Tesla of late: recent events and mullings

Germany succeeds in impeding progress on pollution abatement and climate change remediation

The endless lies against Tesla: is there a conspiracy to smear the company?

Today's big lie: A recall in China for 285,000 Tesla cars. This was prominently reported by The Wall Street Journal, The Street, the ever-dumpster-diving Bloomberg, among other news regurgitation outlets. No, there is no recall of Tesla cars in China! It is the case that the Chinese state authoritarian decided to be the only country in the world to make an issue of Tesla's cruise control...of course ignoring the countless other brands and millions of cars with cruise control. They want Tesla's cruise control to be harder to use because — horrors — cruise control might do what it's intended to do. This is China turning against Tesla, after falling all over themselves to help Tesla establish a plant there — which now seems to have been a ploy so that they could more readily steal Tesla's technology to help native Chinese car companies. And here we have American news outlets haplessly aiding and abetting the undermining of Tesla that China is now undertaking. Tesla is bowing to China authoritarians, to issue a software update to appease their arbitrary demand. In case there is any confusion: A software update is not a "recall": a recall is where a product has to be returned to the seller to rectify a physical issue that requires hands-on attention.

Speaking of Tesla being systematically smeared... Recall back in April when a woman went into the Shanghai Auto Show, jumped onto the roof of an on-display Tesla Model 3, screaming "Tesla brakes failed me". This went viral in China social media, who spread inflammatory, unsubstantiated rumors supporting this braking claim. Worse, media outlets also went with the story, giving credence to something without substantiation. Tesla produced vehicle logs which showed that the brakes on her family vehicle were operating normally...and that her father, who was driving the car, was speeding and failed to apply the brakes in time to prevent the collision that occurred. Tellingly, when Tesla offered to have the vehicle records reviewed by an independent third party, she refused...and further decided to purport that any such logs from Tesla would be fraudulent anyway. This escapade inspired copy-cats, as in the case of the Model X owner who also claimed brake failure, and demanded that Tesla provide him with a new Model X. Mr. Wen subsequently admitted that he fabricated the story, ostensibly to play off of the brake failure frenzy to defraud Tesla.

The lying and smearing continued with one Ricco Kimbrough publishing a TikTok video claiming that the steering wheel on his just-gotten Tesla came apart in his hands, with him showing the broken airbag unit and yoke in a Model S Long Range. In the video he compains: "Okay Tesla, this is unacceptable, I just received my new Tesla and literally my airbag is just hanging out like this. It's not even connected to my steering wheel. What is going on, Tesla, we just got this car." His video gained over two million views and, of course, various media outlets reported it as a story without doing any corroboration. He even posted a follow-up videl portraying him going into the Tesla showroom to complain, and even advising other potential customers entering the facility not to buy a Tesla vehicle. As you can guess, the whole thing was a malicious fabrication: he had not purchased a Tesla vehicle. He admitted to this only after some viewers of the video scrutinized it and noticed that the car was in Transport Mode, not in a state suitable for customer use. He claims to have apologized to Elon Musk for this crap. His behavior is just so characteristic of the low quality of people occupying our society now, where morals and ethics matter naught.

Commercials that are doing wonders for EV sales

Tesla: garnering a reputation as The Vaporware Company

The fact is that Tesla has developed a pattern of vaporware. In January, Tesla started promoting redesigned Model S and Model X cars, which customers could order, and which would start deliveries in March. It is now the second half of April, and no customer has a new Model S or X...and deliveries are now pushed out to July. Incredibly, no customer-intended Model S or X vehicles have been produced since last year. The Cybertruck was unveiled in 2019. There are reportedly over a million pre-orders for this truck; but it is expected that volume production and deliveries won't be happening until 2022. The Tesla Semi was unveiled in 2017, with production to occur by 2020. Companies that ordered the Semi are still waiting for production to start. Elon Musk announced the Solar Roof in 2016. That product was delayed for years by virtue of lack of readiness as a viable product, had to go through several redesigns, and to date has seen just a very small number of installations. Worse, the price of the Solar Roof has gone up dramatically — even for customers who signed a contract for the product a year ago, with customers reporting that their contract price has doubled.

Clearly, this is not the way to run a company...particularly a company which is predicated upon a race against time to have the planet switch to clean energy to prevent a runaway greenhouse effect. Tesla is generating an increasing amount of frustration and ill-will with its customers...who are tiring of the empty promises and are ripe for a better-run, alternative company or companies to come along and actually deliver on what they promise.

GM announces elevated air pollution

Fabreeze vent clip?

GM is going all electric by 2035? Um, not exactly.

Speaking of which... Teslarati reports that customers pursuing purchase of a Mercedes-Benz EQA EV on the company website get to the end of the process to find a banner advisory saying "Your configuration is unique and it can take up to 12 weeks to build your vehicle. We found similar new vehicles that are already available." What vehicles are those? Polluting combustion vehicles. This is emblematic of a company that has not seriously committed to EV manufacturing, that it would take a quarter of a year for them to manufacture an assembly line vehicle. Compare with Tesla's timeline to produce an ordered car, with their fully committed, efficient EV manufacturing process. The German auto industry dismissed EVs for years; and it shows.

Ford: How traditional car companies will say anything

Reviewers have found that the Mach-E is a mediocre car that Ford is trying to make exciting by attaching the Mustang name to it, and add razzle-dazzle with a supersonic-sounding name suffix. The car has ridiculous elements. To make ICE car transitioners comfortable, there is a setting for having the car make engine sounds through the stereo when you're driving or accelerating. For audio entertainment control there is a volume knob on the center display screen: yes, a knob physically attached to the front of the glass! And that's just one of the many bewildering knobs in the cabin. The menu system is poorly designed, as reviewers found when they went to adjust the audio playback treble. Ford's Co-Pilot 360 self-driving is primitive, with no audio alerts and poor control such that it's easy to wander into another lane or go off the road with light pressure on the steering wheel. Range is spec'ed at a mediocre 266 miles; but it's effectively less than that, because when you go to a charger, once 80% charge is reached, the car forces the already medicre charging rate of 150 kW to plummet, which means that on long trips you're going to be either stopping more often or spend a lot more time charging. And Ford has no charging network, meaning you're left to use the public network, along with so many other brands of EVs contending for the working, not-broken chargers on that limited network, which remains distinctly inferior to Tesla's. As reviewers have said, the Mach-E is an overall mediocre EV that is pretty much where Tesla was in 2016, and which Ford would have trouble selling if they had given the car its own model name.

Byton collapses. I'm not surprised.

About a year ago I took a look at Byton, and came away shaking my head. They were intending to produce a luxury SUV for $45,000. It would have a 48-inch screen across the front, face recognition, Air Touch hand gestures, swiveling front seats, entertainment screens for back seat passengers, and more. It was all ridiculously unrealistic. There is no way that that much technology could be reliably provisioned in a luxury SUV for that price (unless every vehicle was being heavily subsidized). On top of that, they were opening more than two dozen extravagant Experience Centers in central metropolitan areas to promote their vehicles. All this while a large and very expensive factory was being outfitted and staffed for pending production, with attendant contractual commitments to suppliers. Byton was attempting to go first class with everything, as if they were already an established, successful vehicle company with assured income flow. This was self-delusion. You simply can't do that. The numbers don't work; and the tragic result speaks to that.

Why the obsession with range?

The answer boils down to two principal motivators.
First, drivers seek the psychological comfort of their vehicle being able to go long distances without refueling. The more range, the more comfortable they are. "More" is simply appealing, whether it is essential or not. The psychology at work here can be illustrated by a point in our technological history that has all but faded from our societal memory (and which I don't believe has been recalled in this context). Back in the 1980s, video recording on tape was a hugely popular pursuit among the population. The VCR was invented by Sony, utilizing a relatively compact Beta tape cassette which could record a one hour program in high quality, and a two hour program with somewhat reduced quality. The Sony VCR was an instant hit, becoming a major money-maker for Sony. That naturally incited other companies to enter into that marketplace, where some of them licensed the Sony technology — but others saw a way to compete, and introduced the VHS tape format, with greater capacity. While Sony was the originator, and had the superior technology, VHS won out, as their tape cassette eclipsed the Beta cassette. The factor in this was capacity: the "more" factor.
The second motivator is about proportion. The United States is roughly in the form of a rectangle, criss-crossed by an expansive network of highways. With a wide variety of natural wonders, things to see, and interesting cities to visit, the call to "See the USA in your Chevrolet" has always beckoned. When people think about seeing their country, the scale of that country factors into their thinking. In a smallish country, a 320 km range would be comfortable for the citizens. In a country like the United States, it's a range of 400 miles or so that makes them comfortable — even though two contiguous hours of driving is the safety limit, after which a person needs at least a 20 minute break (during which charging could occur in simultaneity).

GM held an EV day

More doom and gloom from traditional automakers

Here's the thing, and I emphasize: The future is what you make it.
By definition, the future isn't here. Moaning about what could happen is a self-defeating empty exercise and only adheres you to the past. About Toyota: This is the world's most capital-valued auto company, having immense resources at their disposal. Have they vigorously pursued the demonstrated EV future of vehicles? No, they have diddled with hydrogen — well established to be a ridiculously inefficient technology for personal vehicles — and disparaged electric vehicles. They undermine an EV future and then lament an EV future. Corporate schizophrenia, leading to technology paralysis. They can't seem to see the significance of Tesla passing them in the high speed lane. (There's an even greater, historical irony here: Tesla's Fremont, California plant had been a Toyota manufacturing facility as part of a joint venture with General Motors, the plant being their NUMMI facility. Had Toyota pursued future innovation, they could have stayed at the plant, rather than selling it to Elon Musk, and been the foremost producer of EVs, the way Tesla is now at Fremont.) In popular vernacular, this is Fail. (Recall that Toyota is notorious for their misinformation campaigns intended to malign electric vehicles, as exemplified by the "self-charging hybrid" nonsense.) Where are the TV commercials from traditional automakers extolling the benefits of electric vehicles and educating their historic customers about the future of transportation? Few and far between, from a small number of companies. With increasing numbers of people alarmed about the state of the planet's climate and a potentially irreversible acceleration to climatic disaster, you have a built-in selling point for EVs, and yet there's almost no promotion based upon that. Further, with the economy good, this is prime time for selling EVs. A fool passes up opportunity.

The most valuable U.S. vehicle maker in this nation's history

Autopilot has a real competitor in GM's Super Cruise, right? Take a closer look for the reality

Mazda: inventing lies to continue promoting diesel

From Mazda's stance, you can see the extent to which traditional vehicle makers are in league with oil companies, and how entrenced is the resistance to doing anything about climate change when dollar-signs are in front of corporate eyes.

The Mustang Mach-E

No EV tax credit extension, because of Trump and the Republicans

EVs are increasingly appealing to buyers, but are they considering what they're actually getting?

Many people will fail to perceive what they are not getting with legacy vehicle brands, for lack of self-education. They will not get convenient long-distance travel, as afforded by Tesla's Supercharger network. They will not get the wealth of functionality that is intrinsic to Tesla vehicles, thanks to Tesla's commitment to continuing software development. They will not get updates which both keep their vehicle current with the latest functionality developments and fix problems with their specific vehicle thanks to Tesla's fleet monitoring. They will not have a comprehensive smartphone app, which allows vehicle control as well as governance over other products, such as solar energy system. They will not have direct access to the vehicle maker, as Tesla provides via both voice command and text communication. They will not get Tesla's on-board neural net computer. They will not get Tesla's advanced technology in batteries, vehicle suspension, computer interface, or self-driving.

The Cybertruck is shown

So, what will the acceptance be? The initial reaction in general was: what the heck? It takes some getting used to, but only because it's so unconventional, not ugly. What the design ultimately does is make you question the almost uniform design of pickup trucks until now, where they have gotten more and more ridiculous in trying to look "pretty", with the only innovation of late is an articulated liftgate. With advertising trying to portray conventional pickup trucks as "rugged", the reality is that they have been easily damaged sheet metal. As to design: Pickup truck makers have increasingly been emphasizing aesthetics, ostensibly to compete with SUVs in trying to sway more of the buying public into pickup truck purchases. In this, they are grossly straying from the mission of the pickup truck, which it to be a utility vehicle, to carry things in a open bed. The Cybertruck brings the marketplace back to fundamentals, while at the same time looking to the future. The earth needs vehicles which are benign to the environment. Pickup trucks which devour fossil fuels, get 12 miles per gallon, and belch huge amounts of emissions are incompatible with environmental imperatives.

Will it sell? As of Monday, November 25, 2019, just days after unveiling, Tesla reports some 200,000 pre-orders, and climbing. Will it be profitable? What many may not appreciate is that the design isn't just to be dramatic: it is also to make fabrication easier and more economical. The shell is formed of a few roughly flat sections (polygons) of stainless steel. It is much easier to make stamping dies which chop steel into mostly flat plates than it is to form elegantly curved panels. Quality control is also that much easier. How about batteries? With a 500 mile range touted for the high end version, we should expect some significant evolution of Tesla batteries between now and the 2022 sale date of the Cybertruck. There's a battery seminar upcoming early next year when we should get a sense of Tesla progress in this area.

What of electric competition? We know that conventional pickup truck makers will ever-so-slowly bring out electric versions of their trucks, expectedly looking essentially the same as their gas guzzlers. (Ford says they will be introducing an electric F-150 pickup "in a few years": no environmental imperative there.) The one electric pickup truck maker of prominence is Rivian, with their R1T truck. The R1T should appear long before the Cybertruck. Though more expensive, the R1T offers admirable performance and specs, and should help acclimate the truck-buying public to electric trucks, not to mention getting so many ICE vehicles out of the environment. For that, Rivian is welcome in the electric space.

Naturally, media which trafficks on sensation was absolutely fixated on the windows succumbing to steel balls thrown at them by Tesla's chief designer, and reported that to the exclusion of salient information about this revolutionary vehicle.

Unfortunately, there's are two conspicuously bad design elements of the truck that I haven't seen mentioned by any observers... First: The wheels stick way out from the body. This makes Cybertruck a menace on the highway, as it will kick up all kinds of stones and debris, propelling that shrapnel at all vehicles that follow, resulting in damage to paint and glass on those vehicles. This is bad. Second: In making the body and glass "a nearly impenetrable exoskeleton", as the website touts, they are making it nearly impossible for rescuers to extricate occupants from the vehicle in emergencies. In a crash with a fuel-laden ICE vehicle that results in a fire, unconscious occupants of the Cybertruck are likely to die by being burned alive, as no one will be able to get them out of the truck in time.

Toyota has become the enemy of the good

But, Elon minimizes Model S and Y

Every automaker needs to have not just models, but tiers of vehicle offerings. Steve Jobs realized the need for tiers in the 1980s, where Apple then stratified its computer offerings into "consumer" and "pro" offerings, where those needing more power and features could choose the higher level computer. The S and Y are supposed to be Tesla's flagship vehicles, offering features and carrying capacity that the lower tier models can't offer. The S and Y offer more sophisticated suspension, better performance, greater range, dash display, full glass roof, liftgate, and other amenities that are too costly and/or inappropriate for the EV maker's more entry level cars.

The Model S in particular could be Tesla's "Wow!" product. When you see an auto show and view the prototype vehicles, "wow" is the reaction. The Model S could be that. It's almost criminal that the Model S stagnated. Every other automaker's design department must wonder what's wrong with Tesla that they are ignoring this abundantly obvious opportunity to excel.

There probably would not be a Tesla if it were not for the Model S. To have it now be neglected by Tesla is shameful.

Model S and Y evolution verified to continue

Realism anchorage aside, these product glimpses reveal two things. First, that Tesla is very much an innovation company, their minds racing with new ideas, furthering technology and their specific products. Second, this tells us that their flagship cars remain very much in the forefront of their thinking, such that we should expect continual evolution of the S and X. This bodes well for those models, which many of us kind of thought that Tesla had lost interest in. I think what happened is that the advent of real EV competitors — particularly Porsche — brought Tesla back to realization that their larger cars were their best platforms for major, brand-defining innovations, and that not developing their flagship cars would be a huge, wasted opportunity. I think, also, that concentrating so long on their lower level vehicles had left their design and engineering teams feel somewhat stifled, where returning to the higher level vehicles was refreshing (no pun intended).

Porsche releases pictures of its electric Taycan

China grants Tesla a remarkable tax exemption

Why are the Chinese doing this? Several reasons. One reason is being impressed with Tesla's commitment to China, bringing their technology and brand fame to that country. Most important is China's action plan for a clean environment. Key to that goal has been electric vehicles. However, the cars that Chinese manufacturers have been producing have been disappointments. A large number of EV manufacturers have popped up in China, but almost all are under-capitalized, and the quality and capability of those EVs has been so lacking that the used EVs have almost no value. Their most prominent EV maker, Nio, doesn't have their own factory and has been losing about $4 million per day, and sold only 10,000 vehicles over the past year. The Chinese government is essentially welcoming Tesla into the country as an example to Chinese EV makers: "here is how it's done". China also expects Musk to bring his other innovations to the country, where the government can greatly facilitate bringing them to fruition (think inter-city hyperloops).

How good is Tesla self-driving? Nowhere near good enough

After years of testing, a billion miles of fleet driving, and immense data collection, Autopilot is not measuring up to even basic autonomy standards. Its driving skill is roughly equivalent to an 8-year-old behind the wheel. Do I use Autopilot? No, not while it's still branded as "beta", where if something happens, the onus is on me for having chosen to use a less-than-production facility. I also don't have a lot of confidence in Tesla's programmers, based upon what I've been experiencing with updates. After the most recent update, in the last week of July, when that finished I went to look at the screen for what changed in the update, and the text box was solid white: nothing in it. After updates, I've also experienced the disconcerting and annoying defect that whenever I would open or close the driver door, the radio would come on! After an update about two years ago, the directional signals would not work. All this undermines customer confidence is the software work at Tesla. I'm not going to trust my life to software which is manifestly problematic.

J.B. Straubel steps aside

Very annoyingly, clueless, sensationalizing news outlets such as Yahoo Finance [Akiko Fujita on 'The Ticker'] characterized this as an "executive shakeup", which it obviously is not: they made no mention of Straubel's own explanation for leaving, which would be less dramatic and not incite continued traffic to their site.

Elon says no Model S or X refresh coming

This dashed the hopes of Tesla flagship owners who were looking to upgrade, and new buyers seeking a high end Tesla. I think the reason is clear: Model Y production needs to start ASAP in order to generate income that the company needs, where they can't afford to put resources into less lucrative products. Circumstances indicate that the Model 3 start-up ordeal screwed up Tesla's scheduling roadmap in general, where I suspect that they wanted and expected to already be in the early stage of Model Y production by now. Instead, they are in a crunch. Given how stale the Model S design and outfitting is now, I suspect that it was scheduled to be refreshed, but that is now pushed out, where the huge costs of creating new body stamping dies alone was too much for the current budget.

So, instead of the dramatically redesigned Model S that would insure Tesla's place in the high-end market, there will be only incremental improvements. While these are welcome, they are not exactly exciting, and are not enough to cause current Model S owners to want to upgrade. This is as disappointing as it is disheatening, for both Tesla owners and for the company, which needs to maintain its position in the upper market. Vehicle body and interior designs from competitors are leaving Tesla behind. The Model 3 was born on the back of the Model S, whose purchases made the Model 3 possible. Now, the Model 3 and its Y offshoot are holding S back. It's a sad situation that is going to hurt Tesla in both prestige and profits.

After years of failed leadership, BMW's CEO resigns

The cost of wait-and-see on the part of German automakers

The Mercedes Benz Daimler company is also hurting. While Tesla has been surging in the marketplace, Daimler has only recently dabbled in EVs, and is now in its third earnings expectation downgrade this year — which is exacerbated by them being yet another German company facing the consequences of the German diesel emissions cheating scandal.

BMW: firmly in denial

It is as though BMW is unaware of Tesla's dramatic sales around the world, and particulary of EVs coming to dominate vehicle sales in Norway. Frölich's assertion about "pressing these cars into the market" is particularly ingenuine given that BMW had created a single, lackluster EV, the i3, with a goofy look and meager electric range.

While BMW's love affair with diesel continues, Europe's CO2 levels have been rising, inciting the head of Europe's Transport and Environment lobby group to assert that vehicle makers are declining to make EVs as they promote last century's polluting technology, principally in high-profit SUVs.

The revelatory value of Tesla vehicle dashcams

The dashcam sequences we are all seeing are important because they reinforce the whole self-driving pursuit, which is this: people should not be driving cars. The dashcams are capturing proof of the widespread idiocy, irresponsible behavior, and indifference that is the norm for far too many drivers. These low quality people are responsible for death, destruction, general waste, and the elevation of insurance rates. We need self-driving, where the technology will obey laws, honor lane dividers and traffic signals, and be fully aware of all those around their vehicles. The addition of inter-vehicle networking will further lessen the chance of tragedy. The sooner we can get there, the better, and Tesla is the company which initiated the effort.

Key points from the June 2019 shareholders meeting

• Elon Musk emphasized that there is no demand problem: "I want to make clear there's not a demand problem. Sales have far exceeded production and production has been pretty good, adding that Model 3 sales have far outstripped the sales of its main competitors, both in units and in dollar amount.
• As to the state of Tesla's EV competition: Elon Musk stressed that even as of this date, in 2019, no EV competitor has matched the range of the first Tesla vehicle, of 2012. He also presented a graph of the efficiency of Tesla vehicles versus EV competitors, where the competitors are markedly inferior in efficiency, with the Audi E-tron's efficiency behing half that of Tesla vehicles.
• A stunning statistic is that 63% of the trade-in vehicles that Tesla is getting are ordinary, mid-range cars, like Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. This indicates that a lot of car buyers are fed up with laggard car companies, exploitive dealerships, costly maintenance, and the overall inferior experience of ICE vehicles, and that they are willing to pay more for a better experience.
• Tesla is continuing to pursue plans to offer its own vehicle insurance to its customers. Elon Musk said that a "minor acquisition" needs to happen first.
• The company intends to have a 400+ mile range vehicle offering in the near future: "it won't be long before we have a 400-mile-range car."
• A futuristic pickup truck is planned, intended to be much more compelling than the industry-leading Ford F150, and may be announced this summer. Its price should be just under $50,000.
• The Gigafactory in Nevada is currently operating at 85% capacity, where battery production is what is currently limiting what Tesla can do.
• There will be an upcoming "battery and powertrain investor day" in which the plans for the Maxwell Technologies acquisition may be addressed.

Best $50,000 sports car

Gasoline prices continue to climb

In years past we've seen SUV owners being interviewed at filling stations, wailing and complaining about how much it costs to fill their behemouth vehicles. As prices rose back then, people were abandoning those monstrosities to return to more rational personal vehicles. With any luck, we'll see more of that now, and the population in general adopting EVs in greater numbers. In the mean time, we will continue to see Ford heavily advertising their largest SUV on the basic of how huge it is (with no mention of MPG or impact on the environment, of course.)

Model S and X get "Raven" upgrade

EV laggards feel the pain

Even when traditional auto companies create an EV, they still can't bring themselves to break from the ICE design mentality. Take a look at the Jaguar I-Pace and the Audi e-tron. What do you see at the front? A huge grille. Grilles are for cooling the enormously inefficient heat engines that last century's vehicles used, and yet here is an enormous grille on the front of an EV. It looks as stupid as it is an aerodynamic detriment to the car's mileage. These guys tenaciously cling to the past. And how thorough was their engineering to create an EV? Open the hood of an Audi e-tron: you will find it crammed with fully exposed vehicle equipment. This is not an EV that was designed from scratch: it is the adaptation of an ICE vehicle to somehow make it an EV. You can call this "uncommitted engineering". Open the hood of an I-Pace and you see a dinky storage area that looks like an afterthought, and its trunk lacks any meaningful deep storage (just enough for the charging cable). And check out all the ICE-traditional buttons and knobs in the cabin. What you're seeing in the offerings from these traditional vehicle companies is how far they are behind Tesla.

Hopes for a Model S refresh

It is natural for an auto manufacturer's most recent advances to inspire and lend to its refreshes of older designs, and here we can expect the Model 3's interior to inspire redesign of the Model S interior. The Model 3's dramatically improved, directable HVAC air flow certainly makes sense as a great improvement over the Model S's traditional individual vents. The Model 3's display, however, does not make sense: that "surface mounted tablet" design was a cost expedient that looks okay in a lower end vehicle, but frankly would look "cheap" in a Tesla flagship vehicle, and particularly so when compared with the displays being featured in high end futuristic cars. Extrapolated for a Model S, such a horizontal display would be somewhat bigger and wider to differentiate the S — but that would be a bad thing, in that it would make for a greater reach to control things, as well as eyes being further diverted away from straight-ahead. Rather than deriving from "below" (the Model 3), the display for a refreshed Model S should be from "above": the new Roadster. The Roadster samples we have seen has a dramatic display, integrated into the dash, portrait orientation, but much more elongated and sloped downward. It looks terrific and works much better for reach, control, and information display. Another cost expedient in the Model 3 was elimination of the smaller display in the "instrument cluster" area, behind the steering wheel. That's a wonderful thing to have in the Model S, and should be retained, in a modernized form. This is a vital-information display which can be seen without moving your head, by just diverting your eyes downward a bit, momentarily. Now, the center console. The one in the Model S has always looked dumb, and desperately needs improvement. The one in the Model 3 is much better thought out and is much more useful — but still could be improved. One thing that needs to change is those front cupholders. Americans obsess over them; but there are many of us who never use cupholders and don't want console space wasted on them. So, make them removable, to make more storage space. And please: eliminate the shiny chrome on the external mirrors that results in blinding glare when driving toward the sun. On styling: The exterior design needs to change to visually distinguish it from the Model 3. When you see a Model 3 on the road, it can be hard to tell if it's that or a Model S. Your premium car model needs to stand out relative to its junior.

Then there is the glass roof. Yes, its thinness makes for more headroom, but let's be honest: it's a gimmick. Unlike a solid roof, it's freezing cold in the winter and painfully hot in the summer, which makes for elevated HVAC fan noise and wasted energy as valuable energy is diverted to compensate for the roof temperature's effect on the cabin. This, to the detriment of driving range. It is also the case that the glass roof has to be heavily tinted to try to keep the car interior from becoming a greenhouse, to the extent that it's almost impossible to see anything through that roof, which makes the glass pointless. And despite the tinting, sun glare comes right through that roof, meaning that you're not only fighting windshield glare when driving around, but also direct sunlight coming through the roof (which is also baking the top of your head). Bring back the solid metal roof.

Hopefully, some other things will be retained. The dramatic daytime running lights on the Model S are a definite "keeper": they look terrific, and are far and away much more dramatic that what's on the Model X and Model 3.

If this refresh turns out to be a low-effort carry-over of Model 3 ingredients, customers will be sorely disappointed, and Tesla's bottom line will suffer.

Industry foot-dragging continues

Gigafactory 1 expansion plans and Panasonic

On the Q1 2019 production report

Particularly noted as concerning, though, was the dramatic reduction in Model S and X sales. This decline is not surprising, for multiple reasons. First, the Model 3 attracted buyers away from Tesla's other offerings, particularly so as Tesla offered a compelling range of Model 3 versions, all the way up to "performance". Second (and most disappointing), Tesla has literally pushed the S and X aside in its complete focus on the Model 3: the S and X are now very stale products, crying out for an upgrade. Worse, Tesla has drastically reduced configuration choices in the S and X. It's like Tesla is saying to the buying public, "Yeah, we'll sell you one of those if you really want one, but we're just not interested in those models any more." This is a ridiculous situation: you don't shun your flagship products, and you don't ignore an opportunity to sell a lot more cars by refreshing your offerings. If any other automaker tried to keep selling the same, unrefreshed car for over two years they would be ridiculed, and rightly so.

Toyota's shameful campaign against electric vehicles

There are two things conspicuously wrong here. First and most glaring is the stupid "self-charging" garbage, which makes it sound like Toyota has made the breakthrough to perpetual motion. The reality, of course, is that this is just a gasoline-powered vehicle which is (inefficiently) converting some of that power to electricity to charge the puny NiMH battery that Toyota has been putting into its hybrids since the 1997 Prius. This brings us to point 2, which is that it is now the 21st century and Toyota is still pushing hybrids. (They have been running another commercial called Why Toyota Hybrid which says that "Toyota has been leading hybrid technology for over 20 years. The time for hybrid is NOW." As should be abundantly evident, as their name implies, hybrids were intended to be short-term, transitional technology, which should have naturally evolved into a plug-in electric vehicle. The time for hybrids was in the past. (Ironic is the persistent haze in the commercial, which is emblematic of what has been wrong with the past hundred years of automotive technology, and which this Corolla is perpetuating.)

This is Toyota shooting themselves in the foot, defining themselves as yet another traditional car company clinging to its polluting past, denigrating an inevitable future that Toyota doesn't want to face. This, of all companies, was the one best positioned to be a leader in electric vehicles, and instead chose to be an industry laggard, screwing around with hydrogen rather than pursue the demonstrably more efficient, wholly viable, and here-now, battery electric vehicle approach. What's particularly bad about the commercial is the damage that it is doing in confusing the hell out of the car-buying public. Hopefully, that public will push aside all the confusion to look to Tesla as the one, prominent car company that purely and consistently offers just electric vehicles.

The manifest contradiction in this commercial is that you will get left behind if you stick with Toyota.

Update: On January 24, 2019, Norway has banned Toyota's "self-charging hybrid" commercials as being deliberately misleading. The Norwegian Consumer Authority said in a statement (via Elbil, translated from Norwegian):
"In the Consumer Authority's opinion, it is misleading to give the impression that the power to the hybrid battery is free of charge, since the electricity produced by the car has consumption of gasoline as a necessary condition: Regenerative energy will in all practical respects have consumption of gasoline as a necessary condition.
On this basis, we conclude that marketing is a misleading commercial practice in violation of Section 7, first paragraph, etc. In our view, the commercial practice will also be suitable for influencing consumers to make an economic decision that they would not otherwise have made, cf. § 7, second paragraph.
The current marketing is therefore an unfair commercial practice in violation of the prohibition in § 6 fourth paragraph, cf. the first paragraph."

Irrationality dominates in the United States

These traditional U.S. automakers are complicit with the mindless members of the public who want to buy consumptive SUVs and pickup trucks — the environment be damned. Americans are doing what they always do, which is to lapse into fantasy and deny the realities around them (the hallmark of Trump supporters). They will tell you how important their children are to them, at the same time that they are leaving their children an environment which is much worse off than how they inherited it as children of their parents. These are the same people who, in the last gasoline shortage, were interviewed next to their gas-guzzing SUVs, standing by the pump, wailing about how much it was costing to fill their tank. To these people, the past is always the past and could never recur. The reality is that supply problems always recur, and only then will these people be shaken out of their stupor and bemoan having chosen their behemoth vehicle.

The S.E.C. sues Musk over his tweet on taking Tesla private

VW still talking about the future

Where's the real Tesla competition?

So what's going on with traditional vehicle companies? Their ICE legacy is their impediment. They have a tremendous investment in "tailpipe" vehicles, in gasoline engine technology, in patents, in designs, in assembly lines, in human expertise. The thought of leaving all that behind engenders tremendous anxiety in them. They approach electric vehicles with reluctance, devoting a tiny fraction of their talents to EVs. That results in a lesser vehicle, which consumers fully perceive, and have reduced enthusiasm for buying. This results in the vehicle company producing only a modest number of them. The company doesn't regard the EV as a profit center, and doesn't commit to it. More to the point, the company sees the EV as a liability that will lose money, where profits from ICE vehicle sales will have to subsidize the EV effort, thus being a drain on earnings. The company lapses into a mindset that they aren't going to make money in producing EVs, and so they don't have to try. Contrast this with Tesla, where EVs are all they produce: Tesla has no ICE legacy shackled to their corporate ankle. Tesla has to make the EV a viable product — and they do.

The continuing sad state of the auto industry as a whole

Then, this summer, we started seeing Honda airing a TV commercial for the Honda Clarity. As the commercial starts out with a dominantly green environment, I expected that, finally, a mainstream company would be promoting their electric car. But, no: this is yet another stupid hybrid, where you have to lug around and maintain a performance-robbing internal combustion engine in the car. This is 2018, Honda...we have an environmental crisis underway, and this lame 2011 era (a la Volt) hybrid is all you're going to promote?? Get out of our faces, failure.

In late August we started seeing a much more progressive and encouraging commercial from VW — of all people. Derived from The Jetsons, this commercial's voiceover pointedly states that "With instant acceleration, electric cars are more fun to drive, and more affordable than ever. Electric cars are here." They followed this up with commercial "Enjoy the Silence", which shows a busy downtown rotary and street with deafening ICE vehicle noise — and then a mob of white electric vehicles take their place, bringing peace and quiet. Finally. This is the right stuff. While other companies were carrying on as usual, VW faced an emissions cheating scandal in which its "TDI clean diesel" was found to be a fraud. VW was humiliated, humbled, and had to pay painful billions of dollars in fines. This, apparently, is what it takes to shake a traditional vehicle company out of its business-as-usual stupor and face the future.

Elon deals with a cloaked Tesla troll — who had alterior motives

This episode points out how well-placed people will embark upon defamatory campaigns, resorting to misinformation and harassment to deliberately harm others. It also again shows "social media" to be a cesspool of worthless content, and the social media companies being effectively complicit in allowing such activities to persist within their domains.

Fiat Chrysler: this is still 1990, yes?

This drives home how traditional car companies are still living in the last century, largely in denial as to the dire need to produce electric vehicles, and utterly failing to equip their vehicles with remotely updateable software. In this recall, customers will have to wait at least a week to receive a notice in the mail (if they even get one), then get in an appointment line with perhaps thousands of other customers, then spend at least half a day driving to their dealer and waiting for a service technician to get around to updating their vehicle's software...in the clumsy manner that most ICE vehicles are updated these days. Of course, the backwardness of their technology is not in evidence in their splashy commercials — which are dominated more by distractions from shortcomings than useful information.

Ford: profits over environment

More shoddy reporting about Tesla

The next day, Bloomberg put out a video titled "Enhanced Tesla Model 3 Costs $78,000" which started with editor-at-large for Bloomberg Television Francine Lacqua asking Bloomberg's Dave McCombs: "What's this price hike going to do to sales?" Price hike?? Do some basic research, Francine. It's not a "price hike". McCombs, who should know better, played right along with this ignorance and contoured his response to match the dumb question.
The usual lesson pertains here: If you want real information about technology, go to media which specializes in technology, and avoid general purpose, sloppy media.

Autonomous driving should save a lot of lives, but there will be other lives lost as a result

Uber kills

At 10 pm this night, one of these Uber XC-90s struck and killed 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg as she was walking her bike across the road (outside of a designated crosswalk). The SUV was traveling at 40 mph and struck the woman at full speed: it made no attempt to slow down or stop. The pedestrian did not "dart out into traffic" as some have ignorantly claimed: she was two thirds the way across the road, walking at a normal pace, but not paying attention to traffic. Inside the Volvo, driver monitoring vide showed the supposed "safety driver", 44-year-old Rafaela Vasquez, most of the time looking down, seemingly at a smartphone, only occasionally looking at the road. Nor were her hands poised over the steering wheel, ready to take control, as required by her role in the vehicle.

The LIDAR maker, Velodyne, said that the LIDAR unit should definitely have detected the pedestrian, particularly in that LIDAR works even better at night. Other experts concur with that, adding that the accompanying radar should also have amply detected the adult human in the path of the vehicle such that the SUV would have been able to readily come to a stop. This suggests that Uber's proprietary computer and/or software failed to do what they are supposed to, upon receiving early notice of a pending collision. The CEO of autonomous driving company Waymo said that their vehicles would have been able to prevent the tragedy from happening.

What about the "safety driver"? Rafaela Vasquez is a former felon, convicted for attempted armed robbery and unsworn falsification in 2000, for which she spent three years and 10 months in prison. She was released in 2005. Uber's hiring policy is to give people second chances. That's admirable, but if you're dealing with people who have "a history", you need to more carefully monitor them. Vasquez's behavior behind the wheel was a clear abrogation of responsibility, indicative of a history of such behavior. Her inattention in this instance was very probably not the first time, and as such suggests that Uber has been failing to review videos of its testing program drivers — which could have prevented this tragedy by weeding the irresponsible Vasquez out of the program. This apparent negligence on the part of Uber is a further example of the negligent corporate culture which has been a mainstay of the news over the past several years.

Fortune.com a fount of misinformation

Tesla-specific insurance has arrived!

So, Liberty Mutual customers who currently insure Teslas with them should expect Liberty Mutual to contact them about this insurance opportunity, right? They should expect it, but the reality is sadly otherwise: Liberty Mutual is not known for either EV astuteness or outreach.

On Tesla firing factory workers

Tesla valuation soars: more valuable than Ford, and even GM!

Why should this be, with Ford and GM being enormous corporations with a broad range of vehicles? In Tesla, people see the future: from the proclivities of the other corporations they see entrenched "same old" mindsets. Anyone who watches television sees many GM commercials pushing those enormous, gas-guzzling, pollution-belching GMC vehicles: you don't see any commercials for the Volt or the Bolt. Similarly, Ford is pushing trucks: the F150 et al. These corporations are pandering — they are not leading...they are not leading us into the future. It is true that Ford's leader has stressed that his company is committed to electric vehicles; but we can only believe what we see, and what we see is Ford still heavily into petroleum powered vehicles, with no advertising for its current electric offerings. (In May, Ford replaced their CEO as a result.) At the same time that people seeing increasing evidence of climate extremes being brought on by global warming, they see the major vehicle companies being as oblivious as usual.

What's happening to traditional car companies can be explained in two ways. First, in failing to embrace the future, the traditionals fell behind reality and were ripe for disruption from a progressive company such as Tesla, driven by a visionary like Elon Musk. This results in those other companies going into reality shock and suddenly having to catch up, where part of the catch-up is to be very public and loudly tout what they are going to do in the future — where they engage in that publicity to try to hold onto their customer base. But this has serious consequences, as these companies are now experiencing: by conditioning customers to what they are going to do, they are effectively declaring their current offerings as vestiges of the past. The customers, who put out a large amount of hard-earned income to buy cars, readily perceive this and hold off buying into more of what these companies are currently selling. This is the classic "Osborne Effect", where announcing new products that are too far in the future stifles current sales, resulting in earnings plummeting for the companies making the products. The second thing is that recovery from the Great Recession caused the Federal Reserve to drop interest rates to zero. This incited people to go out and buy cars — conventional cars — and often larger, more extravagant cars than they might in ordinary circumstances. Consumers are now mired in auto payment debt, not unlike the housing bubble that led up to the 2008 recession. They either aren't in a position to go buy a new car to replace their now-aging one, or don't want to buy the essentially obsolete technology that car companies are now offering. But, they are willing to look to the future, which is what Tesla is offering, particularly with the Model 3.

Hydrogen being abandoned in economic realities

A depiction of driverless trucks

Germany seeks to phase out internal combustion engines

When you consider things in the abstract, looking upon the ICE era in the history of human civilization, it seems unfathomable that everyone was literally given license to poison others with noxious and carcinogenic gases. People would not give a second thought to walking alongside busy streets with thousands of vehicles belching toxic exhaust. It says a lot about the price humans are willing to pay for certain capabilities.

Will the Model 3 become available when promised?

On Software 8.0

The update came with one bizarre defect: When the driver gets into the car and closes the door, or opens the door to exit — the radio comes on, every time. I now have to manually turn off the radio every time I use the door. (I've reported this to Tesla.) This may seem minor, but keep in mind that Tesla owners depend upon the company to do proper testing of all functions before releasing an update. An owner experiencing obvious gaffes like this has reason to question the reliability of the update in general. Frankly, I would be fearful of depending upon TACC or Autopilot with this evidence that the update has oversights.

What's still missing:

• Apple CarPlay integration: Tesla seems to have an aversion to Apple technology. This is very peculiar for the advanced technology company that Tesla is, whom you would expect to embrace best-of-breed associated technology. At the same time, much of the rest of the auto industry has embraced CarPlay, with their customers grateful for it.
• Voice commands expansion: Hands-free and eyes-free control of vehicle functions should be at the top of the list for Tesla, in its emphasis on safety, and yet the car's voice commands repertoire remains primitive, functioning only in lesser areas such as phone dialing, audio playback, and navigation. This is woefully inadequate and very disappointing, leaving customers wondering why this high technology company is neglecting this obvious need. Drivers very much need to be able to converse with the car about things they perceive about conditions ahead, which the car can't: we need, for example, the ability to command the car "Raise the suspension!" in response to the driver seeing something lying on the roadway.

Traditional auto dealers: foes to clean air as they are foes to Tesla

You would think that EV manufacturers, given their many millions of dollars of investment in EV production, would themselves conduct such undercover visits to their dealers, to see how well the dealers are pipelining the product. The manufacturers seem to be exhibiting the same indifference, as if they are looking to be able to point to lack of sales to justify pulling out of the market — the same market in which Tesla, with their direct sales model and knowledgeable staff, is having customers line up to buy their cars. In establishing their own retail stores, Tesla learned from Apple's sad experience that you can't rely upon third party retailers to properly portray and market your products.

So, what are premium car companies doing to compete with Tesla?

On the current Autopilot hysteria

All this criticism is being levied despite the accident rate per million miles being below the national average, and Tesla's excellent event logging which demonstrates that the vehicles were not being operated properly by their drivers (some of whom have falsely claimed that Autopilot was active, where vehicle logs shows that Autopilot had not been activated). Operating any semi-autonomous vehicle today without your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road is completely contrary to the instructions of the automakers. Disregarding dire alarm sounds and dashboard warnings will obviously end badly. Egregiously irresponsible actions such as the supposed operator watching a movie on a portable DVD player warrants a Darwin Award. Some critics have said that the name Autopilot was a bad idea — despite the clear definition of the term in dictionaries, Tesla's emphasis thereof, and all the on-screen acceptance warnings. The reality is that it doesn't matter what it's called. It could be called The Keep Your Hands On The Wheel At All Times And Pay Full Attention To Traffic Driver Assist, and you would still find videos of idiot drivers climbing into the back seat as the car drives down the highway.

While the critics are focused on a handful of incidents, the overwhelming reality is that Autopilot is invaluable in helping prevent collisions and fatalities. This is happening perhaps 10,000 times every day in the Tesla fleet, as Autopilot successfully detects, warns, and even prevents the vehicle from harmfully coming on contact with anything. Every Tesla driver can tell you of Autopilot alerting to pedestrians getting in front of the vehicle, the car ahead stopping abruptly, or just getting too close to an object when parking.

Autopilot is invaluable today, and will be even more powerful in the future.

So, critics, how are other car companies doing with autonomous driving? Take a look at Mercedes Drive Pilot for what a premium car company's offering is, compared to Tesla's.

Your next smartphone or other mobile device may be more expensive

We've seen a progression of chemistries for rechargeable batteries. It seems time for the next advance, hopefully reducing or eliminating the need for arduously and expensively looking for a limited amount of raw materials inside the Earth's crust. For that matter, we really need a leapfrog advance in energy storage, obsoleting all this ugly chemical stuff. One suspects that the Gigafactory will contain a research lab to do just that; and/or Tesla may be paying university researchers in various parts of the world to come up with a breakthrough.

The incredible demand for the Model 3

To put this into perspective in the context of mass market cars... GM has been selling their Volt as the worry-free alternative to pure electric vehicles, touting its gasoline-electric hybrid drive, with up to 50 miles on a charge. It took from December 2010, when the first Volt went on sale, until the end of 2015 for sales of the Volt to pass the 100,000 mark. Chevy is now proceeding toward producing and marketing their first pure electric vehicle, the Bolt, which they claim will have a 200 mile range. However, while comparably priced, with its pudgy profile the Bolt painfully looks like a stereotypical small electric car, with puny cargo space and eyesore charging port, and won't have the performance of the Model 3; and the Bolt cannot offer the Supercharger network that Tesla provides to its customers. The public had seen the Bolt at its January 2016 CES roll-out and was waiting to see what Tesla would counter with the Model 3. The public enthusiastically chose the Model 3, with its superb styling, interior roominess, futuristic interior, ample cargo space, and integral Autopilot. For the next two years, the Bolt may be what's left for people who did not get into the Model 3 line. It is actually unfortunate that Chevy didn't offer a more appealing design with the Bolt, as saving the planet is not a competition — it is a dire need. One also wonders how many of the reservations are from Toyota Prius owners who, while committed to green practices, have tired of the excessive complexity of the Prius and its 0 to 60 "eventually" lackluster performance.

All the heightened awareness of Tesla may also be partly responsible for the recent growth in sales of the Model S, perhaps as a way to quickly get a Tesla sedan and assure getting the $7500 federal tax credit. (Note that Model S sales have been healthy in 2016 at the same time that sales have declined at top luxury brands BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus.)

Can Tesla manufacture as many Model 3 cars as is sought in pre-orders? Elon Musk said that the factory, under GM and Toyota, originally had a capacity of some 500,000 cars per year. Prevailing Tesla production has thus far been around 50,000 cars per year. From the roll-out, it is evident that the Model 3 was designed to be much simpler to produce that the Model S and Model X, with high volume in mind. The magnitude of the challenge will be nevertheless daunting. This is a case of "be careful what you wish for".

Ford and Jaguar and GM following Tesla's lead

On January 13 2016, GM introduced their all-EV Bolt four-seater at the Detroit Auto Show, in concept phase, suggesting a 200 mile range and a $38,000 price tag. The concept Bolt copies the Tesla approach of putting the batteries under the floor (unlike the Volt's T-shaped passenger compartment intrusion). The concept Bolt also copies Tesla's aggressive regeneration braking. We might hope that GM will promote EV to help carry the load of saving the environment, but given their reputation of having killed the original electric car and their near-abandonment of the Volt, we are not encouraged. The reality is that GM is obsessed with making and marketing enormous gasoline-powered personal vehicles, as evidenced by near-saturation television commercials for their GMC personal trucks at the start of 2016. My suspicion is that the Bolt will be just a "compliance car" for GM, with little or no advertising and uncharged relegation of one or two samples to the back of dealer lots. Whether the actual production version will live up to current specifications is another unknown when it appears for 2017. Its appeal as designed will be another acceptance factor: already people have lamented that while the specs are compelling, they wish it didn't stereoptypically look like an electric car. At this point I have much more confidence in Ford actually being serious about EVs.

Autopilot and "fleet learning"

But how does Autopilot really work? For every Tesla that goes out onto the road with Autopilot active, there is a Tesla-contracted person sitting at a remote control station to actually drive the car. Tapping into the car's vision system, the remote operator can keep the car within its lane. Data transmission lag obviously needs to be minimal for this to to work, which necessarily entails having regional remote control centers around the country. When a car reaches the effective boundary of one region, an assigned remote operator in the next region will gain control. The transition may result in a burble, which can be seen as the momentary erratic discontinuity seen in some YouTube videos. All in all, though, this remote control system is very effective. It is also the case that that Starburst uses tiny fighter jets to shoot juiciness into every Starburst candy just before you pop it into your mouth.

Tesla again the best car Consumer Reports has ever tested — and it "breaks" their rating scale

Tesla demonstrates that hybrids are yesterday's technology

Reuters misinforms

Anyone who reads beyond the headline will realize that the article is vacuous, filled with puffery and innuendo, devoid of any analytical basis for the conclusion represented in the article title. At best, this was pseudo-journalism, a further example of how much our once-reputable information sources have deteriorated in recent years. This is little more than "blogging", no better than the uninformed commentary you find as an appendage to so many online articles. Unfortunately, it is done as a legitimate article from a news source that has historically been widely regarded.

The article leave the impression that its authors know essentially nothing about business investment, or are out to deliberately paint a false picture of the company's economics. Analysts know full well that Tesla Motors' situation is nothing like the article portrays. Unlike some electric car manufacturers, Tesla is making a healthy profit on each Model S that it sells. Elon Musk has repeatedly explained his approach to Tesla build-out, starting with a high-end car to bring in sufficient capital to be able to phase into other models (SUV, mass market car), with the ultimate goal of saving the planet by shaking the population from its petroleum addiction and resultant CO2 rise. That requires more economical and more efficient batteries (or other energy storage technology) and thus the construction of the "gigafactory" battery manufacturing and research facility in Nevada. That, in turn, makes possible the Powerwall home energy storage system to supplement solar power generation, and allied power storage at commercial scales. All this requires substantial investment of profits, akin to the way that Jeff Bezos developed Amazon.com into what it is today.

BGR.com took Reuters to task for the irresponsible article, as did Clean Technica. One would like to see more such critical analysis of online "information" to point out what's of value, and what is of negative value.