Tesla Motors has announced that its CEO, Elon Musk, won’t be paid unless its already high stock valuation blasts into the stratosphere. The executive’s compensation is now tied to a dozen operational milestones. The first of these requires bringing the company’s current market cap to $100 billion, followed by 11 more set at $50 billion increments.

Agreeing to the program, Musk now has to stay with Tesla until 2028 as both its executive chair and product officer. While this does allow him to bring in another CEO sometime in the future, the company is likely hoping to dispel any speculation that he would abandon the position. It’s good to see Musk putting some serious skin into the game but, as a multi-billionaire, his not being paid unless Tesla’s stock valuation climbs isn’t the biggest threat to his financial security.  Read More >

The number of people willing to plunk down a $1,000 deposit for a Tesla Model 3 currently stands at about 455,000. In the third quarter of 2017, Tesla delivered 220 units of its smallest and most affordable electric car. Last quarter, some 1,550 buyers took ownership.

If it looks like it’s shaping up to be a long wait for the newest reservation holders, you’re right. Tesla claims it has succeeded in working out some of the issues hampering production at its Fremont, California assembly plant, but the pushed-back ramp-up of Model 3 production means some reservation holders won’t see their new car this decade. Meanwhile, you can not only walk into a General Motors dealer and order a Chevrolet Bolt today, but you can expect delivery well before the 2020 election campaign gets into full swing.

Is GM planning to exploit its competitor’s production woes? Not us, the automaker claims. Read More >

To hear Tesla explain it, the fourth quarter of 2017 was a boffo month for the company, with record deliveries and a new product that’s really hitting its stride.

It’s true that 1,550 customers took delivery of a Model 3 in the past three months, after the previous quarter saw just 220 of the lower-priced electric sedans roll into driveways. Overall deliveries rose 9 percent from Q3, for a tally of 29,870 vehicles. It sounds good, but the company, like before, still isn’t making enough Model 3s.

As it continues working through supply and assembly line issues, Tesla has pushed back its goal for 5,000-vehicle-a-week Model 3 production for the second time. Read More >

While The Truth About Cars has occasionally been accused for having it in for Tesla, the honest-to-god-truth is that we just possess a severe aversion to unbridled hype. Autonomous cars have made a lot of progress in the last few years, but there’s something about the way manufacturers talk about them that makes us want to say, “Interesting, but we’ll believe it when we see it.”

Automakers love making grandiose claims and Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk may be the prince of hyperbolic statements and lofty promises. He should be commended for delivering on many of them. Still, though there have been many occasions where the other shoe dropped and it was our job to report it. We’re having to do that again, now that Tesla has missed its initial deadline to dazzle the world with an autonomous cross-country road trip.  Read More >

It’s sometimes hard keeping up with the specific engineering feats Tesla actually plans to pull off and the forward-thinking visions uttered just to keep the tech press salivating (and its readers buying up shares). Is CEO Elon Musk actually sending a tunnel with an elevator in it to Jupiter? Wait a minute — it’s possible that promise fell victim to the purple-monkey-dishwasher chain of distortion before it reached this author’s ears.

One thing we’re more or less assured of now, following Musk’s stint at the Twitter pulpit Tuesday, is that Tesla will build an electric pickup truck. Yes, just as soon as the compact Model Y’s out the door. This means Tesla fan club members and curious buyers will have to wait until after the Model Y crossover finishes development and finds a place in which it can be built — not an overnight process by any means.

What we’re left with is a pickup that’s a blank slate in terms of size and design. Grab your pencils. Read More >

Tesla Motors or, more accurately, company CEO Elon Musk has hinted at the prospect of an electric pickup for quite some time. But neither the automaker nor the CEO ever issued any kind of concrete guarantee on it, even after other manufacturers had already beaten it to the punch.

However, Musk is now officially promising the pickup will be made immediately after the Model Y crossover arrives sometime between 2019 and 2020. Of course, he also promised that Model 3 deliveries would hit its stride before the end of this year. So let’s consider this more of an assurance that Tesla will produce the electric truck and not so much an indication of when you might see one on public roads.  Read More >

The United Parcel Service said Tuesday it will purchase 125 all-electric semi trucks from Tesla, surpassing PepsiCo’s order to make it the largest known order for the vehicle thus far. While the purchase isn’t tantamount to UPS making a complete shift to an electric fleet, the company has previously stated it wants to convert up to 1,500 delivery trucks in New York to battery electric units and has been researching non-traditional powertrains for some time.

With so many of its trips taking place between distribution hubs, a medium-range EV truck boasting a high capacity could be a good fit for UPS. At the very least, Tesla seems to think so — the delivery service provided the automaker with extensive data on how its trucks function on real-world routes in order to evaluate how the hulking BEVs might perform in its fleet. Of course, the cooperative experience also helps both companies promote themselves as leaders in the green revolution.  Read More >

I didn’t learn about the “California No” until I started writing about cars. I was raised on the East Coast, where people have no trouble saying “No” whatsoever. There’s even a song about it. In Ohio, people might be apologetic about it but they will still forthrightly tell you, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to buy from you,” or “I don’t want to meet with you about that.”

That’s not how California works. The so-called “California No” is simply a drawn-out pas de deux in which someone avoids responding directly to your question because they are unwilling to directly refuse or reject you. Supposedly, the California No and the Asian No are related. I couldn’t say. All I can tell you is that I have zero patience for the California No, particularly when it comes from people working in the automotive PR or journalism “spaces,” and I will make attempts to California-No me as uncomfortable as humanly possible, without exception.

To this fine Golden State institution, you can now add the related “California Prohibit,” which is best exemplified by Tesla’s new directive regarding “commercial” use of its Supercharger facilities.

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American investment manager and short-seller extraordinaire Jim Chanos claims Tesla is “headed for a brick wall.” Having deemed the automaker as structurally unprofitable, Chanos said, “Three years ago, this company was supposed to be making money [today]. And now, it’s supposed to be making money by 2020. I’m guessing by 2019, we’ll hear about 2025.”

However, while Tesla has taken on massive amounts of debt to ensure its evolution as company, investors haven’t seemed to mind. Its stock price has climbed from $33 a share in 2013 to almost $380 in September of 2017. As a short-seller, Chanos says he’s lost money on the company in the past since the stock price never seems to go down, and that’s what he finds the most alarming.

“Nobody is buying Tesla stock based upon the current business,” he said. “It’s all based on the future and the hope for half-a-million to a million Model 3s per year.” Read More >

PepsiCo nearly doubled the number of new electric big rigs Tesla will have to manufacture after reserving 100 units. Adding to the list of orders by more than a dozen companies, including other massive companies like Wal-Mart and Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi is helping Tesla make a case for EVs with a fixation on freight.

Last year, the food brand stated it wanted to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2030. With a fleet of over 10,000 units, semi trucks might be a good place to seek improvements. Granted, depending upon how it’s generated, pulling energy from the grid isn’t a perfect solution. But, at that point, it’s someone else’s problem.  Read More >

When you’re selling the self-professed “King of Beers,” you’re going to want to transport them in a style befitting of royalty. Either that, or you’re interested in keeping your shipping costs to a minimum and have the capital necessary to invest in new technologies like an electric semi.

Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser and over a dozen other beer brands, has decided to purchase 40 of Tesla’s battery-electric trucks. The company said it made the move in hopes of reducing fuel costs and cutting vehicle emissions. We’d also gamble that the adult beverage purveyor is interested in the vehicle’s claimed autonomous driving capabilities. Read More >

Unless you were living under a rock or on the moon late last week, you know Tesla introduced not one but two concepts on Thursday night — a Class 8 semi truck and a kinda-sorta-maybe Roadster (is it a roadster or a targa? It’ll only cost you a quarter mil to find out).

Since then, many corners of the internet have been yammering about the feasibility of Tesla’s plans, not to mention the wisdom of taking eyes off the very important ball that is the Model 3 in favor of two models that likely won’t appear until the next decade.

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Even though a next-generation Tesla Roadster unexpectedly rolled out of the back of one, it was still beyond weird to see the world’s automotive press converging on a California warehouse for the reveal of a big rig on Thursday night. But this is the scene we’ve grown accustomed to when something occurs in the Tesla universe.

The delayed reveal of the automaker’s electric semi truck, which surely has the Tesla fan base downloading C.W. McCall’s Convoy on Spotify this morning, is a proposition to trucking companies. Buy this Class 8 transport and save. Read More >

The Roadster’s back. Tell a friend.

Not that you’ll need to, of course. Elon Musk and Company seemingly pulled off the impossible last night in California, blowing up the internets by upstaging Tesla’s own semi truck reveal with a carefully choreographed “one more thing” moment. Read More >

Unbothered by the constraints of space and time, Elon Musk took to Twitter yesterday, breathlessly announcing a press conference for Thursday. Is the call’s topic set to address Model 3 production troubles? Or, perhaps, provide some insight into the supply chain woes at the Gigafactory? No, dear reader, nothing so mundane.

It’s to announce the Tesla semi truck, which is surely the most urgent topic and best use of resources at Tesla these days.

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