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Tag: tesla

  • Tesla Motors introduces two less costly Model S versions

    Tesla Motors introduces two less costly Model S versions

    Electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc said on Thursday it would offer two slightly lower-priced versions of its electric Model S sedan, starting at $66,000 in the U.S. market.

    The current Model S starts around $76,000 and is often delivered to customers at a price of about $100,000.

    Prices are before tax incentives are applied.

    The new versions, the rear-wheel drive Model S 60 and the all-wheel drive Model S 60D, will have slightly less range than the Model S already sold. The Model S 60D starts at $71,000 in the U.S. market.

    The newer models will have a range of more than 200 miles, Tesla said in a statement.

    The Model S 60 and Model S 60D will be sold with a battery pack with a capacity of 75 kilowatt-hours, but will be limited to a capacity of 60 kWh. Tesla said owners will have the option to get a software upgrade to allow the car to have a capacity of 75 kWh and the longer range it provides.

    Analyst Joseph Spak of RBC Capital said the upgrade option will cost $8,500 at purchase or $9,000 after purchase.

    A 60 kWh battery has an estimated range of 218 miles for the rear-wheel drive Model S 60 and 210 miles for the Model S 60D, Tesla’a website shows.

    The upgrade to the 75 kWh battery pack will add about 40 miles of range to each model.

    Tesla in 2012 offered a 60 kWh Model S version priced starting about $70,000 but it was discontinued last year. Tesla says the two newer Model S versions offer more capabilities than the discontinued one.

    Tesla has said it will produce between 80,000 and 90,000 electric cars in 2016 and that it can make 500,000 by 2018. Most of those are expected to be Model S cars. In the first quarter, Tesla produced 14,820 vehicles, of which 12,851 were Model S and 2,659 were Model X sports utility vehicle.

    Tesla plans a new car, the Model 3, which is to be a more affordable sedan, starting around $35,000, to go to market in late 2017.

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  • Tesla calls out to build a million all-electric cars a year by 2020

    Tesla calls out to build a million all-electric cars a year by 2020

    Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk gave a public shout-out to the sharpest minds in manufacturing this week, calling on them to come help Tesla Motors Inc build a million all-electric cars a year by 2020.

    Musk says he is “hell-bent” on making the Silicon Valley automotive upstart a manufacturing powerhouse, but his vision relies on finding veteran auto engineers to ramp up volume ten-fold in four years – a challenge even for established carmakers.

    Tesla on Wednesday said it would build 500,000 cars in 2018, two years ahead of schedule, and close to 1 million by 2020. The same day Tesla said its vice presidents in charge of production and manufacturing were leaving.

    “You’re looking at a company with significant levels of management turnover at the highest ends, people without experience in the planning, design or build of vehicles, and you expect to crank it up at those kinds of volumes?” asked Michigan-based auto manufacturing consultant Michael Tracy.

    Putting aside the issue of capital requirements, auto experts point to a shortage of manufacturing engineers, whose ranks were thinning out even before the U.S. auto crisis hit in 2008.

    “It’s a constant issue we have in this country,” said Garth Motschenbacher, director of employer relations at Michigan State University’s College of Engineering.

    “For the longest time manufacturing was seen as the dirty end of engineering,” he said.

    At the same time, Alphabet’s Google and Apple are working on car programs and courting the same potential employees. So are established auto names like Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp .

    A 2015 Deloitte report found it takes three months to hire skilled engineers, and the shortage is crimping manufacturers.

    Robust early reservations for the upcoming Model 3 mass-market car may have assured Musk of demand, but now comes the execution, said automotive recruiter Stephen Parkford.

    “It’s like reservations for a restaurant that’s not open yet. You got the menu, but you don’t have a chef!” he said.

    Hiring a highly proven production engineer from a traditional carmaker who arrived with his entire team could speed the process, Parkford said.

    But while young engineers will jump at the chance to work for Tesla, the “by-the-numbers, disciplined manufacturing guys” with 15-20 years experience will be harder to nab, said Cuneyt Oge, president of the Society of Automotive Engineers. One key obstacle is the high price of living in Silicon Valley.

    Musk needs a visionary auto industry veteran, Oge said. “But anyone with that kind of experience is going to say, ‘Hey, Elon, you can’t do this in two years.’”

    Tesla is known for pushing the envelope on design and technology but has stumbled in manufacturing, with prior launches marked by delays and quality issues.

    Traditional automakers have more human and financial resources than cash-burning Tesla: Tracy pointed to Nissan Motor Co Ltd’s ability in 2004 to bring in 200 engineers from Japan to help fix quality issues at its recently opened assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi.

    “Greybeards” are crucial to build and run factory systems, said Oge. “You can’t just defy the laws of business physics which require you to go down a learning curve collectively to build that systems know-how,” he said.

    While Tesla employees may cite Musk’s tirelessness and attention to detail, even bedding down inside his Fremont, California factory, others like consultant Tracy see a worrying sign.

    “If Elon is sleeping in a sleeping bag in a conference room off of the final assembly line, then there’s an awful lot happening in that factory that’s wrong,” Tracy said.

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  • Apple explores charging stations for electric vehicles

    Apple explores charging stations for electric vehicles

    Apple is investigating how to charge electric cars, talking to charging station companies and hiring engineers with expertise in the area, according to people familiar with the matter and a review of LinkedIn profiles.

    For more than a year, Silicon Valley has been buzzing about Apple’s plan to build an electric car. Now the company appears to be laying the groundwork for the infrastructure and related software crucial to powering such a product.
    The moves show Apple responding to a key shortcoming of electric vehicles: “filling up” the batteries. A shortage of public charging stations, and the hours wasted in charging a car, could be an opportunity for Apple, whose simple designs have transformed consumer electronics.

    Apple, which has never publicly acknowledged a car project, declined to comment for this story. Neither the LinkedIn profiles nor sources said specifically that Apple was building charging stations for electric cars.
    But automotive sources last year told Reuters that Apple was studying a self-driving electric vehicle (EV), as the Silicon Valley icon looks for new sources of revenue amid a maturing market for its iPhone.

    Apple is now asking charging station companies about their underlying technology, one person with knowledge of the matter said. The talks, which have not been reported, do not concern charging for electric cars of Apple employees, a service the company already provides. They indicate that Apple is focused on a car, the person added.

    Charging firms are treading carefully, the person added, wary of sharing too much with a company they view as a potential rival.
    It is unclear whether Apple would want its own proprietary technology, such as Tesla Motors’ Supercharger network, or would design a system compatible with offerings from other market players.

    Several charging station suppliers contacted by Reuters declined to comment about any dealings with Apple, which typically requires potential partners to sign non-disclosure agreements.

    Arun Banskota, president of NRG Energy electric vehicle charging business, EVgo, did not respond directly to questions about Apple, but said repeatedly that his company was “in discussions with every manufacturer of today and every potential manufacturer of tomorrow.”

    Apple has hired at least four electric vehicle charging specialists, including former BMW employee Rónán Ó Braonáin, who worked on integrating charging infrastructure into home energy systems as well as communication between EVs, BMW and utilities, according to a LinkedIn review.

    As recently as January Apple hired Nan Liu, an engineer who researched a form of wireless charging for electric vehicles, for instance. Quartz earlier this month reported that Apple had hired former Google charging expert Kurt Adelberger.
    Electric vehicle charging stations are manufactured, installed and operated under varying business models. Players in the space include Car Charging Group and privately held ChargePoint, SemaConnect and ClipperCreek, infrastructure companies such as Black & Veatch and AECOM as well as General Electric, Siemens and Delta Electronics.
    The three largest utilities in California also have plans to install charging stations.

    CHARGER SHORTFALL

    The electric car industry has faced a chicken-and-egg paradox with the installation of charging stations. Property owners have been reluctant to install the stations before EVs hit the road en masse, and drivers are wary of buying EVs until charging stations are widely available.

    Apple’s home state of California by 2020 will need about 13 to 25 times the roughly 8,000 work and public chargers it currently has, to support a projected 1 million zero-emission vehicles on the road, according to an estimate by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

    Tesla recently goosed electric vehicle demand, unveiling its more affordable Model 3 sedan, generating hundreds of thousands of reservations from potential buyers and leading many experts to calculate the number of EVs will soon outstrip the charging station supply.

    Tesla has led the way with a proprietary network for customers, who also can use public chargers. Tesla’s more than 600 “Supercharger” stations juice up a car in about 30 minutes, more than twice as fast as the standard “fast charger,” called Level 2.
    One global engineering and construction firm already has reached out to Apple to offer its services, a person at the firm said.
    “It would be natural to assume if Apple is going to have a full battery electric vehicle that creates a seamless consumer experience the way Apple does, the charging infrastructure and its availability would be of paramount importance,” the source said.

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  • Tesla Opens 17th Experience Store In China

    Tesla Opens 17th Experience Store In China

    U.S.-based electric car maker Tesla has opened a new experience center, which is the company’s largest experience center in North China and its fifth owned sales site in Beijing.

    Tesla will reportedly build ten new stores in China in 2016. At the same time, the company will stick to a direct sales model, which is the core model of Tesla. At present, Tesla’s new cars need to be booked via its official website and the cars will be delivered to physical stores.

    So far, Tesla has opened 17 experience centers in China, covering North China, East China, and South China. Those experience centers are mainly located in first-tier cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and some are in Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Xi’an.

    Zhu Xiaotong, head of Tesla China, said that the company will continue to develop within the market of first-tier cities in the future. On one hand, the potential of those super cities has not been fully explored and they can still digest Tesla’s capacity; on the other hand, it is complicated to expand into a new city. Therefore, Tesla will seek stable development based on existing sites.

    During the opening ceremony of this new store, Tesla’s new Model S also made its debut in China.

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  • Tesla’s new Model X will cost you an arm and a leg in China

    Tesla’s new Model X will cost you an arm and a leg in China

    Fans of affordable electric vehicles, avert your eyes. Tesla has announced its mainland China pricing for high-end models of its upcoming SUV, the Model X, and the numbers are not pretty. The 90D model, which will cost around US$100,000 in most other markets, will run Chinese consumers a whopping US$146,000. Chinese Tesla fans who want the fancy P90D Signature Red limited edition model can expect to pay almost US$225,000 (the Signature P90D reportedly costs US$132,000 in the US).

    This news shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Prices for other Tesla models in China, like the Model S 70D it announced last year, feature similar markups.

    It’s not clear exactly who Tesla fans should blame for the consistently high prices. China does charge high import duties on luxury cars, reportedly around 25 percent. But Chinese state media has accused foreign automakers of price-gouging in China, and a 25 percent tariff doesn’t explain how the P90D Signature model seems to double in price somewhere between Tesla’s US home and Beijing.

    On the other hand, Tesla claims that it charges the same prices for all of its cars after accounting for transportation costs and import duties. And Tesla’s prices are pretty reasonable compared to other imported luxury cars. Tesla’s China markup for the Model X 90D is 53.7 percent. That’s nothing compared to the whopping 188.4 percent markup Chinese consumers pay to buy the BMW M5, for example, which costs under US$100,000 in the US and nearly US$300,000 in China. The China markup on a luxury SUV, the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, is even worse (194 percent).

    Even with the high costs, the Model X could do well in China. A fan tally (which almost certainly doesn’t account for all reservations) suggests the company has over 2,600 Model X units reserved in China already. Moreover, the car features an air-filtering biodefense system that could be a boon to urban Chinese drivers who want to ensure they’re not breathing in Beijing’s toxic haze.

    Lower costs coming?

    It will be interesting to see how Tesla prices its lower-cost Model 3 when that hits the market next year (or later). Currently, its offerings are all luxury-tier, and although the China prices are inflated, China’s luxury car consumers can generally afford to pay them. China has more than a million millionaires, after all. But the Model 3 is intended to be accessible to the middle class, at least in Western markets. Will Tesla price it aggressively to go after that market in China too, or will it become a low-end luxury offering thanks to China price inflation?

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  • Tesla Posts Wider Loss, Highlights Energy Storage Demand

    Tesla Posts Wider Loss, Highlights Energy Storage Demand

    Tesla Motors reported a wider first-quarter net loss on Wednesday, but outperformed expectations and stuck to key milestones for the year ahead, despite pressure on margins.

    Chief executive officer Elon Musk said during a conference call that demand for the company’s new line of stationary energy storage systems, unveiled last week, is “off the hook.”

    Over time, it was possible stationary storage could be a bigger business for Tesla than selling cars, he added.

    Tesla said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday that “total addressable market size for Tesla Energy products is enormous and much easier to scale globally than vehicle sales.”

    Musk said last week that the stationary battery storage systems could be “materially profitable” sometime next year.

    The shares of the Silicon Valley electric car maker rose about 2 percent after hours from their close of $230.43.

    The challenges confronting Tesla’s auto business were illustrated by the company’s continued cash burn and signs of pressure on profit margins.

    Tesla’s cash reserves fell to $1.5 billion as of March 31 from $1.9 billion at the end of 2014. The company said it plans a total of $1.5 billion in capital spending this year, much of it to buy production tools for the Model X, complete its large battery “gigafactory” in Nevada, and for other facilities.

    Musk said Tesla’s cash flow should turn positive later in the year.

    “It’s extremely likely cash flow is really good” by the end of the fourth quarter, he said.

    Chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja said Tesla is looking at establishing asset backed lines of credit to “assure we have a strong balance sheet.”

    Tesla reported an adjusted net loss of 36 cents a share in the latest quarter, excluding certain expenses, compared with a profit of 14 cents a share on the same basis a year ago. Analysts had expected a loss of 50 cents a share on that adjusted basis.

    Tesla had a net loss in the first quarter of $154.2 million, or $1.22 a share, on revenues of $939.9 million. A year ago, Tesla reported a net loss of $49.8 million, on revenues of $620.5 million.

    However, the automaker warned that a “less rich product mix” could push down average selling prices for the Model S sedan, which now starts at $76,200.

    Tesla delivered 10,045 Model S sedans in the first quarter, a 55 percent increase from the year before. The company forecast deliveries of 10,000 to 11,000 vehicles in the second quarter.

    Tesla could face more competition in the future as established automakers field new electric vehicles with longer driving ranges. There is also the potential other well capitalized Silicon Valley companies such as Apple Inc or Google Inc will move into the market.

    Asked about that, Musk said: “I certainly hope Apple gets into the car business. That would be great.”

    Tesla said it will start delivering its Model X sport utility vehicle late in the third quarter, still within the window the company promised earlier this year. The Model X is critical to Tesla’s goal of delivering 55,000 vehicles this year.

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