Model S
Tesla’s quiet entry in the Middle East, starting with Jordan
?We now learn that a few weeks before Musk revealed that Tesla is “already in Jordan”, a chain of gas stations installed Tesla Superchargers at three locations in the country – see the locations on the right from Supercharge.info and the image featured above is from one of the location. The Supercharger stations, which don’t appear on Tesla’s website, were installed by the Manaseer Group.
Talking Cars with Consumer Reports #81: Tesla Autopilot
Jake and Tom hit the highway in our Tesla Model S P85D to discuss its Autopilot system, which can steer the car and keep it within its lane on its own. There are some advantages to the system, especially on long highway trips and in stop-and-go traffic, but this beta-level system is still working out some bugs. We also talk about the temptations posed by the technology, both for increasing distracted driving and for using it on roads where it is far from optimized. Finally, we contrast Tesla owners' willingness to purchase and try out this system, compared to the difficulty typical car buyers have in understanding the value of advanced safety systems like forward collision warning and autobraking.
Owner bemused by Tesla’s power shortfall
But after just a few weeks, Sacha felt all wasn’t well. He reported he wasn’t receiving the performance he thought he should be, and having owned a Nissan GT-R, was disappointed by the Tesla's power. He said: “The car is incredible, but nowhere near what I was expecting, to the extent I don’t feel comfortable overtaking at high speed.” Sacha searched online and found other P85D owners in Europe were experiencing the same. So Sacha took his Tesla to a dyno to measure the output. He found it maxed out at 393bhp, and said: “It's way less than I was expecting when I ordered in good faith, initially based on advertised figures.” Despite its defence of the claimed figures, Tesla is in the process of organising a buy-back. The Tesla spokeswoman concluded: “Customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance to Tesla. In the rare case when a customer finds their Model S isn’t for them, we’ll do what we can to help them move on.”
TSLA
HaaS and the future of TSLA...
In our opinion, TSLA is the birth of the first HaaS company at scale. What is hardware-as-a-service? It is the realization that thru efficient assembly, modern technology and massive amounts of software, the economics will make it more obvious for a consumer to subscribe to an asset, like a car, than own a car. Autopilot was the coup de grace for me on this HaaS line of thinking. With 100k’s of cars collecting millions of data points likely every hour(!), their software will become iteratively better, bordering on amazing, over time. At this point, it will be up to TSLA to simply decide that instead of selling a consumer a car, they can allow that consumer to subscribe to a car — or really, a massive fleet of cars.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk calls for carbon price to halve the transition time to clean energy
One of the world’s greatest innovators, Elon Musk, says the key to tackling climate change and driving clean energy innovation is a carbon price very similar to the one Australia abolished. Addressing students at the Sorbonne University on the sidelines of the Paris climate summit, the electric car, powerwall battery and space tycoon said he believed a phased-in carbon price would halve the time it took the world to transition to clean energy, something that would make a huge difference to dangerous climate change. The obvious solution to runaway global warming was to remove the effective subsidy of not pricing the damage done by carbon pollution, Musk said, urging the students to lobby governments to implement the policy.
Elon Musk Appears On Thanksgiving Big Bang Theory Episode
In case you are one of the few people who doesn’t watch the Big Bang Theory, in a recent Thanksgiving episode “The Platonic Permutation” last week, Howard runs into his idol – and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. In the episode Musk has a featured cameo, in which he is volunteering at a homeless shelter, helping out with Thanksgiving dinner.
Other News
Tesla Board Member Steve Jurveston Interview on Bloomberg
Bloomberg's Emily Chang sits down with venture capitalist, space investor and D-I-Y rocketeer Steve Jurvetson to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the firm Draper Fisher Jurveston on "Studio 1.0."
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