Tag: Tesla Motors

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk does freewheeling Q&A

Elon Musk
CEO Elon Musk takes questions at Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting. (Tesla via Ustream)

Billionaire Elon Musk’s Q&A sessions are traditionally the most entertaining part of Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting, and this year’s appearance did not disappoint.

During today’s hourlong meeting at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., Musk fielded questions about what he does during his off time, and whether a nuclear fusion reactor would fit in the front trunk of Tesla’s Model S electric car.

But there was also serious substance to Musk’s talk. One of the biggest applause lines came when he discussed preparations for the unveiling of Tesla’s Semi electric-powered truck in September. He said a prototype of the truck already has been shown to organizations that buy heavy-duty trucks.

“They all love it,” he said. “They just want to know how many can they buy, and how soon. … We’re getting them closely involved in the design process.”

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Tesla starts taking orders for solar roofs

Tesla solar roof
Tesla’s demonstration house features solar glass roof tiles that can generate electricity. “That’s a real fake house,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk joked. (TED via YouTube)

Tesla has started taking orders for traditional-looking glass roof tiles that soak up solar power to generate electricity.

Installations are to start next month, beginning with California and gradually rolling out to other U.S. markets, Tesla said. Overseas markets will be added to the mix next year, said Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire CEO.

“I think it will be great,” Musk tweeted.

In a blog posting, Tesla said “the typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot” for the product it calls Solar Roof. That’s significantly more than the cost of a traditional asphalt roof, based on Consumer Reports’ estimates, but closer to competitive in price when the anticipated electric-bill savings are factored in.

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Elon Musk sets timetable for Tesla trucks

Tesla Semi concept
An artist’s conception provides a speculative view of what the Tesla Semi might look like. (Jan Peisert Illustration / Peisert Design)

Getting the Tesla Model 3 electric car on the road clearly isn’t enough to occupy Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX: Today he tweeted the time frame for unveiling Tesla’s autonomous, all-electric Semi truck and a smaller pickup truck.

But wait … there’s more: The Tesla Roadster, which was the first vehicle the company put on sale, is coming back. And this time, it’ll be a convertible.

Musk’s timetable for executing the next steps of his “Master Plan, Part Deux” spilled out in a series of tweets.

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Tesla briefly tops GM’s market value

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Tesla Model 3 candidates are being road-tested in preparation for production. (Credit: Tesla Motors)

For a time on April 10, Tesla edged out GM in market capitalization to become the most valuable U.S. automaker, even though Tesla is on track to lose almost a billion dollars this year while GM is expected to make a $9 billion profit.

The share prices for both car companies dipped today, putting GM ever so slightly back in the lead with a market cap of just less than $51 billion. What’s more, U.S. automakers still fall short of foreign companies such as Toyota and VW. Nevertheless, the rapid rise in Tesla’s share price left some observers predicting a sea change in the auto industry – while others were left just shaking their heads.

“Clearly General Motors is undervalued and Tesla is overvalued,” AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson was quoted as saying at a forum setting the stage for this week’s New York Auto Show. He said Tesla was “either one of the great Ponzi schemes of all time or it’s gonna work out.”

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Elon Musk teases Tesla Model 3 electric car

Tesla Model 3
A release candidate version of the Tesla Model 3 hits the streets. (Elon Musk via Twitter)

Tesla’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, is showing off a video of the company’s more affordable Model 3 electric car – but he’s also touting Tesla’s pricier models.

A clip that shows a black release candidate version of the Model 3 zipping down the street popped up this morning on Musk’s Twitter and Instagram feeds, and quickly picked up tens of thousands of views, plus thousands of shares.

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Tesla says it’s on track to make Model 3 cars

Tesla Model 3
Tesla says its Model 3 electric car is on track to go into initial production in July. (Tesla Photo)

Tesla says it’s “on track” to start producing its mass-market Model 3 electric vehicles in July, and plans to build 5,000 of the cars per week by the end of the year.

The company, which reported financial results for 2016’s fourth quarter and the full year today, also said it’ll pick locations for as many as three more Gigafactories this year. Tesla’s first Gigafactory, in Nevada, is already turning out power cells for the company’s energy storage system, while its second factory is building solar panels in New York.

“We start 2017 well positioned to scale our business significantly,” Tesla said in its typically upbeat quarterly letter to shareholders.

Investors reacted positively, turning Tesla’s price trend from a minus to a plus in after-hours trading.

Quarterly revenue exceeded Thomson Reuters’ expectations, reaching $2.28 billion rather than the predicted $2.19 billion. Tesla’s loss per share amounted to 69 cents, which was more than Thomson Reuters’ forecast of 42 cents but less than Bloomberg News’ advance estimate of $1.14.

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Tesla and SpaceX back immigration battle

Musk, Weeks and Trump
Elon Musk (left), the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, listens to President Donald Trump during a White House meeting. Corning CEO Wendell Weeks sits in the middle. (White House via YouTube)

If you can join them, you can try beating them, too. Today SpaceX and Tesla signed on to the legal fight against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, even though the companies’ billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, is a member of Trump’s business advisory council.

SpaceX and Tesla are among 31 additional tech companies joining a friend-of-the-court brief that was filed by nearly 100 companies overnight.

The brief supports a challenge to Trump’s executive order on immigration – a challenge that’s being led by Washington state. The challengers won an initial victory on Feb. 3 when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to force a suspension of the president’s immigration ban.

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Tesla-SolarCity merger takes effect

Elon Musk
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the SolarCity merger will lead to increased synergies. (Tesla via YouTube)

The $2 billion Tesla-SolarCity merger went into effect today, just four days after Tesla Motors’ shareholders gave their approval.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla said SolarCity is now its wholly owned subsidiary. The all-stock deal converted each SolarCity share into 0.11 Tesla shares, and SolarCity is no longer listed in the NASDAQ market quotes.

For what it’s worth, the final trading price for SolarCity shares was $20.34 as of Nov. 18. At the end of today’s trading, Tesla shares were down 50 cents for the day at $184.52.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the merger would create synergies between Tesla’s lines of business, which market electric cars and electricity storage systems, and SolarCity’s line of electricity-generating solar panels.

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Shareholders OK Tesla-SolarCity merger

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Elon Musk unveils Tesla’s Powerwall 2 battery and SolarCity’s roof panels in Los Angeles in October. (Tesla via YouTube)

Tesla’s shareholders overwhelmingly approved a merger with SolarCity today, opening the way for consummating the marriage of the electric-car company and the solar-panel venture within days.

The vote was more than 85 percent in favor, excluding the shares held by billionaire Elon Musk and other executives affiliated with the companies, Tesla said in a statement. Musk is the CEO of Tesla as well as the chairman of SolarCity.

Musk and other executives talked up the deal in advance of the vote, saying that it would take advantage of the synergies offered by each company. In addition to manufacturing electric-powered vehicles, Tesla is ramping up production of its Powerwall storage batteries. Meanwhile, SolarCity has become America’s top solar-panel installation company.

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Elon Musk holds forth on the election and more

Image: Elon Musk
Elon Musk is the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. (Credit: AGU file)

Today Elon Musk laid out his views on electricity-generating solar roofs, the Tesla-SolarCity merger, SpaceX’s return to flight and artificial intelligence during an extraordinary 30-minute telephone interview on CNBC.

His timeliest comments may relate to next week’s presidential election: Musk gave a lukewarm endorsement to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

“I would say it’s not going to make much of a difference one way or the other, honestly,” he said. “I think Hillary’s economic policies and her environmental policies particularly are the right ones, you know? Yeah. Also, I don’t think this is the finest moment of our democracy in general. But so it goes.”

So what about GOP candidate Donald Trump? “I feel a bit stronger that probably he’s not the right guy,” Musk said. “He just doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”

Musk – who’s the billionaire CEO of the SpaceX rocket venture and the Tesla electric-car concern as well as chairman of SolarCity, a producer of solar panels – touched on a wide range of topics, with occasional commentary from one of Tesla’s biggest investors, billionaire Ron Baron.

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