is pushing suppliers to build a truly gargantuan battery cell manufacturing plant. While Tesla Motors’ plan to increase Model S production to 40,000 cars a year by the end of 2014 will be good for their…
Tesla Motors stock has risen over 400% in the last six months, and by market capitalization the company is rivaling the smaller automakers, which raises the question: Why? The price for Tesla Motors stock (TSLA) briefly touched the $172 level today before a selloff beginning at 2pm Eastern Time erased…
