A few days after last Friday’s collision between an Autopilot-enabled Tesla Model S and a stopped fire department truck, police in South Jordan, Utah blew away the clouds of speculation by stating the Tesla driver was looking at her phone immediately prior to the collision. Witnesses claim the car, piloted by an on-board suite of semi-autonomous driving aids, didn’t brake as it approached the traffic signal (and the stopped truck).

Now we know the entirety of what occurred in the car in the minutes preceding the 60 mph impact. (Read More…)

Last Friday’s crash of a Model S in South Jordan, Utah will get the magnifying glass treatment from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency announced Wednesday it will send a team of investigators to probe why the vehicle — which the admittedly distracted driver said was in Autopilot mode at the time of impact — collided with a stopped fire truck at 60 mph.

It’s the second NHTSA investigation of an Autopilot-related collision this year. (Read More…)

China’s recently announced plan to scrap its 50 percent foreign ownership rule for auto assembly plants could be just the doorway into the market Tesla CEO Elon Musk was looking for. It appears he’s already capitalized on it.

The electric automaker registered an electric car firm in Shanghai on May 10th, Reuters reports, in the hopes of building vehicles where they’re sold, rather than shipping them across the Pacific at great cost. (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…)

On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told employees the company intends to “flatten” its structure. That translates into fewer management executives as the automaker hires as many line workers as possible. Neither should come as a shock to those paying attention. Tesla Motors has bled high-ranking executives for a while now, and the autonomous assembly system that was supposed to revolutionize production hasn’t appeared yet.

Flattening the company’s management structure may be less about cutting costs and more about having no one to fill empty seats. That said, Musk’s announcement placed an emphasis on improving the company’s finances — echoing statements made during an earlier conference call that created some public relations hiccups. So the restructuring plan could be Tesla performing double duty.

“To ensure that Tesla is well prepared for the future, we have been undertaking a thorough reorganization of our company,” Musk said in his memo to staff. (Read More…)

Replying to an over-enthusiastic superfan on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said orders will start this month for the dual-motor and performance variants of the Model 3 sedan. Currently, Tesla’s Fremont, California factory only cranks out the rear-drive, long range model.

Production of the higher-end models begins in July, Musk claimed, but the CEO failed to give reservation holders waiting for a base $35,000 sedan anything new to go on. (Read More…)

Tesla Motors is 15 years old and it is still not profitable. Hyperbolic stock values have encouraged investors to keep showering Elon Musk and his crew with billions of dollars to keep the EV company afloat and develop new products, but now the Bloomberg news agency says that Tesla’s cash burn is severe enough to make the company insolvent this year if they don’t raise new capital, something made more difficult by a recent 24% decline in that stock’s value.

Reporters Dana Hull and Hannah Recht did a deep dive into Teslas finances, both where their money has come from and where it’s been going. They came up with some interesting data. The company is going through cash at the rate of about $6,500 a minute, a bit more than $9 million a day. Free cash flow has been in the red for over a year. That’s how much money a firm generates after subtracting capital expenses. (Read More…)

What’s a good way of pissing off the very analysts you’re hoping to impress — or at least placate? Brush them off in the midst of an earnings call. Resorting to angsty teen language works well, too.

That’s what happened Wednesday during a call between Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Wall Street analysts, media, and one YouTuber. While the YouTuber — Gali Russell, shareholder and young host of a channel called HyperChange TV (who gained access to the call via a tweet) — ended up as Musk’s preferred interviewer, the analysts who asked questions described by Musk as “dry” and “boring” no doubt left the interaction in a state of shock. (Read More…)

Earlier this year, Elon Musk agreed to stay on as Tesla’s CEO for another 10 years. But he may not remain as the chairman of its board. This week, the automaker announced some of the proposals to be voted upon at this year’s annual stockholder’s meeting. Among them was a bid to have Musk replaced by an independent director.

After previous complaints that board members were too closely tied to Elon, the company took on Johnson Publishing Company CEO Linda Johnson Rice and 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch. However, at least one shareholder is claiming that isn’t sufficient and drafted a proposal to have Musk replaced as chairman — saying that his involvement with SolarCity and SpaceX conflict with his commitment to Tesla Motors.  (Read More…)

Depending on who you believe, Tesla is either the innocent victim of a shadowy, union-backed disinformation campaign peddled by so-called journalists, or a cynical, profit-chasing company willing to underplay injury statistics in a bid to keep its operation looking viable and progressive.

It’s not hard to fall into one of these two camps.

There’s a battle raging between the electric automaker and the journalists behind an explosive story published in Reveal, a publication of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. In it, Reveal claims workers at Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant face unsafe working conditions resulting from an all-hands-on-deck-style work culture. Workplace injuries are often categorized as personal medical issues, the report stated, and CEO Elon Musk’s dislike of the color yellow (a color used to mark workplace hazards) has created further risk to employees.

False, false, and false, Tesla claims. (Read More…)

Tesla has stopped production of the Model 3 again.

That’s the second time this year.

Production problems might not normally make such news – after all, Tesla is a small automaker that’s both attempting to grow and bring a new model, its first truly mass-market model, to production.

(Read More…)

Tesla Motors is months behind schedule. Despite promises that Model 3 production would be humming along by the end of last year, the automaker has found itself bogged down by all kinds of delays. In March, the company’s problems were exacerbated by a voluntarily recall on 123,000 Model S sedans and another high-profile crash involving its Autopilot system.

This has shaken investors’ previously unwavering faith in Tesla, and forced a significant dip in its overall share price. Last month, the company’s stock valuation took a hit that it’s just now starting to come back from. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk knows he cannot simply dazzle shareholders with new ideas and promises, and has been camping out at the factory in Fremont, California, to prove his resolve and engage in some on-sight troubleshooting.

While he has mentioned his office sleeping-bag before, we actually got to see it in a recent interview he had with CBS This Morning host Gayle King — along with the rest of the factory. Musk invited CBS to come and see the plant and discuss Tesla’s current status, providing a rare glimpse of the facility. Normally, the automaker is incredibly strict in terms of who it allows inside and no network television crew has ever been able to film the assembly process.  (Read More…)

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is currently investigating last month’s fatal crash involving Tesla’s Autopilot system, has removed the electric automaker from the case after it improperly disclosed details of the investigation.

Since nothing can ever be simple, Tesla Motors claims it left the investigation voluntarily. It also accused the NTSB of violating its own rules and placing an emphasis on getting headlines, rather than promoting safety and allowing the brand to provide information to the public. Tesla said it plans to make an official complaint to Congress on the matter.

The fallout came after the automaker disclosed what the NTSB considered to be investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by the investigative team. On March 30th, Tesla issued a release stating the driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning before the accident. It also outlined items it believed attributed to the brutality of the crash and appeared to attribute blame to the vehicle’s operator. The NTSB claims any release of incomplete information runs the risk of promoting speculation and incorrect assumptions about the probable cause of a crash, doing a “disservice to the investigative process and the traveling public.” (Read More…)

In June 2017, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told shareholders that the company’s upcoming Model Y crossover, built on its own dedicated platform, would appear in 2019. That plan soon changed, with Musk deciding (under pressure) that the new vehicle would share much of its architecture with the Model 3 sedan. The timeline remained hazy, as Tesla timelines are wont to do.

Now, sources close to the company’s supply chain say the Model Y is headed for a November 2019 production start — a timeline one of the sources describes as “aggressive, but possible.” (Read More…)

Tesla could soon find itself on the receiving end of a wrongful death lawsuit. The family of Walter Huang, the driver of a Tesla Model X that crashed into a concrete highway divider in Mountain View, California in March, has sought out the assistance of a law firm to “explore legal options.”

The crash occurred as the vehicle travelled along US-101 in Autopilot mode. Tesla released two statements following the fatal wreck, divulging that the driver had not touched the steering wheel in the six seconds prior to impact. While company claims the responsibility for the crash rests on the driver, law firm Minami Tamaki LLP faults Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system for the death. (Read More…)