Tesla – Page 2695 – I wish I had more to offer

UPDATE 1-Tesla, Elon Musk win dismissal of lawsuit over Model 3 production

FILE PHOTO: A Tesla Model 3 car is displayed during a media preview at the Auto China 2018 motor show in Beijing, China April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A federal judge in San Francisco dismissed for the second time a securities fraud lawsuit brought by Tesla Inc shareholders alleging that… Continue reading UPDATE 1-Tesla, Elon Musk win dismissal of lawsuit over Model 3 production

Tesla eliminates annual service, keeps some periodic maintenance

2019 Tesla Model 3 Performance
Electric cars are supposed to be more reliable than internal combustion models. Certainly, they have a lot fewer moving parts and need a lot less lubrication.

Yet Tesla, like most corner auto dealerships, has made money selling extended service plans for annual maintenance on its cars, sometimes mandatory.

With hundreds of thousands more Teslas hitting the road, all those service visits—along with repair work—have reportedly backed up the company's service centers. Now the company has reportedly put an end to those extended service plans and is hoping instead to highlight electric cars' inherent reliability—and hopefully reduce the wait times at those service centers.

DON'T MISS: Tesla aims to make service quicker, roadside assistance automatic

In an earnings call in January, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said improving service is one of his main priorities for 2019. He later made another change to eliminate parts distribution centers and stock common Tesla repair parts, including some body-repair panels, at the service centers themselves.

Tesla hasn't revealed what percentage of its service-center visits are for annual maintenance versus repairs. The annual maintenance schedule covers things like the cabin air filter (or HEPA filter, in the case of cars that include Tesla's Bioweapons Defense Mode), replacement of air-conditioner desiccant, tire rotation and wheel alignment, and brake fluid tests every two years, since the hydraulic brakes don't get used as much in electric cars and the hygroscopic brake fluid (which attracts water) tends to sit still for too long in the brake lines where it can cause rust.

READ THIS: Tesla opens its first in-house body shops to reduce repair times

Tesla recommended the service every year or 12,500 miles for the Model S and Model X and every two years or 25,000 miles for the Model 3.

Now Tesla tells owners: “Your Tesla does not require annual maintenance and regular fluid changes,” and instead recommends only periodic, as-needed servicing of brake fluid, pads, and calipers, filters, and air conditioning.

CHECK OUT: Tesla Model S Service Contract: $600/Year, Or Warranty Voided (2012)

In independent reliability reports, such as those from Consumer Reports, electric car cars have proven to require vastly fewer repairs of critical systems such as their drivetrains—if not necessarily any better overall reliability based on body hardware and minor annoyances such as squeaks and rattles. These are the kinds of things that independent mechanics can mostly accomplish if they have access to the parts.

It remains to be seen whether eliminating annual service visits in favor of waiting for problems to crop up will improve or diminish either customer satisfaction or service-center wait times.

In the meantime, in Texas, which has banned Tesla from selling through stores in the state, the legislature has introduced a bill to ban the company from working on its cars at its service centers. So far, there's no indication how likely it is to pass.

Faraday Future gets new money from gaming company to build in China, and the US

Faraday Future FF91 prototype
The shame of Faraday Future's financial struggles is that it has what looks to be a viable new electric car, not just on paper, but ready to roll on the road—in prototype form—that may never actually make it to market.

On Sunday, the company revealed a new joint venture with a video-game company in China that could bring it $600 million to build a version of its FF91 in China.

The company will form a joint venture with The9, a Chinese video-game company that launched the first Chinese virtual currency and community in 1999 and once had the exclusive license to operate World of Warcraft in China. It trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange and is reportedly worth $100 million.

READ THIS: With cease-fire agreement, spark flickers toward Faraday's Future

The joint venture aims to produce a new model for the Chinese market based on the FF91, called the V9. The joint company plans to produce up to 300,000 V9s per year for the Chinese market.

In a statement released Sunday, Faraday Future said that The9 will initially invest $5 million, which Faraday Future will use to “overcome its short-term cash flow difficulties and support its ongoing equity financing efforts.”

The balance of the $600 million is dependent on meeting certain investment contingencies.

DON'T MISS: Faraday Future posts “For Sale” signs, as Evergrande backer announces first EV

The company also said the joint venture will help it get the FF91 into production in the U.S.

Faraday Future has a factory in California, where it planned to build the FF91, and had talent from Tesla, Apple, and quite a few automakers to develop the FF91, but it has laid off most of it staff after a funding dispute with its previous backer, Evergrande Health, a large, Hong Kong-based conglomerate intent on getting into the electric-car business. Evergrande also holds a majority stake in National Electric Vehicles Sweden, a Chinese company that builds electric versions of the last Saab 9-3 in China.

CHECK OUT: Faraday Future funder writes its own Saab story

That $2 billion funding deal fell apart in a volley of lawsuits when Faraday Future spent through the first round of funding building running production prototypes of the FF91. The lawsuits were later withdrawn as Evergrande agreed to let Faraday Future seek additional funding from other sources.

The company has since struggled to do so, and The9 represents its first new source of major funding since the $2 billion deal with Evergrande fell apart.

Chinese EV startup XPeng is at the center of major trade secret disputes with Apple and Tesla

Last summer, a former Apple employee was charged by the FBI for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to the company’s secretive self-driving car project. This week, Tesla sued a former employee for allegedly stealing trade secrets related to Autopilot. While they happened many months apart, both sets of allegations have something in common: the employees… Continue reading Chinese EV startup XPeng is at the center of major trade secret disputes with Apple and Tesla

Tesla car hacked at Pwn2Own contest

[embedded content] A team of security researchers has hacked a Tesla Model 3 car on the last day of the Pwn2Own 2019 hacking contest that was held this week in Vancouver, Canada. Team Fluoroacetate –made up of Amat Cama and Richard Zhu– hacked the Tesla car via its browser. They used a JIT bug in… Continue reading Tesla car hacked at Pwn2Own contest

Tesla Autopilot now gives red light warnings & right of way for lane changes

Tesla is continuing to improve Autopilot’s abilities in both documented and undocumented ways. Just recently the system has gained two new capabilities: detecting stop lights and detecting lane change intention from other cars. Lane change detection In the last few weeks, some drivers have noticed that Autopilot seems to be detecting lane change intention from… Continue reading Tesla Autopilot now gives red light warnings & right of way for lane changes

760,000 Cars Are Compatible With CHAdeMO (1.3 Million Including Tesla)

2 H BY MARK KANE CHAdeMO still keeps a strong position, but changes are coming. CHAdeMO Association released interesting numbers on the CHAdeMO fast charging standard popularity, using EV-Volumes.com data. As it turns out, among about 5 million plug-in cars of any kind sold globally, two-thirds are BEVs and one third are PHEVs. 49% of… Continue reading 760,000 Cars Are Compatible With CHAdeMO (1.3 Million Including Tesla)

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.

SK Innovation Plans 100 GWh Of Battery Production Capacity

1 H BY MARK KANE Break even expected in 2021 SK Innovation has bold investment plans in new lithium-ion cell production capacity around the world. The output is set to increase from 5 GWh annually today, to 20 GWh annually by the end of 2019, to 40 GWh annually in 2020 and 100 GWh annually… Continue reading SK Innovation Plans 100 GWh Of Battery Production Capacity

Early Customer Basks In The Glow Of His New Tesla Solar Roof Tile Install

Invest
Electric Cars
Electric Car Benefits
Electric Car Sales
Solar Energy Rocks
RSS
Advertise
Privacy Policy

Clean Power

Published on March 21st, 2019 |

by Kyle Field

Early Customer Basks In The Glow Of His New Tesla Solar Roof Tile Install

Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook

March 21st, 2019 by Kyle Field

Another Tesla Solar Roof Tile customer (Blu_Beauties on Instagram and YouTube) has taken to the interwebs to show off his new system, and it gives us a view of what an installed retrofit system looks like. To date, installations of the sexy new Tesla Solar Roof Tiles have only trickled out, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the Model Y unveiling last week that, “this is definitely going to be the year of the Solar Roof and Powerwall.”

This particular customer was able to cram an 18.5kW Solar Roof Tile system onto his roof, which he will use to power his Tesla Model X P100D and his home. Excess daytime solar generation will be stored on site in his cluster of three Tesla Powerwall 2s, with a storage capacity of 13.5kWh each. The Powerwalls will then be able to provide backup power in the event of a grid outage as well as providing nighttime power to his home after the sun goes to sleep.

The new customer video highlights a retrofit install, where the existing roof is removed and a new Tesla Solar Roof Tile roof is installed in its place. The installation of a solar roof tile roof is more complex than a traditional roof, with the Solar Roof Tiles arriving on site in blocks of 8 or 12 tiles that are then physically installed on the roof and wired up in succession.

Being made from glass, the solar roof tiles definitely aren’t your average roof covering. They aim to make use of the existing expense and effort to install a traditional roof to lower the cost of going solar. Installing a solar roof tile roof also eliminates the need to create new holes in an existing roof to mount traditional solar panels to the roof, which can be the cause for roof leaks years after the installation of the solar system.

I have been working with Tesla for a few months now to see if we can squeeze our home rebuild into the Tesla Solar Roof Tile program. We are rebuilding our home from the ground up after losing it in the Thomas Fire in December of 2017 and Tesla has not officially opened up Solar Roof Tile installations to new construction, which has been the only sticking point, but I’m not giving up yet.

I was initially skeptical of the return on investment, but after getting a few real quotes for normal roof installations from contractors and adding traditional solar onto the price, Tesla’s Solar Roof Tiles turned out to be fairly competitive. Either way, keep your eyes peeled for more scoops on Tesla’s Solar Roof Tiles and what should be an exciting year for Solar at Tesla.

About the Author

Kyle Field I'm a tech geek passionately in search of actionable ways to reduce the negative impact my life has on the planet, save money and reduce stress. Live intentionally, make conscious decisions, love more, act responsibly, play. The more you know, the less you need. TSLA investor.

Advertise with CleanTechnica to get your company in front of millions of monthly readers.

CleanTechnica Clothing & Cups