Inquisitir Online News – I wish I had more to offer

Tesla Has Just Launched Their Model 3 Sedan For Only $35,000 And You Can Buy It Online Now

While Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been working hard since 2016 to push out the company’s Model 3 sedan at a super low mass market price tag, after suggesting just last month that this car would finally be here before 2019 was through, Tesla made the surprise announcement on Thursday that the Standard Range Model of this vehicle was finally being sold online for just $35,000, which is of course before the savings start to kick in.

As The Daily Mail reports, potential buyers of the Model 3 are able to rent it and test it out for themselves, driving the car for either 1,000 miles or seven days. Tesla’s Standard Range Model has a top speed of 130 MPH and boasts a range of 230 miles, with acceleration reaching 60 MPH in 5.6 seconds.

Tesla reportedly stopped processing orders on their website last week, writing cryptically that “great things are launching,” which was followed by Elon Musk announcing that he had “some Tesla news” that he would be sharing later on Thursday.

However, instead of making a huge public announcement, the company quietly began selling their Model 3 once again, this time adding one that was listed for a mere $35,000. Rather excitingly, for those who purchase this vehicle with the standard interior, the cost will only come to $24,950 once savings come into play.

Tesla is also selling their Model 3 Standard Range Plus which runs for up to 240 miles, contains “most premium features,” and retails for $37,000. But despite these low prices, the company made it startlingly clear that these models still hold a perfect 5-star rating by the U.S. government.

“Although lower in cost, it is built to achieve the same perfect 5-star safety rating as the longer-ranged version, which has the lowest probability of injury of any car ever tested by the U.S. Government.”

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To keep costs down and to also make it easier for customers to purchase its vehicles, Tesla has announced that a large number of their stores in the United States will be shut down to make way for all orders to be taken online instead. By doing this, the company has said that they will be able to greatly reduce the costs of their cars, including the $35,000 Model 3 now on offer.

As a recent press release has stated, “Shifting all sales online, combined with other ongoing cost efficiencies, will enable us to lower all vehicle prices by about 6% on average, allowing us to achieve the $35,000 Model 3 price point earlier than we expected. Over the next few months, we will be winding down many of our stores, with a small number of stores in high-traffic locations remaining as galleries, showcases and Tesla information centers.”

Besides the announcement of their new Model 3 sale price, Tesla is also ramping up their service system in a very big way and will soon be offering services not only on the same day, but very possibly even within the same hour that it is needed, and have said that in most cases technicians will be able to come to the customer instead of the reverse.

Tesla Will Bring Robotaxis To U.S. Streets ‘Next Year’

Tesla Inc. founder Elon Musk predicts that robotaxis, or autonomous driverless cars, will be available on U.S. streets next year.

Musk, who admitted he can be overly optimistic about some of his predictions, said at an Autonomy Investor Day on Monday that he was confident that Tesla would have over 1 million robotaxis on the road next year, CNBC reported.

“I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year,” the tech guru said.

He added that the vehicles would not be “in all jurisdictions, because we won’t have regulatory approval everywhere, but I am confident we will have at least regulatory approval somewhere, literally next year.”

Musk went on to say that part of the reason he is so optimistic about robotaxis being on the streets so soon is because Tesla cars already on the streets are built with the hardware needed for self-driving cars, so improving the software is all the company would need to do to make the driverless cars happen.

The company currently offers Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features in its cars, which seem to indicate the company is on the cusp of making the driverless car a reality. According to the Tesla website, the features have many amazing abilities, including keeping a car within a lane, automatically changing lanes without driver input, self-parking when near a parking spot, and braking automatically.

In addition to robotaxis on the street, Musk also predicted that his company would be making cars without steering wheels or pedals in two years, Reuters reported.

Getting those vehicles on the streets won’t be easy, however. As Reuters noted, the technology involved with driverless vehicles faces many federal and local regulatory hurdles.

But the notion of working through bureaucratic red tape does not seem to bother Musk. He promoted the latest Tesla at the event, claiming his cars were the wave of the future.

“The fundamental message consumers should be taking away today is it’s financially insane to buy something other than a Tesla. It’s like buying a horse.”

Safety concerns are another issue. CNBC reported that at least three fatal accidents have occurred in the U.S. involving Tesla cars while the Autopilot feature was engaged.

In a statement on its website, Tesla said the Autopilot program does not prevent all accidents, but it makes them much less likely to happen. The company also said that the feature “unequivocally” makes the streets safer for everyone on them.

Tesla Accusing Ex-Employee Of Selling Self-Driving Technology To Chinese Rival

Tesla has been renowned as a pioneer in its field, creating incredible, more environmentally friendly cars that run without petroleum gas and working on technology that will one day mean cars will be able to completely drive themselves.

That technology has been improving drastically under the Tesla banner, but the brand has recently had some trouble with Chinese rival Xiaopeng Motors. The California-based company has accused a former employee, engineer Guangzhi Cao, of stealing their self-driving tech, the Autopilot source code, and selling it to the Chinese startup, according to a report by CNN.

The legal complaint filed by Tesla states that “Cao uploaded complete copies of the company’s self-driving source code to his personal Apple iCloud account.”

It is believed that he took a total of “300,000 files and directories” during his time working with Tesla.

But the lawsuit then explains that after Cao was given a job at Xiaopeng Motors, he suddenly deleted 120,000 of those files and even disconnected his Apple account from his work computer. He then proceeded to repeatedly log into his Tesla account and delete his browser history.

In the meantime, Xiaopeng Motors has denied any knowledge of such underhanded business regarding Cao, but state that it has launched an internal investigation within the company to determine if Tesla’s accusation is true.

“XMotors fully respects any third-party’s intellectual property rights and confidential information. The company has been complying and will comply [with] all applicable laws and regulations,” they said in a statement, according to a recent Reuters report.

Tesla’s claim goes back to January, shortly before Cao left Tesla for Xiaopeng officially.

Cao is one of four former employees who Tesla is going after in cases of intellectual property theft, according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday. U.S. self-driving car startup Zoox Inc. is also part of the lawsuit for stealing “proprietary information and trade secrets for developing warehousing, logistics and inventory control operations.”

Tesla has been working on self-driving technology for a while now and has been testing it on the road already. But competition, particularly of the variety that could be promising the same product for a much lower price, could cause a serious problem for them in the long run.

As Reuters points out, Tesla has also started construction on a production factory in Shanghai, putting it in direct competition if the Xiaopeng Motors company has, in fact, gotten ahold of its coding technology.

Tesla Launches ‘Dog Mode’ To Keep Your Furry Friend Safe In The Car

Despite thousands of warnings that repeatedly make the rounds year after year, for some reason, people still insist upon leaving their pets inside of cars in parking lots. In summer, this is particularly dangerous, with soaring temperatures putting the dogs’ lives in danger. Even in cooler weather, dogs can easily succumb to heat stroke.

Tesla has finally come up with a solution for irresponsible pet owners that could help save their fur-babies. The car company has announced the launch of a “Dog Mode” in some of their cars, which will monitor pets in the vehicle and let people know that they’re all right, according to Bloomberg.

The special mode was released on Wednesday for Model 3 cars, and will allow owners to “set the cabin temperature and display a message on the sedan’s screen signaling that the canine’s owner will be back soon.”

Apparently Tesla users have been asking owner Elon Musk to add this quirky feature over Twitter, to add to some other strange features that have been introduced to the car. Musk first announced that he would be working on this special feature in October, 2018, and started dropping hints early this week that its release was imminent.

The hope is that the feature will give pets a more comfortable environment inside the parked car in terms of temperature, while also letting concerned passersby know that the pooch is safe and well. The reason for that is the existence of “hot car” laws in 29 states that allow strangers and authorities to break car windows to save a dog’s life.

“This is in addition to existing Cabin Overheat Protection, which come on automatically at high temps to ensure any babies or pets in the car are safe,” Musk explained in a tweet following the release.

While the feature has been released slowly this week, Musk is hoping that he’ll be able to start rolling it out to everyone in the next week or two. The purpose of the trickle release is to make sure any bugs are worked out of the system before everyone has access to it.

“Dog Mode” can be found under the car’s climate control settings. The setting still allows owners to decide exactly what temperature to set the car at, but within preset limits that have been determined to be safe for dogs.

Tesla has still warned that owners should make sure they are familiar with their state’s laws regarding leaving pets in parked cars before relying solely on this new feature.

Tesla Owners Unimpressed With Car’s Winter Performance

The door handles are proving problematic, as are the batteries.

Electric car owners learned the hard way during the recent polar vortex that their batteries cannot hang onto a charge when temperatures dip that low. Tesla owners, in particular, discovered that they cannot open their doors very well after a winter storm either.

Tesla’s Model 3 owners are filling social media and online forums with complaints about their vehicles not performing well during the extreme cold the polar vortex brought with it. While cold temperatures will more quickly drain a battery in general, Tesla vehicles aren’t doing well.

“My biggest concern is the cold weather drained my battery 20 to 25 miles overnight and an extra five to ten miles on my drive to work. I paid $60,000 to not drain my battery so quickly,” New Jersey resident Ronak Patel told Bloomberg.

Patel owns a Model 3 and wasn’t happy with its performance. Salim Morsy explained that it’s Panasonic’s batteries manufactured for Tesla and not Tesla, said the Bloomberg new energy finance analyst.

“It happens to Chevy with the Bolt and Nissan with the Leaf,” he said.

The door design for Tesla’s Model 3 is futuristic and cool – when it isn’t wintertime. The handles are flush with the exterior of the car. In order to open the door, the driver or passenger pushes on one side of the handle, then pulls on the other side to open it.

But wintertime’s abundance of ice, particular what came during the polar vortex, has made it incredibly difficult to open those types of doors. Software engineer Andrea Falcone tweeted a photo of her frozen door handle and was less than impressed.

“I can’t wait all day for this silly car,” she tweeted.

Others argued that it’s winter and things freeze, deal with it. Bloomberg shared that Canadians are suggesting car owners place dental adhesive film over their door handles to help prevent them from freezing.

In response to the weather-induced issues, Tesla owner Elon Musk tweeted that the company would release software updates to improve the car’s winter weather performance after it had learned of motorists’ concerns.

But according to Top Speed, the “fix” that was released to solve freezing windows, door handles, and charge ports actually caused further problems.

Even after warming up their vehicles for 10 to 15 minutes, car owners still couldn’t open their doors or lower the windows. Fred Lambert, editor-in-chief for Electrek, tested the new fixes issued by the company and learned that the patch just wasn’t working.

It was 12 degrees Fahrenheit and he warmed up his Model 3 for 20 minutes.

“My driver’s window did go down when pulling on the door handle, but it didn’t go up after closing the door. It looks like Tesla is not allowing the window to go completely up anymore in order to enable people to safely open the doors in cold weather,” he told Top Speed.

Winter isn’t done yet, so hopefully Tesla fixes these issues very soon.

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster Is Still Boldly Traveling Through Space Exactly One Year After SpaceX Launch

The Starman inside Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is now 226,423,581 miles away from Earth and has listened to David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' approximately 99,000 times since it first began its journey one year ago today.

One year ago today on February 6, 2018, Elon Musk and SpaceX successfully launched their Falcon Heavy rocket and propelled a Tesla Roadster and its sole occupant, the daring mannequin affectionately known as the Spaceman, into space where the duo has remained to this day on their wild orbit around the sun.

As Space reports, the Tesla Roadster is currently traveling along an elliptical path that will take the electric car far beyond Mars, just as distant as it can get from the sun, while also bringing it along the closest solar approach when it drifts near the orbit of Earth.

Last year at the start of November, the Tesla Roadster pushed well beyond the orbit of Mars and according to Ben Pearson, who very cleverly built the Where Is Roadster website, both Spaceman and the Roadster are right now 163,525,522 miles (263,168,899 km) away from Mars and 226,423,581 miles (364,393,544 km) away from us here on Earth.

Assuming any repairs needed to be conducted on Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, the Starman would be well out of luck as the electric car has officially gone over its 36,000-mile warranty not just one time, but a stunning 13,000 times over the past year.

And if the Roadster’s battery is still functioning today, this would mean that the Starman has so far listened to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” a total of at least 99,000 times since it first began its journey one year ago today.

According to the Where Is Roadster website, Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster should stay rooted where it is in space for quite some time now as its period of orbit has been estimated to be approximately 557 days.

The Roadster should also eventually be making several very large laps around the sun before it and the Starman reach the conclusion of their daring journey.

After conducting orbit-modeling studies, scientists have explained that the Tesla Roadster will eventually smash into either Earth or Venus, finally ending its adventures on one of these planets. However, this won’t be occurring for a long time as scientists estimate that this will take tens of millions of years to occur.

However, there is still a small, six percent chance that the Roadster will crash into Earth within just 1 million years, with a slightly lower and 2.5 percent risk that it may also careen into Venus during this same time frame.

While Elon Musk has previously stated that the Tesla Roadster was launched into space for fun, the Falcon Heavy which launched it will be making another trip very soon on its March 7 flight which will see the SpaceX rocket launch the Arabsat 6A communications satellite into orbit.

Azealia Banks Warns She Has ‘Plenty More Dirt To Spill’ On Elon Musk

The rapper lashed out at Musk after his legal team accused her of 'making bold and sometimes unverified claims.'

Azealia Banks is not happy about a recent court filing from Elon Musk’s lawyers that paints the rap star as an unstable liar. The Guardian reports that Musk is currently embroiled in a shareholder lawsuit, that claims Twitter comments on taking automotive company Tesla private constituted market manipulation, costing the plaintiffs hundreds of millions of dollars. They were requesting subpoenas for Musk’s musician girlfriend Grimes and Azealia Banks, who reportedly spent the weekend at Musk’s house at the time of his controversial tweets.

“It is evident that this is really more of an effort to sensationalize these proceedings than a legitimate attempt to preserve evidence,” Musk’s attorney Dean Kristy wrote in his filing objecting to the subpoena of Banks. But he may have gone too far to involve her in a lawsuit, in his attempts to portray Azealia as too unreliable.

Banks posted a now-deleted picture on Instagram, with some quotes from the legal document, including a passage saying “she is a veteran of long and nonsensical beefs” and “has a history of making bold and sometimes unverified claims,” as reported by The Guardian and TechCrunch.

“Not enough that they took my phone and tried tampering with evidence, they are STILL slighting me like I don’t have plenty more dirt to spill on Elon,” Banks wrote, as archived by Spin. “He thinks this is a game. I’m now even more angered by the fact that his lawyer is falsely stating I lied after being vindicated in both incidents with Russell Crowe and Jack Dorsey. This is going to get extremely ugly.”

“I may be a lot of things but a liar is not one of them. Elon will learn very soon who is more powerful of us two.”

Banks is referring to an incident in 2016 where she and Russell Crowe reportedly got into an altercation at a party, that culminated with the Australian actor spitting on her. While other attendees at the event sided with Crowe at first, Wu-Tang member RZA later admitted Crowe did indeed spit on Banks.

“Look, he spit at her,” he said on The Breakfast Club radio show, via Billboard. “I saw that.”

The other incident refers to claims from Azealia Banks that Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey, had sent her clippings of his hair to create an amulet. These claims were confirmed in a Vanity Fair feature on Dorsey — via Vice — but only after initial headlines had generated plenty of criticism toward Banks.

As for Banks and Elon Musk, Azealia made numerous Twitter posts — which have since been deleted — about her weekend spent at his mansion working on a musical collaboration with his girlfriend Grimes.

“Lol I waited around all weekend while Grimes coddled her boyfriend for being too stupid to know not to go on Twitter while on acid,” she wrote.

At the same time, Musk was tweeting that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share. As Inquisitr reported, Musk was forced to resign as Tesla chairman and was fined $20 million over the claims, which turned out to be untrue.

At the time, Musk told Gizmodo he “has never even met [Banks] or communicated with her in any way.”

The Tesla Model 3 Has Just Won A Five-Star Rating In Every Safety Category By The U.S. Government

Just like Tesla's Model S and Model X vehicles, the fully electric Model 3 has just won a five-star rating in every safety category set by the NHTSA.

After brutal crash tests were conducted on the Tesla Model 3, the U.S. government decided to award the fully electric car with its highest honor and gave it a five-star rating in every safety category that has been set so far by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

As the Daily Mail reported, viewers who watch the slow-motion footage of the crash test on the Tesla Model 3 can see the car being forcibly pummeled in test crashes to the front and rear of the vehicle, while also testing to see how the Model 3 would respond to rollovers and side crashes.

Since 1978, the NHTSA has been crash testing cars in this manner to see how they would hold up in real-life scenarios, and the Tesla Model 3 was proven a winner in this respect, with Elon Musk previously stating that he believed the Model 3 would be proven to be the safest car out there. In this, he was certainly not wrong.

The success of the Model 3 may have seemed assured, but this was not the case, especially with Musk describing the “production hell” of the past year that his company suffered under such high demand for this electric vehicle. Yet, just like Tesla’s Model S and Model X, which have also been given the same five-star rating by the NHTSA, the Model 3 has now had the same honor bestowed upon it.

However, ever the perfectionist, Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to proclaim that further stats by the NHTSA could prove that the Model 3 is, simply put, the safest car to drive in all of America.

“All 5 star are *not* the same… “5 star” just means a car met a certain threshold, but injury probability stats (real numbers) tell you by how much. NHTSA will post final safety probability stats soon. Model 3 has a shot at being safest car ever tested.”

The crash ratings for the Tesla Model 3 were helped immensely by the fact that there is no internal combustion engine in these cars, which means that with the forward crumple zone there is much more room. Also helping to save it from rollovers are the helpful addition of battery backs beneath the vehicle. In fact, according to the NHTSA, if you are driving a Model 3 the chances of suffering from a rollover accident are a mere 6.6 percent, which is down considerably from the 10 percent that is allotted to traditional cars of the same size.

With the latest five-star rating for the Tesla Model 3 by the NHTSA, now might be a good time to place your order if you are looking for the most stunning, and quite possibly the safest, car currently on the American market, as judged by the government.

Elon Musk SEC Lawsuit Stems From Misleading Tweets To Take Tesla Private

SEC sues Tesla CEO Elon Musk for securities fraud.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a lawsuit against Tesla CEO Elon Musk for a series of posts on Twitter where he suggested taking his company private at a stock price of $420 per share.

Court documents filed on Thursday show that SEC charged Musk for securities fraud due to misleading tweets. According to CNBC, sources close to the company also expect Tesla to be sued albeit the company was not named as defendant in the complaint.

The complaint alleges that Musk issued false and misleading statements that funding was secured for a Tesla buyout.

The statements were posted on Twitter in August. Less than three weeks after the controversial tweet, Tesla announced it will remain pubic.

“Musk’s statements, disseminated via Twitter, falsely indicated that, should he so choose, it was virtually certain that he could take Tesla private at a purchase price that reflected a substantial premium over Tesla stock’s then-current share price,” the filing from the Southern District of New York reads.

SEC said that Musk’s tweets caused significant disruption, and now seeks civil penalties sans noting an amount. It also wants to bar the billionaire from serving as an officer or director of any public company.

“Corporate officers hold positions of trust in our markets and have important responsibilities to shareholders,” Steven Peikin, co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said in a press release.

During a press conference held on Thursday evening regarding the complaint, Stephanie Avakian, co-director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, enumerated the responsibilities that Musk should have as chairman and CEO of a public company.

“Those responsibilities include the need to be scrupulous and careful about the truth and accuracy of statements made to the investing public,” Avakian said.

In response to the SEC complaint, Musk said that the allegations are unjustified. He also said that he has always taken actions in the best interest of investors, truth and transparency. Amid issues of making misleading statements, Musk said that he never compromised his integrity.

In a statement released on Thursday evening, Tesla and the company’s board showed support to their CEO. The statement attributes Elon’s integrity and leadership for transforming Tesla into the most successful auto company in the United States in over a century.

Tesla shares dropped more than 13 percent in extended trading on Thursday following news of the lawsuit. The stock is around 30 percent below its 52-week high of $387.46.

Tesla To Cut 7 Percent Of Workforce, Per Statement From Elon Musk

The billionaire says that there is a 'very difficult' road ahead for the company.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that the company will be cutting 7 percent of its full-time employees this year. In the company-wide email, Musk also announced that Tesla would end up keeping “only the most critical temps and contractors.” The layoffs are expected to impact roughly 3,000 Tesla employees, according to the Verge.

Musk took to his blog to explain the reasoning behind the mass layoffs, saying it had been the “most challenging” year in the history of the company. The cutbacks announcement comes only one day after Tesla officially announced it would also be ending its customer referral program in the hopes that it would help reduce costs. The referral program previously allowed people to give their friends a code that granted them six months of free charging on Tesla’s Supercharger network. The program will come to an end on February 1.

Part of the turmoil Tesla experienced this year comes from the launch of the Model 3, which is the company’s first mass-marketed vehicle. This led to all sorts of complications as the company grappled with production issues and struggled to scale up as it had originally intended.

“Tesla will need to make these cuts while increasing the Model 3 production rate and making many manufacturing engineering improvements in the coming months,” Musk said in his blog.

While Tesla did make a profit in 2018, it was nowhere near where experts had hoped it would be. It only managed to achieve a small profit in the less two quarters, with Q3 proving to be the best. Some think that a big factor in Tesla’s issues is the cost of the Model 3 itself. While the base price is claimed to be around $35,000, that number has proved to be false. The least expensive version of the Model 3 comes in at $44,000 — a significant price jump for the electric car.

Musk acknowledged that the company will need to make some big moves if it’s expected to be profitable in 2019. He expressed concern about the upcoming loss of tax credits, which will end up making the electric cars even costlier — which could have a devastating impact on already-sluggish Tesla sales.

Musk’s next goal is to create mid-range Model 3 options for all markets. He believes that the lower-priced cars will sell significantly better than their pricier counterparts and bring in much-needed revenue for the company. Tesla plans to roll out the mid-range Model 3 vehicles in May.

The USA’s federal tax credit for electric cars will be cut in half on July 1. The amount of tax credit will be cut to $1,875, before being completely removed on December 31 of this year.