Tesla – Page 2755 – I wish I had more to offer

GM partners with EVgo, ChargePoint and Greenlots to improve its EV charging solution

GM announced today that it is partnering with EVgo, ChargePoint and Greenlots, three of the biggest charging networks in the US, in order to improve its electric vehicle charging solution for customers. While companies like Tesla are building their own charging networks to specifically cater to their own vehicles, several other automakers rely on third-party… Continue reading GM partners with EVgo, ChargePoint and Greenlots to improve its EV charging solution

Tesla: Full Self Driving Is “Very Far Away” From Being Legal

The Best Policy Tesla might just kill the stereotype of the sleazy car salesperson. On Wednesday, Electrek shared refreshingly forthright emails Tesla sales advisers sent to buyers looking to purchase the company’s Full Self Driving (FSD) package. “Before I take your order for the FSD, I would like to point out that the legal aspect… Continue reading Tesla: Full Self Driving Is “Very Far Away” From Being Legal

Top Automotive Industry News for Week of December 17 – December 23, 2018

Here is the most important news associated with the automotive industry
identified by the AEA for the week of December 17, 2018 – December 23,
2018.

We hope it helps you stay up to speed on the key developments in our
industry:

-AEA Membership News-

The next AEA Members Reception will be held on Thursday January 24th,
2019 in San Francio. Invitations have been sent to all current AEA
Members. Annual AEA Member Dues renewal will occur on January 2 nd, 2019. If you have any questions, please contact
memberservices@automotiveexecutives.com

-Automotive Manufacturing News–Automotive Manufacturing News-

Carlos Ghosn vows to 'restore my honor' in first remarks since arrest

(autoblog)

Ford's New Truck-like Explorer SUV To Debut Jan. 9 Ahead Of Detroit
Auto Show

(Forbes)

General Motors hints it could negotiate a way to keep one or more
plants open

(CNBC)

German automakers BMW, Daimler stand to benefit the most if China cuts
US auto tariffs

(CNBC)

Ghosn Rearrested, Now Faces 20 Years in Prison

(Forbes)

GM gets thousands of holiday letters about plant closings

(Detroit Free Press)

IIHS Unveils Top Safety Pick Plus Models for 2019

(The Detroit Bureau)

In the Switch to Electric Vehicles, Expect a Few Giants to Crash

(Bloomberg)

Jeep Wrangler plant uses rotisserie to crank out SUVs

(Detroit Free Press)

Nissan to lay off 1,000 Mexican workers, citing market challenges

(autoblog)

Tesla Survived Manufacturing Hell–Now Comes The Hard Part

(Forbes)

UAW scandal sending union's ex-No. 2 in Fiat Chrysler Department to
prison

(Detroit Free Press)

-Automotive Evolution News-

Daimler, BMW Get U.S. Approval for Mobility Company

(The Detroit Bureau)

How electric cars are slowly moving from niche to something 'people
want to buy'

(CNBC)

Laser Vision Upstart Luminar Reveals Self-Driving Tech Alliance With
Audi's AID Unit

(Forbes)

NHTSA Moves to Accelerate Autonomous Vehicle Petitions

(The Detroit Bureau)

Self-driving bill hits dead end in U.S. Senate

(The Detroit News)

The Year Of The Scooter: The Good, The Bad, And The Road Ahead

(Forbes)

Uber's self-driving cars are back on the road, nine months after a
fatal accident

(CNBC)

Zoox Inc. Snags First California Permit To Transport Passengers In
Self-Driving Cars

(NPR)

-Automotive Retail News-

Beating Predictions, 2018 New Car Sales to Surpass 2017 Results

(The Detroit Bureau)

CarMax's stock drops after earnings beat, but used car sales miss

(MarketWatch)

Fed Raises Interest Rate, Lowers Growth Forecast

(Auto Dealer)

Shopping for a new car? Buy before the Fed rate hike affects car loans

(MarketWatch)

Study: Dealers Overspend on Marketing

(Auto Dealer)

U.S. auto sales seen falling 1% in December, say J.D. Power, LMC

(autoblog)

-Automotive Wholesale News-

Car Values at Auction Continue Decline at Year's End

(Vehicle Remarketing)

-Automotive Ownership News-

'Dramatic drops' in gas prices: Less-than-$2 gas is here for many
American motorists

(USA Today)

-Automotive Enthusiast News-

In a blatant attempt to pull at our heart strings, Chevrolet is
offering an in-car Santa tracker

(CNBC)

The most amazing classic car stories of 2018

(FOX News)

-Automotive Servicing News-

Citing Fire Danger Ford Recalls 410,000 Pickups

(Forbes)

Report: 16.7M faulty Takata air bags still on US roads

(The Detroit News)

The Biggest and Smallest Automotive Recalls of 2018

(Car and Driver)

Tesla Model S catches fire in California town: Fire Department

(CNBC)

-General Business & Executive News-

ACV Auctions continues rapid disruption of $100B wholesale automotive
industry

(PR Newswire)

Car rental company Fair raises $385 million in SoftBank-led funding
round

(Reuters)

CU Direct's credit union network leads in auto loan originations

(Automotive News)

The real problem with the American auto industry

(CNN)

U.S. third-quarter growth trimmed; business spending slowing

(Reuters)

-AEA Reminder-

Did we miss something? Let us know via our

. If you have specific important news going public soon that you would like
to share with your fellow AEA Members, submit your

PR Distribution Request >>

Have a great week,

Member Services

memberservices@automotiveexecutives.com

Automotive Executives Association

www.automotiveexecutives.com

EE Times Looks to AEye to Answer the Question, “Do ADAS cars and robocars really need lidars?

EETimes explores AEye’s use of artificial intelligence to discriminately collect data information that only matters to an AV’s path planning, instead of assigning every pixel the same priority. According to VSI’s Phil Magney, “this is really edge fusion as the device is fusing the raw data with the camera data before any classification occurs.”
Article >

EE Times Looks to AEye to Answer the Question, “Do ADAS cars and robocars really need lidars? — The Future of Autonomous Vehicles: Part I – Think Like a Robot, Perceive Like a HumanAEye Introduces Advanced Mobility Product for the Autonomous Vehicle MarketThe Future of Autonomous Vehicles: Part II – Blind Technology without Compassion Is RuthlessAEye’s iDAR Shatters Both Range and Scan Rate Performance Records for Automotive Grade LiDARElon Musk Is Right: LiDAR Is a Crutch (Sort of.)Gartner Names AEye Cool Vendor in AI for Computer VisionAEye Introduces Next Generation of Artificial Perception: New Dynamic Vixels™AEye’s $40M Series B Includes Numerous Automotive Leaders Including Subaru, Hella, LG, and SKAutoSens Names AEye Most Exciting Start-Up in the Automotive Imaging SectorAEye Granted Foundational Patents For Core Solid-State MEMs-Based Agile LiDAR And Embedded AI Technology

Tesla’s Software-First Approach Foreshadows The Future Of Cars

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Published on January 6th, 2019 |

by Guest Contributor

Tesla’s Software-First Approach Foreshadows The Future Of Cars

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January 6th, 2019 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

Everyone knows that Tesla is an innovative company, and almost everyone knows that its cars don’t need gasoline. But as Lou Steinberg points out in a recent article entitled “Some of the Greatest Innovations are not What You Think,” electrification is not Tesla’s only innovation, and when it comes to competing in the global auto market, it may not even be the most important.

Tesla’s center stack touchscreen display in the Model S (Image: Tesla)

In Steinberg’s view, Tesla’s most important innovations stem from the fact that it’s the first company to approach cars the Silicon Valley way: as a software problem. Steinberg perceived the power of “tin wrapped software” as the CTO of Symbol Technologies. “Symbol built hardware, but was able to use software to tune how it worked in different environments. Flexible software meant that the hardware behaved one way in a hospital (long-battery life for a 12-hour shift) and another way in a retail store (higher-power radios to overcome dead zones).”

“I bought the Model S because it was the first time I had ever seen someone treat a car as a software problem,” Steinberg writes. Sure, modern cars are full of software, but their builders are hardware companies, and automotive hardware is a mature market with few opportunities to disrupt, or even to differentiate their products.

Tesla has changed everything — for the first time, a car can improve itself over time via software upgrades. “Aside from navigation maps, all of my cars [he has owned many] had features that were largely fixed on the day they left the factory,” says Steinberg. “Not my Tesla. Every month, it gets software updates that make it better. It learned how to park. Then it learned how to do it better. It opens my garage door when I come home. It improved its self-driving. It improved the stereo. It added anti-theft features. After one year, my car is safer and better to drive than the day I bought it. My Tesla driving experience keeps improving through patches and updates.”

Tesla owner describes why he loves the car’s software updates: “It’s the feeling that your car is always new.” (YouTube: Tesla)

Steinberg vows never again to buy “a car whose capabilities are frozen in time,” and once they’ve experienced the ever-improving Tesla ownership experience, most drivers probably feel the same.

Another important but overlooked innovation that the Sages of Silicon Valley have made is to free up constrained resources. The Tesla Rangers — mobile teams that perform minor service at customer locations — provide an example. Why are the Rangers such an innovation? Because they free up resources at service centers. “The most constrained real estate at a service center is in the service bays,” Steinberg writes. “You can hire more technicians if demand increases, but the service bays are a big capital investment that can’t be flexed up and down. The second most valuable real estate at a showroom is in the parking lot. You can fill it with cars to sell, but only if you don’t have a lot of cars you already sold taking up space while waiting for a service bay to become available. Cars waiting for service, especially warranty service, crowd out cars that are ready to be sold and delivered. Add to this the fact that many owners will ask for a loaner car, and you need a fleet of loaners. It all costs money.”

Thus, the Tesla Rangers represent not just a convenience for customers (though they certainly are that), but also “a way to optimize constrained resources and save capital. It frees up the parking lots to sell and deliver cars.”

And the third and greatest innovation of all? Tesla isn’t selling just cars. There’s a saying in the software business: “People don’t buy software, they buy a roadmap.” In other words, customers, especially large companies, don’t buy software based only on what it can do today, but based on their confidence that it will continue to get better and keep up with future needs. Once you conceive of a car as software, the capabilities you can offer to customers are almost unlimited.

Tesla uses the phone as a “key” for the Model 3 (Image via Tesla)

“Tesla isn’t limited to promoting the current features,” writes Steinberg. “Tesla and Musk are either lauded for offering a vision or panned for over-promising, but they offer a glimpse of what your car will be able to do in the future. Not another car you have to purchase again…the very same car you buy today. My car knows how to park, and will someday have full autonomous driving. Why shouldn’t it drop me off in front of the store and then find a parking space on its own?”

Many stock market observers believe that the high valuation of TSLA stock has a lot to do with investors’ belief that the company will someday offer full self-driving capability, an innovation that could have even greater implications for mobility and society than electrification. And it’s not just the stock price. A Mercedes or a BMW is a great automobile, but once you buy it, it’s going to be the same vehicle you bought until the day you sell it. If, instead, you could have a machine that’s going to get better and better, and eventually be able to drive itself, how much more would you be willing to pay?

“By treating cars as software, and constantly pushing updates, Tesla can command a premium price today by selling the roadmap,” concludes Steinberg. “Other manufacturers may innovate incrementally, but as the character ‘bored Elon Musk’ once tweeted, ‘Incremental innovation is really just adjusting for inflation.’”

About the Author

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. 😀

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The “Tesla Stretch” — Proving Car Buyers Will Pay More For A Tesla Model 3

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Cars

Published on January 9th, 2019 |

by Matt Pressman

The “Tesla Stretch” — Proving Car Buyers Will Pay More For A Tesla Model 3

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January 9th, 2019 by Matt Pressman

Originally published on EVANNEX.

The Tesla Model 3 is turning out to be an electric car that’s seducing car buyers across multiple market segments. According to a CleanTechnica report, “45% of current electric car drivers plan to buy a Tesla next.” Okay, that’s understandable. Non-Tesla EV drivers might be interested in a Tesla. That said, it’s extraordinary how many gas-powered car owners, from vastly different auto segments, are transitioning to Teslas.

Tesla Model 3 (Photo by Zach Shahan, CleanTechnica)

Bloomberg reports, “When Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk first revealed the Model 3 at a late-night party in March 2016, the vehicle was expected to compete in the premium sedan market against the likes of Audi, BMW, Lexus and Mercedes. Instead, owners of mass market cars like the Honda Accord and Toyota Prius are opening their wallets for the sedan, signaling that the vehicle is pushing Tesla beyond its luxury niche and more into the mainstream.” Buyers are also coming from the BMW 3 Series, and surely other luxury cars, but luxury car sales are not down much and Tesla appears to be pulling much more from lower classes.

“For Earl Banning, getting behind the wheel of a Tesla meant spending more than he ever had on a car. The 43-year-old Air Force neuropsychologist from Dayton, Ohio, ponied up $54,000 for a Model 3, figuring he would save on gas and keep the car for a long time. It was almost double what he had previously paid for a fully loaded Honda Accord,” reports Bloomberg.

The most common cars traded in for a Model 3 according to Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk (Chart by Bloomberg)

Banning says, “I call it the Tesla Stretch — everyone I’ve met who owns a Model 3 is willing to spend more to get into a Model 3.” For example, a former Nissan Altima owner, 36-year-old Eric Snapat, spent nearly $60,000 on his new Tesla. And 26-year-old Robert Preston actually charges $155 a day to rent out his Tesla on Turo to help pay for his new Model 3. “Every weekend I have someone renting it,” Preston said.

“Tesla recently said that more than half the trade-ins for the Model 3 were from vehicles priced below $35,000. And there are signs that the sedan’s popularity is adding [some] pressure on rival carmakers. … In October, sales of cars such as the Accord and Prius continued to slip as deliveries of the Model 3 ramped up,” according to Bloomberg.

⇒ Related: Honda Accord Sales & Civic Sales Drop 80,000 In 2018

A Tesla Model 3 charging in Florida. (Photo by Zach Shahan, CleanTechnica)

“Tesla has captured lightning in a bottle,” said Jeremy Acevedo, manager of industry analysis at researcher Edmunds. “It’s hard to even benchmark the Model 3 against other cars because it’s broken the mold in so many ways.”

⇒ Tesla Model 3 = Lightning, Model Y = Thunder

About the Author

Matt Pressman is all about Tesla. He’s a TSLA investor, pre-ordered the Model 3, and loves driving the family's Model S and Model X company cars. As co-founder of EVANNEX, a family business specializing in aftermarket Tesla accessories, he’s served as a contributor/editor of Electric Vehicle University (EVU) and the Owning Model S and Getting Ready for Model 3 books. He writes daily about Tesla and you can follow his work on the EVANNEX blog.

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VW & GM Exec Statements on Electric Vehicles & Tesla Leave Me Dizzy, Confused, Laughing

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Published on January 9th, 2019 |

by Matt Pressman

VW & GM Exec Statements on Electric Vehicles & Tesla Leave Me Dizzy, Confused, Laughing

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January 9th, 2019 by Matt Pressman

Originally published on EVANNEX.

Big Auto’s executives have a long history of taking shots at Tesla. Now, two industry giants, VW and GM, have decided to dismiss the Silicon Valley automaker altogether and claim they’ll (instead) lead the EV revolution. Yet, their braggadocio, somehow, doesn’t seem to add up.

Two of the industry’s biggest heavyweights, VW and GM, have dialed up their bold claims surrounding electric car efforts. VW has lineup of fully electric vehicles coming in next few years.

Larry Vellequette reported in November (via Automotive News Europe) that Volkswagen’s rhetoric about electric vehicles is “the direct result of a strategy shift that came after getting caught cheating on diesel-emissions testing.” Deflecting attention from the dieselgate scandal and recent cartel allegations, VW’s corporate communications vacillate wildly from reluctant to boastful when it comes to the company’s EV plans.

In a puzzling interview with VW’s Herbert Diess shared in that article, the company’s CEO downplayed the viability of the electric car, explaining, “if you are still driving far distances, 20,000 or 30,000 miles [per year], it’s probably not the right car.” And with EVs, Deiss adds, “you’re driving on coal instead of oil, and it doesn’t make sense.” [Editor’s note: What????] That said, he concedes, “Renewable energy is a must… [so] we will be very big in electric cars worldwide because we are very strong in China.”

A look back at VW’s dieselgate scandal, which likely sparked the company’s recent PR offensive touting its “support” for EVs (YouTube: The Verge)

Deiss admits, “[Electric car] sales are picking up. It’s not all over the place, but West Coast, if you go to a parking lot, you see already a decent mix of electric cars there. Most of them are probably Teslas, but what’s happening now is that the cars become so much better.” He continues, “I think we have the best setup strategy for the electric vehicles to come. … We will be aggressive on the pricing. We will be much lower than Tesla.”

Meanwhile, GM’s former bigwig, Bob Lutz, is consistently appearing on financial news shows in order to trash-talk Tesla. Recently, he claimed, “Tesla is headed to the graveyard.” Do GM’s top brass feel the same way? Jamie Lareau (via Detroit Free Press) spoke with Mike Abelson, GM’s vice president of global strategy, for his take on EVs. He reports, “GM’s gasoline-powered cars and trucks will be the main revenue stream for the company for at least the next two decades,” according to Abelson. [Editor’s note: What?????]

GM has no plans for electric pickup trucks.

Yet, contradicting himself, Abelson adds, “We do believe we’ll lead the industry in EVs sometime in the next decade or so.” [Editor’s note: What???????]

If that’s the case, will GM, perhaps, battle Tesla in market segments like pickup trucks. No. Abelson says, “There will not be any AV/EV pickups.” [Editor’s note: OMG]

Nevertheless, it’s reported that “GM is exploring all fronts in future mobility, including talking to companies working on flying cars.”

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AI Predictions For 2019 From Technology Leaders

If 2018 is any indication, 2019 will see AI play an even bigger role in our lives than we imagined. It will be deployed in ways we don’t realize and to do things we didn’t expect. We won’t even be aware of when it is being used for or against us. And there may not be any appeal of AI decisions. Further, it will be everywhere deployed by everyone thanks to various companies democratizing the technology. These are the observations of leaders from around the industry as reported by Forbes.

“We are seeing the democratization of AI through open source algorithms, affordable computing power and AI specialized hardware,” said Roy Raanani, CEO and founder of Chorus.ai. “Google TensorFlow released open source software to allow anyone to build on Google’s own machine learning algorithms. Also the introduction of AI specialized hardware by Apple, Google, Tesla and NVIDIA is increasing AI performance by tens to hundreds, and enabling that performance in smaller form factors.”

Santi Subotovsky, General Partner at Emergence, and Oded Gal, Head of Products at Zoom Video Communications, believe AI will reshape business meetings by increasing productivity and surfacing hidden insights. AI combined with speech recognition can enable automatic note-taking. It can also surface non-verbal cues that participants of a meeting could miss.

Expect facial recognition as a standard part of the conference room. Much insight can be gained from knowing who used the room, when, and for what purpose.

Candace Worley, Chief Technical Strategist at McAfee, sounds a cautionary note. She believes there will be special oversight of AI usage due to the “legal, ethical, and cultural implications.” She cites the fact that “AI has demonstrated unfavorable behavior such as racial profiling, unfairly denying individuals loans, and incorrectly identifying basic information about users.”

Nick Caldwell, Chief Product Officer from Looker, offers the most optimistic endorsement of AI by suggesting we stop giving its decisions greater scrutiny than we do for humans. He uses a doctor as an example. We trust her professional judgment without forcing her to cite all the studies, research, journals, and lectures she consumed that factored into her decision. He acknowledges that sometimes AI will make mistakes. But for AI to do its best work, we have to get out of its way.

There are a few differences between AI and doctors. For one, we know exactly how, where, and by whom doctors are trained. We can audit that process and be sure it meets expected standards. Second, doctors are accountable for their mistakes. And there are certainly times when we get to question their judgment.

Legally, we still have not worked out what the training standard should be for AI, or who is liable when AI makes a mistake. Will insurance companies cover AI like they do other professionals? Despite these issues remaining open questions for now, it seems professionals in a number of industries are set to integrate it even more in their processes and in our lives.

Report: Self-driving car startup Aurora is raising capital at a $2B valuation

Early last year, LinkedIn co-founder and prolific venture capital investor Reid Hoffman called Chris Urmson “the Henry Ford of autonomous vehicles (AV).” The vote of confidence and big check from Hoffman, coupled with a team of deeply knowledgable AV entrepreneurs, has catapulted his company, Aurora Innovation, squarely into “unicorn” territory. Aurora, the developer of a full-stack… Continue reading Report: Self-driving car startup Aurora is raising capital at a $2B valuation

What effect will lower tax credits on Tesla and GM plug-ins have? Twitter poll results

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric cars outside dealership [photo: Patrick Reid]
For a bunch of electric-car owning acolytes, our readers are surprisingly sanguine about the reduction and eventual expiration of plug-in tax credits on electric-car sales.

We've reported extensively on the expiring tax credits, which will affect models from Tesla and GM in 2019. When Congress set up the tax credits in 2007, it scheduled them to sunset individually by automaker, after each automaker sold its first 200,000 plug-in cars.

DON'T MISS: Opinion: Expiring tax credits hurt U.S. automakers, favor imports

Tesla reached that milestone last July. General Motors hasn't specified exactly when it crossed the threshold, but it happened in the fourth quarter. After an automaker sells 200,000 plug-in cars, the $7,500 credits remain through the end of the quarter when it reaches the marker, and for the following quarter. After that the tax credit is cut in half for six months, in half again for another six months, and then disappears entirely. GM's cars get one more quarter of full credits before they begin winding down. Tesla's were cut in half Jan. 1.

Electric cars from every other automaker are still eligible for the full tax credit.

In our Twitter poll last week, we asked, “What effect will lower tax credits on Tesla and GM plug-ins have in the new year?”

Almost half our respondents, 46 percent, said they thought it would have “No effect.” Tesla buyers are a loyal bunch, and for the most part those who plunk $44,000 down on a car that can't be leased—or more for a Model S or X—can generally afford it with or without a tax credit.

The second largest group, 29 percent, said the lower tax credits will result in fewer Tesla sales. Even with a $2,000 price cut across the board, the reduction in the tax credits amounts to a $1,750 price increase for Teslas.

Relatively few readers thought the credit reduction, hitting only America's two largest electric-car makers, would result in more sales of imported electric cars in 2019. Only 15 percent chose “More import sales.”

READ THIS: Tesla Model 3 Mid Range misses $35,000 target by $9,000 even after price cut

Just 10 percent of our respondents thought that the three month window, until April 1, before tax credits on the Chevy Bolt EV and Volt begin winding down would result in a rush to Chevrolet dealerships to buy before the full tax credit gets reduced.

We're not sure what effect winding down the tax credits will have, but perhaps sales reports for the first and second quarters will show.

In the meantime, remember that our Twitter polls are not scientific, because our respondents are self-selected and our sample size is too small.