Hoping to simplify vehicle assembly, Tesla tweaked its online car configurator over the weekend, culling numerous options from both the Model S and X. This translates into a price bump for more-basic models and a few dollars saved on the higher trims, but less choice overall. The Model S ($78,000) and X 75D ($84,000) now cost a grand more and offer improved interiors, but the 100D units cost $500 less than before. Meanwhile, all trims play host to a slimmer options list.

It was an expected move, as the brand has previously limited options to grease the wheels of production. Elon Musk said the company would embrace further streamlining to “simplify the product offerings” last month, but it’s a little surprising how far the company went.  (Read More…)

Tesla’s latest over-the-air update appears to have caused at least a few drivers to lose all Autopilot functionality. While the vehicles seem otherwise intact, the semi-autonomous driving mode that was supposed to be improved by the latest firmware installation ended up a little buggy. That’s unfortunate for Tesla — a company that could do without additional bad publicity.

Luckily, minor software issues are exactly that — minor. This isn’t on the same scale as Tesla’s CEO promising to go public or pretending to smoke weed online. It isn’t even as big of a deal as the company losing another high-ranking executive, which also happened this week.  (Read More…)

Tesla’s Elon Musk announced Tuesday that the automaker will limit its paint options to simplify production and, hopefully, improve volume. “Moving [two] of [seven] Tesla colors off menu on Wednesday to simplify manufacturing,” said the CEO via social media. “Obsidian Black and Metallic Silver will still be available as special request, but at higher price.”

The announcement comes after a busy press week for Tesla. Musk lost his chief accounting officer after a comically brief tenure and was lambasted for smoking marijuana on Joe Rogan’s podcast. However, the real crime was how much of it Elon wasted by puffing on the monster wrap in an attempt to appease the host, without ever inhaling any smoke. That’s no way to get high.  (Read More…)

Complain about Tesla Motors’ hype machine all you like; it’s still an innovative company. Unfortunately, it has painted itself into a bit of a corner as a result. Still lacking the production might of its much larger competitors, it continues to brand itself as an upstart as it works on improving volume. That means its CEO, Elon Musk, has to continue coming up with new ideas and gimmicks to keep the public impressed.

This week, he came up with a special vehicle mode that would improve the vehicle’s usability while parked. But we can’t exactly tell if it’s a good idea or a bunch of meaningless fluff. Dubbed by Musk as “party & camper mode,” the setting would allow drivers to maintain in-car airflow, regulate the temperature, play music, charge devices, and have access to lighting for up to 48 hours.

There’s no timeline for the feature, but it would likely be done through via over-the-air updates, meaning it could be applied to every Tesla vehicle currently on the road.  (Read More…)

Tesla Motors announced Thursday that it officially reached 200,000 deliveries this month, which is good news in terms of overall sales. But the figure also means the company has surpassed the threshold requiring that federal tax credits be phased out, which is bad news.

Some speculate that, without government incentives, fewer people will be willing to buy Tesla-branded vehicles. While that’s a possibility, the brand offers unique, trendy models not readily available elsewhere. We’d presume a discount on an iPhone would probably help sales as well, but affordability it isn’t the main reason people purchase them.

We’ll see what kind of impact it has on the automaker as the $7,500 federal electric vehicle tax credit for new owners is gradually phased out. It will also be telling for the electric vehicle market as a whole, as Tesla is the first EV producer to reach the limit.  (Read More…)

Never let a crisis go to waste, goes the saying. In this case, it’s an actress and her husband facing a car shortage and a rival automaker sensing an opportunity for a juicy dig.

Mary McCormack, who appeared on the endlessly referenced political drama The West Wing, tweeted a video of a Model S in flames Friday, claiming the blaze broke out “out of the blue” as her husband’s Tesla cruised through traffic in West Hollywood. She directed her tweet at Tesla.

General Motors has since capitalized on the unsolved blaze, offering McCormack and her husband, identified as director Michael Norris, a new Chevy Bolt. (Read More…)

The collision earlier this month between a Tesla Model S and a stopped fire truck in Utah didn’t result in serious injuries, but questions remain as to why the vehicle, piloted by a suite of driving aids, didn’t recognize the approaching danger.

Witnesses claim the vehicle didn’t brake in the moments leading up to the impact. The driver, admittedly distracted by her phone (for a period of 80 seconds), only reacted less than a second before impact, police said. Now, thanks to a South Jordan Police Department report obtained by The Associated Press (via The Detroit News), we know a little more about what happened in those last moments. (Read More…)

When is an accident not just an accident? When it involves a Tesla, according to Elon Musk. The electric automaker’s CEO took to Twitter to lambaste the media Monday night for reporting on the high-speed collision between a Tesla Model S and a stopped fire truck in Utah last Friday.

It’s true, a collision resulting in minor injuries usually only warrants a brief mention in local media, if that. However, context is key. When it’s revealed that Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system was activated at the time of the collision, sorry, that’s news. (Read More…)

If you’re wondering how many times this website has complained about people mishandling semi-autonomous driving systems, we’ve completely lost count. However, if you want further evidence that we are justified in constantly wringing our hands over the matter, you’re in luck.

On April 20th, Bhavesh Patel plead guilty to “dangerous driving” at St. Albans Crown Court in the United Kingdom. The term driving is a bit of a misnomer, though. Because Patel was actually sitting in the passenger seat of his Tesla Model S 60, while his vehicle traveled down the motorway driver free. The incident, which took place in May of last year, was caught by a fellow commuter and subsequently reported to authorities. Obviously, we had to find footage of the unbridled stupidity.  (Read More…)

Stately. Elegant. Dignified. Endangered?

This isn’t the first time someone has applied that final descriptor to flagship passenger cars, and with good reason. As SUVs gobble into traditional passenger car market share, sales of even the most prestigious sedans have taken a hit — leaving premium automakers wondering “what’s next?”

Well, more SUVs, for one, but also more electrification. Luxury car buyers have shown themselves to be more receptive to plug-in hybrid or fully electric vehicles, but more importantly, one pesky American automaker — Tesla — is threatening to eat everyone’s lunch.

In Europe, competition between the Old World and Silicon Valley is heating up, and the newcomer is winning the sales race. (Read More…)

Palo Alto, we have a problem.

That’s essentially the message one Tesla owner had for the automaker, and one I couldn’t stop thinking about during yesterday’s excitement.

You see, on Tuesday, in a feat of technological prowess and bravado, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shot his personal Tesla Roadster into deep space by mounting it atop the final stage of the Falcon Heavy rocket — the latest and certainly greatest space vehicle constructed by Musk’s very own SpaceX.

After becoming the fourth car in space (GM built the first three for NASA’s Apollo program), and the first factory production car to leave Earth’s atmosphere, that Roadster and its dummy astronaut driver are now headed for a point beyond Mars, near the solar system’s asteroid belt. The plan is for the car to orbit the Red Planet, or maybe crash into it, who knows.

Mars is, on average, about 140 million miles from Earth.

However, Kingston, Ontario is a scant 215 miles from Cambridge, Ontario. That’s the distance one Tesla driver was attempted to span when the trip, as Margaret Thatcher would say, went pear-shaped. (Read More…)

A quartet of suspected baddies were arrested on Friday after being caught with four vehicles believed to be stolen from a Tesla dealership in Salt Lake City. While an automotive theft ring isn’t anything special, the way in which this particular incident unfolded is beyond strange.

According to South Salt Lake police detective Gary Keller, the incident began around 1 a.m. when a Highway Patrol trooper conducting a traffic stop near the dealership noticed a sparkly new Tesla vehicle stop behind his squad car. Smelling something fishy, the patrol trooper assumed the driver wasn’t the owner of the car and called for local backup as he conducted another stop.

Keller said the man had a bag of keys on his person and told police he had come to return the vehicle to the dealership. “I don’t know if he had a guilt complex or whatever, but he claimed his name was Tesla and once [police] started talking to him, he didn’t want to talk to police; he wanted an attorney,” Keller explained. (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.

(Read More…)

Since 2011, National Drive Electric Week has taken place in venues across the United States, some Canadian locations, and at select international venues. This year, it runs from Saturday, September 9th through Sunday, September 17th.

There are 262 event locations for 2017, so there’s probably an event not far away, assuming you’re electrically inclined.

(Read More…)

You can forget the GM EV1 and the Toyota RAV4 EV. The car that truly attempted to bring electric cars into the mainstream was the 2011 Nissan Leaf.

It didn’t. U.S. Leaf sales, never reaching any great heights, plunged after its fourth full model year, falling by more than half between 2014 and 2016.

There’s a thoroughly updated second-gen Nissan Leaf on its way, destined to hit U.S. dealers early in 2018. But during the first-gen Leaf’s tenure, the Nissan was joined by a broad array of electric cars, from a handful of Teslas to the Chevrolet Bolt, Volkswagen e-Golf, Kia Soul EV, BMW i3, and Hyundai Ioniq, and all of these cars together have combined to quintuple U.S. electric vehicle market share over the last half-decade.

Only 0.1 percent of the new vehicles sold in America in 2012 were pure EVs. That figure has risen, very slowly, to 0.5 percent through the first eight months of 2017 while the number of available nameplates has more than doubled.

Perspective? Ford grew its F-Series’ share of the overall U.S. new vehicle market from 4.5 percent to 5.1 percent during the same period. (Read More…)