Apple – Page 951 – I wish I had more to offer

Apple Co-Founder Gives Up On Self Driving Cars – Yahoo Finance

”The hurdles to battery electric vehicles and complete autonomous driving are still quite high,” Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo recently said in an interview at Honda Motor Co.’s global headquarters. His company will focus on gasoline-electric hybrids, not full EVs, through 2030. As for fully autonomous vehicles, Honda will roll out incremental advances that offer real-world safety at… Continue reading Apple Co-Founder Gives Up On Self Driving Cars – Yahoo Finance

Mazda: 2020 Mazda CX-5 Continues To Separate Itself From Its Class

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Hyundai: 10 New Technologies Onboard the New Sonata

10 New Technologies Onboard the New Sonata – Hyundai Motor Group TECH We use cookies to improve our site and your experience. By using this site, you agree to our TERMS OF USE Close The new Sonata is ambitiously redefining the industry standard for what a mid-size sedan has to offer. The assortment of latest… Continue reading Hyundai: 10 New Technologies Onboard the New Sonata

6 killer apps for autonomous cars

From the time businesses started buying Apple II computers just to run VisiCalc, the power of the “killer app” has been undeniable. While mostly homogenized app ecosystems and largely browser-based activities like social media have dulled the concept of the killer app outside of console-exclusive video games, autonomous vehicles open a new market where the… Continue reading 6 killer apps for autonomous cars

Google Is Slurping Up Health Data—and It Looks Totally Legal

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Tesla Inside Out, Part Deux — Tesla Stores, Early Deliveries, & Seeing Elon

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Published on November 9th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Tesla Inside Out, Part Deux — Tesla Stores, Early Deliveries, & Seeing Elon

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November 9th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

Continuing our discussion of Tesla and David Havasi’s long history at Tesla, we took up where we left off, talking about early Model S days at Tesla. At the time that, Tesla had a gigantic factory in Fremont with almost nothing in it other than big, wild dreams and post-apocalyptic images of Blade Runner and The Highlander flashing through their heads as they looked across the expansive space. (No, it wasn’t the 1980s, but many of the Tesla staff in 2012 had probably come of age in the ’80s, and it seems the atmosphere in the nearly empty factory stirred up those images again.)

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David was brought onboard by George Blankenship, who was the architect behind Apple stores and The Gap before jumping into his VP of Design & Store Development role at Tesla. We are so used to Tesla stores now that they may seem like nothing special, but they shattered the auto industry mold by following that Apple model. The goal was basically to be the opposite of an auto dealership — welcoming, warm, cool, and a place you just enjoyed visiting. (Side note: David completely matches those characteristics, except that he’s a human, not a place.)

As David describes them, Apple stores were themselves revolutionary, something like “an art gallery and a petting zoo combined,” and Tesla replicated that feeling of premium, artistic, beautiful products being put on display but also, magically, available for touching and feeling and playing with. The atmosphere in a Tesla store is still something I love to experience. I’ll just go into my local store to see the eyes of wonder and excited tickling of inspiration that you can witness there. You can practically see into people’s brains as they let themselves genuinely consider buying a Tesla.

(At this point, we also had a bit of a chat about kids in Tesla stores, how much kids love Teslas, and how that relates to Tesla’s overall aim with the stores and the atmosphere therein. Then there was some discussion about people comparing Teslas to other vehicles in their class, about the different stages of tech adoption, and about Tesla’s leadership. To separate all of that out from the core of the interview, it will be in a separate video coming later.)

Coming to David’s first time seeing Elon Musk, we had to go back to a time when there were about a dozen small delivery teams around the country. David explained that those teams were made up of people with diverse backgrounds who sometimes had to operate and solve problems in situations they were completely unfamiliar with. He noted that, for example, back then the company was so small and bootstrapping it so much that the delivery teams had to build the trailers for the cars (“build” as in “put together,” sort of like IKEA furniture). Finding people on the team with the right skills for each part of the process was like a game of, “What’s your background? What can you do?” They had to pull together skills and experience and combine them into something like a real-world, come-to-life scrapbook. David shared a funny story about doing that one long day and night.

Getting back to the post-apocalyptic Fremont factory, David talked a bit about watching early Tesla engineers work right on the floor there and develop Tesla vehicles, the manufacturing system, and more. That’s also where he spotted Elon Musk for the first time. It’s not a story of Elon doing anything crazy — or even anything at all — but it’s a fun little story that certainly made me laugh.

The best part of this portion of our interview series, though, related to the head of manufacturing at the time and the final product his delivery team created one night. You just have to watch the video or listen to the podcast for the ending of this episode of “Tesla Inside Out.”

Related: “Tesla Inside Out — Tesla History From 7-Year Insider“

Side note: David and I will be the featured entertainment at a coming Tesla Florida Enthusiasts event on November 24 in Sarasota, Florida. Join us if you can!
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About the Author

Zachary Shahan is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He's also the CEO of Important Media. 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, Canada, and Curaçao.

Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA] — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in this company and feels like it is a good cleantech company to invest in. But he offers no investment advice and does not recommend investing in Tesla or any other company.

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Tesla Inside Out — Tesla History From 7-Year Insider

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Published on November 9th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Tesla Inside Out — Tesla History From 7-Year Insider

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November 9th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

I recently met a gentleman named David Havasi while charging our Tesla Model 3 at a ChargePoint station at a Whole Foods I frequently visit. He recognized me from CleanTechnica and I quickly learned he worked at Tesla for 7 years, until just recently. We got talking, talking, talking, and talking. I wasn’t sure if he’d be camera shy to repeat some of what he told me (or more) on camera, but it turned out he very much wasn’t shy — he had actually worked on Broadway before working at Tesla!

To kick off our first on-camera interview, I got some background on David, which included being raised by a professional Detroit gearhead. His dad had actually been instrumental in designing the now dominant crossover vehicle style, which David humorously relayed was an odd-sounding idea when his dad excitedly explained it to him many years ago.

From that gearhead background and a deep passion to help protect our climate and environmental resources, when David found out about the AC Propulsion tzero (read our exclusive, fascinating piece on the tzero if you haven’t done so yet) in 2013, and then soon after that the Tesla Roadster, he got super excited about electric vehicles. (David’s Broadway background was kicking in well at this point, helping to animate the history — I recommend watching.)

Interestingly, David noted that it was the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that really pushed him to get into the industry, that pushed him to try to get a job at Tesla. This was in 2010. With such a wild few years (for Tesla and politically), it seems like lifetimes have passed since then, but that was less than a decade ago. We discussed in a bit of wonder how far Tesla has come since then. Back in 2010, Tesla was almost unknown. A story about Tesla would be a short sidebar of Motor Trend. “Tesla clickbait” was definitely not a thing!

After a short side tangent about lingo from the ’90s and ’00s, David talked a bit about the early Tesla recruitment process and how he joined the Tesla team, starting with a meeting in Palo Alto in 2010 and then his eventual hire in May 2012.

He also discussed early roles at Tesla, and how much the unique corporate culture of “builders” and everyone being “ultra hardcore” led to its success. We talked about the culture changing a bit and how trying to retain the deep essence of Tesla is an ongoing process. “The ultra hardcore mentality can’t be an archaic notion from a bygone era,” David said. “We can’t become complacent,” was his critical parting message to colleagues when leaving the company earlier this year.

Getting back to 2012, he noted how empty and “post-apocalyptic” the Fremont factory seemed. Tesla was only using about 10% of the space, and David had some hilarious stories of riding bikes across the empty space from one side to another, including one funny story of seeing Elon along the way and circling back to spy on him again. We also talked about how much different the factory is today, how impressive it is, and my first big impression from our tour of the factory earlier this year: “The World Inside Tesla Is Completely Different From The Media’s Portrayal Of Tesla.”

One interesting tidbit David shared is that Elon and Jerome, in the past at least, required at least two incremental improvements a week in the factory.

We got into a short discussion about Tesla Easter eggs, humor, and Tesla’s many literary and film allusions, including a fun story about Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest experiencing a “turn it up to 11” inside joke while test driving a Tesla Model S. David also noted a fun Monty Python tweet he sent out a while back that Elon Musk responded to and then Eric Idle of Monty Python also responded to. David talked a little bit about how the younger staffers at Tesla miss some of these references so well known to our generations, like “All our patents are belong to you,” which made me think of one of my recent joke articles, an article many people loved but others were confused by. In case you missed it, the article was “All The Problems With Our New Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus.” Luckily, David was a fan of the article and even called it poetic! He actually had some thoughtful philosophical reflections on the blank article. Admittedly, as off topic as that part of the discussion was, I think it’s what got us most animated and enthusiastic. That said, David is highly enthusiastic throughout the interview and definitely relayed more interesting and important stories throughout the talk. It’s worth a watch, so I hope you’ll now go click play and watch or listen to the conversation.

We wrapped up the conversation talking about elementary school enthusiasm around Tesla, Elon Musk’s role as a legendary historical figure, how the media narrative around Elon has warped the story of his life and business career, David’s first days at Tesla, and Tesla achieving “the impossible.” There’s much in there that can’t be summarized in text, but I think you now have a good overview of what’s in the conversation.

We have more “Tesla Inside Out” articles underway. We’ll publish the videos and summaries soon. Stay tuned.

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VinSolutions and INFINITI ICAR-X App Integration Enhances the Digital Showroom Experience with Merged Databases

MISSION, Kan., Nov. 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — VinSolutions and INFINITI announce the integration between INFINITI’s ICAR-X Sales app and VinSolutions Connect CRM, combining the two databases to give retailers unabridged access to key customer information from one centralized source. Through this integration INFINITI retailers now have the enhanced ability to offer a seamless online to in-store experience… Continue reading VinSolutions and INFINITI ICAR-X App Integration Enhances the Digital Showroom Experience with Merged Databases

Why James Dyson couldn’t keep his electric car dream alive – Automotive News

The reason it was even conceivable for Dyson Ltd. to make an electric car may also have been why its project was doomed to fail: They’re simply too easy to make. The British company, best known for its expensive vacuum cleaners, has now abandoned its $2.5 billion plan to branch out and take on the… Continue reading Why James Dyson couldn’t keep his electric car dream alive – Automotive News

The Morning After: A 900HP electric Mustang with a stick shift

Sponsored Links Mustang Lithium Ford Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. This year at SEMA, the stick shift is back, and Xiaomi has taken smartphone megapixel wars to a new level. Also, we’ve reviewed macOS Catalina and Facebook’s Portal TV, and the FCC has given its blessing to the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. Row… Continue reading The Morning After: A 900HP electric Mustang with a stick shift