Tesla Motors today announced that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had agreed to remain as CEO for at least 10 years. What was announced is the new compensation package and performance awards for Elon Musk. In industry parlance we call this kind of package “Golden Handcuffs” because the payoff is tied…
The news about Tesla Motors regularly repeats a complaint about the cash burn rate, the fact that Tesla routinely runs at a loss, is propped up by investors, and eventually the house of cards will come crashing down. There’s some truth to this – the company showed a profit in…
There have been several one or two fatalities this year of Tesla Model S drivers who were perhaps overly trusting the autopilot mode. In January 2016, well before the well-known crash in Florida, a fatality occurred when a Tesla Model S drove into the back of a street sweeper truck. Going by…
Ten years ago Elon Musk posted the first super-secret Tesla Motors master plan on the company blog. It seemed that nobody remembered he’d done so, because the company is routinely attacked over making playthings for rich people when the plan all along has been to build the Model 3 (affordable 200+ mile…
Tesla Motors just released production figures for Q2 2016 — 18,345 vehicles for a 73,380/year annualized rate. This is the Tesla Model S and Model X, both of which target the luxury car market. The company also announced projected production rate increases for 2016, and that they should (knock on…
Today Tesla Motors released its Q1 2016 quarterly financial results. Those results were eclipsed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s statement that Tesla Motors is speeding up the production plans. Their new goal is to hit 500,000 vehicles/year production rate by 2018, a full two years ahead of previously announced plans. The…
Today the Geek Squad and Toyota announced that Best Buy (the Geek Squad’s operators) is switching from their iconic VW Beetle’s over to Toyota Prius c’s. While this is great for Toyota and Prius sales, it strikes me that an interesting opportunity is being missed. There’s several companies offering services in…
Earlier today Tesla Motors released its Q4 2015 financial results. The company claims it has strong sales growth, and now that the Tesla Model X is in production financial results throughout 2016 will improve greatly. Since this continued growth of Tesla as a business depends on growing their car sales,…
Today Tesla Motors released their financial results for Q4 2015, and it’s a mixed bag. The company strongly emphasized strong sales growth for the Tesla Model S, claiming it is outselling the other cars in its class, and that “Cash Flow From Operations” went from hugely negative to hugely positive.…
The January 2016 plug-in electric vehicle scorecard doesn’t look too good. For example, Nissan just introduced the 2016 Leaf with great new features (more range, bigger battery pack, etc) that customers likely wanted. But its sales haven’t taken off, instead sales plunged to 755 Leaf’s for USA in Jan 2016,…
The US Department of Transportation is proposing to “Amend the Definition of 3-Wheeled Vehicles”. While the description of the Proposed Rulemaking is something I agree with, if the proposed rules had been in place 10 years ago certain aspects of the Electric Vehicle industry would have been held back. There…
This evening Faraday Future finally unveiled themselves, showing off what the company has been developing, including a massively powerful electric race car. The key is what the company calls it’s Variable Platform Architecture, which should enable the company to develop nearly any kind of four-wheeled vehicle. In other words, Faraday…
In a statement today from BMW’s top management, the company said clearly – electric vehicles are the future. Oh, and “digitalization” meaning the integration of advanced computer systems and networked connections into cars. The statement by Harald Krüger is attributed to a quarterly conference call dated Sept 30, 2015. As we’ll see…
Bob Lutz is prognosticating the death of Tesla Motors, saying the company is badly run, its costs are too high, it should be working through dealers, it should add a plug-in hybrid model, and oh-by-the-way he likes Elon Musk. Coincidentally, I see from my calendar that in exactly one…
Today, GM unveiled plans to “capitalize on the future of personal mobility by owning the customer relationship beyond the vehicle, building upon nearly two decades of connectivity leadership” and while a large part of that plan is an eventual autonomously driven car based robotaxi service, General Motors announced a couple…
