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Avis to Equip 50K Vehicles with Connected Car Tech

Connected vehicles empower Avis customers to manage their entire rental experience through the recently updated Avis mobile app. Photo via iStockPhoto/Karneg. Avis Budget Group and Continental announced an expanded partnership, which will see Avis boost its fleet of connected cars in Europe and the U.S. by equipping 50,000 vehicles with Continental’s enhanced Key as a Service (KaaS)… Continue reading Avis to Equip 50K Vehicles with Connected Car Tech

Bulgaria’s Top Rent A Car Adds Tesla Model S to Fleet

Customers can easily take a Tesla Model S when they arrive at Sofia Airport or to make a reservation in advance at the other 14 company offices in Bulgaria. Photo courtesy of Top Rent A Car. Bulgaria’s Top Rent A Car is now offering customers the Tesla Model S rentals. The luxury electric class is available… Continue reading Bulgaria’s Top Rent A Car Adds Tesla Model S to Fleet

Who Shops At Tesla Stores? — #NewsQuickie

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Published on January 11th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Who Shops At Tesla Stores? — #NewsQuickie

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January 11th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

The data firm Factual stalked shoppers at US Tesla stores for a period of time last year and discovered some interesting things about the people who walk into those Apple-like showrooms.

Like CleanTechnica readers, the people strolling around Tesla stores and galleries were fairly wealthy. (Who’s surprised?) Shoppers were 109% more likely to have incomes between $150,000 and $175,000.

They were also 70% more likely to be new home owners than the average American.

The Tesla shoppers were also quite young, which fits well with my anecdotal evidence. Those strolling around Tesla stores were 40% more likely to be 35–44 years old.

Perhaps the wackiest — or most interesting — finding is that the respondents were 135% more likely to be Disney enthusiasts.

To wrap things up, these are the 10 dealership brands most likely to be frequented by the humans Factual found snooping around in Tesla stores:

Jaguar
Land Rover
MINI
Volvo
Audi
Volkswagen
Porsche
BMW
Lexus
Honda

We haven’t done thorough in-store (or lingering-outside-the-store) research, but we have conducted surveys of over 2,000 electric car drivers and 1,000 potential drivers. We didn’t ask if they were Mickey Mouse enthusiasts for some reason, but we did ask them a bunch of questions about the electric cars they have, the features they want in their next cars, and who they are. One particularly interesting finding was that 45% of current electric car buyers intend to buy a Tesla next.

To get that full report, head to: Electric Car Drivers: Demands, Desires & Dreams (2018).

If you plan to buy a Tesla too and want the benefits that come from using a referral code, feel free to use mine — http://ts.la/tomasz7234 — or not.

About the Author

Zachary Shahan Zach is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species). He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He's also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession and Solar Love. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada.

Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in. But he offers no professional investment advice and would rather not be responsible for you losing money, so don't jump to conclusions.

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Tesla Vehicle Ramp Cycles Getting Shorter (Charts)

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Published on January 12th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Tesla Vehicle Ramp Cycles Getting Shorter (Charts)

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January 12th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

Twitter user @ElonMuskScience created an interesting chart last year based on Tesla financial data and shared it with us.

I thought it was fascinating and worth a long story, but we never got around to diving deeply into the topic (well, I mean, since Maarten did back in May). But the time has come. Here we go!

This was the original tweet:

And here’s a newer one:

One basic point which all of the financial press seemed to ignore in 2018 is that it takes time to get a new product — especially something as complicated and costly as a car — through the production ramp and to profitability, but that doesn’t mean the whole business model is financially unsustainable. It just means that it takes time to make money on a new product.

Of course, professionals in the financial press have to know this — yet they continually ignored the point while covering Tesla and acting as though it could never make money and was essentially just a clever Ponzi scheme.

Just because Tesla was spending a lot of money on new products didn’t mean those products wouldn’t make the company a net profit eventually. That’s what we tried to explain over and over in 2018 when so much of the media was forecasting Tesla’s doom.

Anyhow, that’s the basic point you can take away from the charts above, but there’s a more interesting point highlighted by @ElonMuskScience here. That point is that the development cycle for Tesla vehicles — from initial development stages to actually making the company money — has been getting shorter and shorter.

“Ramp 1” in each of the charts represents the Tesla Model S’s path from its early stages of development to company profits. “Ramp 2” covers essentially the same cycle for the Tesla Model X, but that one comes in at 42 months instead of 51 months. (Note that both timeframes are quite short compared to normal vehicle development in the auto industry.)

The Tesla Model 3’s ramp — “Ramp 3” — showed a big reduction in the timeline, though, cutting the period down to just 24 months!

As you can see in the second chart, it also led to soaring profits. (Selling 63,000 cars a quarter at an average selling price over $50,000 = a lot of revenue.)

Of course, there’s development of the models that goes on before the ramp timeframes shown. Nonetheless, it is clear that Tesla has gotten much quicker at completing the process between showing a prototype and making money (in net) on that model.

What about going forward? The Tesla Model Y is supposed to be shown in the middle of March. It is supposed to go into production in China in 2020. And perhaps earlier in the US? Will it be approximately 2 years from the time the Model Y is shown and it is delivering a cumulative net profit for Tesla? Will it be 18 months?

We don’t actually have precise data to measure any this, as Tesla doesn’t break out costs and revenue by model in such a way. Historically, @ElonMuskScience and others have basically tracked the results based on overall company costs & revenue — as you can see above — but we won’t even have that method going forward, as Elon Musk expects the revenue from Tesla’s Model 3, Model S, and Model X will be enough to fund new product development & production ramps while maintaining a company profit.

The whole thing is pretty amazing when you step back and look at it. Tens of thousands of Tesla employees made magic happen by somehow bringing product after product to market, selling these through new sales channels for the auto industry, rising from a few hundred cars a quarter to nearly 100,000 cars a quarter in just ~6 years, and scaling up requisite manufacturing, service, supercharging, and sales networks all along the way.

You can see why so many in the auto world and financial world didn’t expect Tesla to succeed. Making it through one humongous product ramp was a challenge, making it through another one was another challenge, and making it through a super rapid and high-volume third one was yet another daunting challenge. If any of those product ramps went too badly — in terms of production or consumer demand — Tesla would have crashed into a deep crater of debt.

But it didn’t.

There were signs and historical precedence along the way to presume that Tesla would pull through. Nonetheless, Tesla had a seemingly unprecedented level of skepticism thrown its way, winning the title of most shorted company on the US stock market for much of 2018.

Now the company is employing 45,000 people and counting, and it appears to be in a very different period of its corporate life. There should be no more “bet the company” trials, as the real Elon Musk put it. The Model Y ramp, Tesla Semi ramp, and Tesla electric pickup truck ramp, while not walks in the park, should be easier to manage and fund thanks to lessons learned from the production ramps of the S-3-X model lineup. The revenue flowing into Tesla’s piggy bank from those pillar products should help as well.

That said, stay tuned — there could always be life-threatening challenges around the corner, and Tesla short sellers accounting for billions of dollars of bets against the company will be sure to notify us of any forming (or imaginary) thorns and stumbles.

To wrap up, I’ll return to comments Maarten made in 2018 in a handful of articles aiming to shed bright lights on Tesla’s present and future when so many people were focused on the darkness:

Early May: “It was my impression that the original plan for the Model 3 was self-financing through a slow ramp and incremental building of the assembly line. The number of reservations changed those plans. Tesla accelerated the development of the car and design of the production and shortened the ramp by a whole year. … I have a very strong impression that Tesla is only looking at self-financing for its future products and factories.”

Middle of May: “The long answer is in 3 fresh articles here on CleanTechnica. This first one examined the problems 450,000 Tesla Model 3 reservations created. In this second one, we have a long look at the profitability of Tesla products. We finish with the media madness about ‘Tesla Cash Burn.’ … But I think Tesla is secretly a potentially very profitable company. Or not so secretly, if you really pay attention to Tesla’s finances. …The only reason Tesla keeps reporting losses is because after launching each successful product, the next product is so much more ambitious that it can’t be financed out of the revenue streams of the company’s current products.

“To visualize this and make it easier to discuss, I have Tesla virtually split into separate companies, each providing a single product or service. Each company has its own financing, from sister companies or from the capital markets. Resources like design labs, research departments, specialized personnel, etc. are “sold” to sister companies for shares when no longer needed, mimicking the relationships between the parts of a consolidated company.”

Late May: “As usual, the rumors of Tesla’s demise are grossly exaggerated.”

Late May: “’Tesla bankwuptcy’ would perhaps be better termed ‘shorts losing their shirts.’ …

“As usual, the rumors of Tesla’s demise are grossly exaggerated. If you haven’t been fooled in the past 10 years, don’t start falling for the rumors now. ”

Indeed. Easier said now than in May of 2018. Kudos to Maarten for saying it then.

If you plan to buy a Tesla and want the benefits that come from using a referral code, feel free to use mine — http://ts.la/tomasz7234 — or not.

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Tyler The Creator Survives Car Crash After Falling Asleep At The Wheel

Tyler the Creator totaled his new Tesla, but is counting himself lucky that the car was all he lost.

All it takes is dozing off for a few seconds behind the wheel to find yourself in a very dangerous situation. According to People, Tyler the Creator is considering himself lucky after making it out of a near-fatal car crash alive. The accident occurred when the exhausted rapper briefly fell asleep while driving Wednesday night.

Tyler has been hard at work lately completing music for the new film, Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch, coming out November 9. He will be featured on several vocals from the movie’s soundtrack and is also contributing to the production. According to Tyler, it was due to long hours spent on the film that he found himself in what could have quite easily been a far worse situation.

Upon dozing off, the rapper rammed his brand new Tesla Model X into a parked car not far from the UCLA campus. The force of the crash was enough to send the stationary Honda CR-V flying nearly 50 feet down the road. Although there is no saving the new Tesla, Tyler shockingly endured barely a scratch. He was able to exit the vehicle and call the necessary authorities.

Luckily for Tyler, no arrests have been made and no one was injured during the crash. He did provide his insurance information to the owner of the Honda CR-V and rightfully reported the accident. Tyler is showing no lasting effects of the crash and has been busy on social media sharing his cover of the beloved Christmas classic, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”

He also took to Instagram to assure his fans that he is fine and is grateful that his mistake did not cause any more damage. The rapper said that he’d been up late the night before finishing his music and hadn’t allowed himself enough sleep.

“Guess who wanted to finish music super late and dosed off for a few seconds while driving home,” he said.

Tyler is especially grateful to Tesla for the top-notch safety features on his vehicle that quite possibly saved his life. He then gave a shout out to Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla.

“I calmly jumped out the back and called the people. thanks elon for the excessive airbags u a qt. good day sir,” Tyler said.

Tyler the Creator is indeed lucky to be alive after making a mistake that could have cost him his life. Next time he hops behind the wheel, he’ll be doing so fully rested.

Tesla is not going to buy GM factory because of union employees, says GM CEO

After GM announced that it would shut down some factories, Elon Musk said that Tesla would consider buying one of them, but now GM CEO Mary Barra says that it will not work out because Tesla doesn’t want GM’s union employees. Last year, GM announced that they are closing 3 assembly factories in North America. In an… Continue reading Tesla is not going to buy GM factory because of union employees, says GM CEO

GM will be ‘extremely profitable’ for the foreseeable future, says former exec Bob Lutz

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SpaceX to layoff 10 percent of workforce

(Reuters) – Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX will reduce its workforce by about 10 percent of the company’s more than 6,000 employees, it said on Friday. FILE PHOTO: The SpaceX headquarters is shown in Hawthorne, California, U.S. September 19, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake The company said it will “part ways” with some of its manpower, citing… Continue reading SpaceX to layoff 10 percent of workforce

Nissan China chief Jose Munoz resigns amid broadened Ghosn probe

(Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co Ltd’s (7201.T) head of China operations Jose Munoz has resigned following reports that the Japanese automaker has broadened its investigation into ousted Chairman Carlos Ghosn’s alleged financial misconduct. FILE PHOTO: Jose Munoz, Chairman of Nissan North America, speaks during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January… Continue reading Nissan China chief Jose Munoz resigns amid broadened Ghosn probe

Cadillac to become “lead electric vehicle brand” for GM to rival Tesla (Updated)

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2014 Cadillac ELR
General Motors’ Cadillac brand has fought to restore its luster as a brand for technology and innovation, with repeated attempts that fell short of a resounding success. Finally, it appears that Cadillac might be turning toward a future that may have a better chance of restoring the brand’s glory days: electric luxury cars.

In an investor conference call on Friday, GM announced that Cadillac will be the first of GM’s brands to get a vehicle based on the automaker’s so-called BEV3 platform—the global electric vehicle platform that is expected to launch starting in 2021 and be the basis for 10 or more vehicles.

DON’T MISS: Electric cars “not going to work,” Trump says of GM's plan

This reaffirms what Cadillac’s former president, Johan de Nysschen, said—that electric vehicles would be “at the forefront for the brand in both the U.S. and China. After his departure and Cadillac’s move-in-progress from Manhattan back to Warren, Michigan, it’s good to hear that Cadillac still plans to keep to that goal.

GM CEO Mary Barra said the company has determined that the sweet spot for range is 300 miles, and company president Mark Reuss, who most recently headed product development, said that is the target for all the company's upcoming electric vehicles.

2014 Cadillac ELR revealed at 2013 Detroit Auto Show

The new BEV3 platform will support front-, rear- and electronic all-wheel drive, and will support a variety of battery sizes through an “ice-tray” like battery pack that can be filled with as many of as few battery cells as the automaker wants.

That could indicate that the company could offer 300 mile versions of each of its cars, but could also offer shorter-range options in the same models.

CHECK OUT: Sources: GM manufacturing revamp could signal faster lane-change to EVs

In recent months, GM has been caught in the middle of several politically charged topics relating to electric vehicles. Last fall, GM became a vocal proponent of extending the federal EV tax credit. Then, after the company announced sweeping production cuts including axing the Chevy Volt and idling several U.S. factories, President Trump threatened to end federal subsidies for GM's electric cars and said that the company's plan to eventually go all-electric was not going to work.

Globally, GM plans to launch 20 new hybrid, plug-in, and electric vehicles by 2023. It also aims to launch 10 vehicles on its dedicated EV platform—including a three-row SUV, a low-roof model, and a van.

GM CEO Mary Barra with 2016 Chevrolet Volt – Detroit Auto Show

At the end of 2017, Barra called GM's investment in electric and autonomous vehicle development the “biggest business opportunity since the creation of the internet.” She said that the company aims to create profitable, affordable 300-mile (range) electric vehicles by 2021.

READ MORE: GM wants Trump administration to consider national electric-vehicle mandate

Both of Cadillac’s other recent plug-in vehicles, the 2014-2016 ELR coupe and the 2018 CT6 Plug-In, have been discontinued in the U.S. The ELR was very stylish but felt compromised in many ways, including a cramped interior and an all-electric driving range that was lower than that of the closely related Chevy Volt.

While those models arguably did very little to turn the brand’s image around, a fully electric (U.S.-built) Cadillac electric vehicle, if it arrives soon enough, could be the key to keeping the luxury brand relevant.