EV Age Dawning Now? NYT Says Yes. We Say Maybe.

The New York Times, or one writer paid by the New York Times (one journalist’s take or analysis or opinion doesn’t represent the entire paper, you know), had a piece out a couple days ago claiming the dawn of the EV age is now.

Somehow, I missed this article until now. But let’s a look at its assertions, shall we, and see what is and is not accurate?

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From Russia, With Malware? Tesla Thwarts Cyber Attack

A criminal complaint filed this week details a very Cold War-like plot to cripple Tesla from the inside. Federal prosecutors and the automaker claim a Russian “tourist” attempted to coerce an employee of Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory to infect the company’s system with malware, and in doing so receive a payment of $1 million.

The employee reportedly turned down the offer and squealed on the so-called tourist, leading to an FBI sting operation — as well as this week’s criminal complaint.

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Cash in Your Chips: Automakers Ask FTC to Seek Appeal After Losing Qualcomm Case

Frequently on the cutting edges of technology, the automotive industry has been slamming chips into vehicles to facilitate communications ever since General Motors launched OnStar back in 1996. This evolved into cars boasting reliable navigation systems and remote vehicle diagnostics until they literally started becoming mobile internet hot spots.

Now the industry wants to further ingrain connectivity by equipping all vehicles with 5G — opening the road for new features and the ability to harvest your personal data more effectively.

This has required deals with tech chip manufacturers like Qualcomm, which requires companies to sign a patent license agreement before actually selling any of its hardware or software. But regulators around the globe worried the practice may be monopolistic, violating antitrust laws. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought a case against the business in 2017. Despite winning that case in 2019, a U.S. appeals court overturned the decision earlier this month, deciding Qualcomm could continue conducting business as usual. Now, tech companies (mainly Qualcomm rivals) and a gaggle of automakers are urging the FTC to seek an appeal following the loss.

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Elon Musk Hints at Beefier Batteries

There’s another B-Day set to occur next month, and this one has nothing to do with the Ford Bronco. “Battery Day” is what Tesla dubs September 22nd — the day of its annual shareholder’s meeting, but also the date of a planned technology reveal.

Tesla has suggested its near future holds great advancements in energy density, meaning far greater miles from a same-sized battery. In response to an online query, company CEO Elon Musk hinted that the EV maker’s batteries could travel 50 percent longer on a charge.

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A Dating App for Tesla Owners? It Could Be Real, but It's Not Spectacular

Man, this is really something. The 145,000th piece of evidence just landed in support of the hypothesis that Tesla is, in fact, a cult, and that activism and ideology has replaced religion in the wealthier, progressive, and more youthful corners of America.

Which brings us to Tesla Dating.

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GM Muses Spinning Off EV Operations to Better Court Investors

One of the strangest anomalies in the automotive industry is the way electric vehicle startups (like technology companies in general) seem to draw limitless support from investors while established automakers don’t receive nearly the same kind of love — even when transitioning toward EVs.

There’s a logic behind this, however. Green tech is overwhelmingly trendy at the moment, even if some of it lacks a comprehensive game plan to actually save the environment, and financial backers are always looking to get in on the next big thing before anybody else — resulting in scattershot investing that sometimes coalesces into a major victory for new firms possessing sufficient moxie.

But it hasn’t helped the auto industry’s largest players, who are seen as dinosaurs using the blood of their forebears to amass their fortunes. They lack the presumed purity of brands like Tesla or Nikola (clever name), even though their financial goals seem largely the same.

A potential solution to this problem is to distance tech-focused entities from the core business.

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Musk on Cybertruck: If They Don't Like It, We'll Go Boring

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was on top of his game during an interview with Automotive News last week. By that, we mean his ego and various personality quirks came through like a shaft of sunlight parting a fog bank.

Musk announced during the talk that his company performed no customer research before designing and revealing the polarizing and still-not-clearly-legal Cybertruck to would-be buyers, laughing at the idea. If folks don’t like it, he said, there’s a plan.

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Tesla Sues Rivian Over Stolen Secrets, Poached Employees

Tesla is accusing Rivian Automotive of poaching its employees and lifting trade secrets in a recent complaint filed in San Jose, CA. Founded in 2009 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology alum R.J. Scaringe, Rivian has made inroads with the automotive sector and established partnerships with entities like Amazon and Ford Motor Company ( we think).

While its home base is presently TBD, as the company considers shifting more of its staff to the West Coast, its mission has remained consistent — manufacture all-electric SUVs and pickups so they can wash over North America.

Rivian is one of those “Tesla killers” you keep hearing about before they suddenly blip out of existence, but it has enough weight behind it to potentially offer real competition in the future it plays its cards right. Tesla is just worried that some of those cards might not belong to Rivian.

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Tesla: A Surprise Profit, a Stock Bounce, and a Factory Site Secured

Everything was moving in Tesla’s favor Wednesday night, with the electric automaker reporting an unexpected quarterly profit — its fourth in a row — for Q2 2020. This positive financial news, made possible by other automakers’ hunger for regulatory credits, sent the company’s already elevated (overvalued?) stock closer to the face of God.

At the same time, CEO Elon Musk announced something long suspected: That Tesla’s next domestic assembly plant will set up shop in Austin, Texas.

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Texas Tempts Tesla With Tax Breaks

If you happen to find yourself running a section of this country and would like an automaker to build a factory there, we’ve got a couple of tips to help improve your odds. It might be unfair to call them tips, however, as they’re common knowledge and realistically the only way to get a business to settle on your land. Step One involves promising as much money and as little regulation as possible. Step Two involves waiting for their response.

Hoping to beat out Oklahoma as the home of Tesla’s Cybertruck, Texas is attempting to dazzle the electric automaker with the tax breaks it knew the company wanted. All the automaker has to do is spend over a billion dollars to build its facility in Travis County.

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'Language!': German Court Slaps Tesla for Bad Words

Hey, how bout that bitchin’ new Bronco- whoops! Sorry, got ahead of myself there. The check hasn’t even arrived yet!

In news unrelated to a Ford model Car and Driver wrote 13 stories about in the last 24 hours, a German court has smacked Tesla for misleading its citizens. The ruling, brought on by a complaint from an industry group, involves something that’s plagued the auto industry for years. Essentially, the overstating of a car’s autonomous driving abilities.

Thankfully, we’ve reached a point where even the Associated Press Stylebook is warning about inaccurate self-driving language use, but old habits die hard at Tesla. Germany didn’t like what it heard.

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Tesla's Model Y Gets More Go for Less Dough

Most car buyers prefer to spend less money for more performance, and the more eco-conscious among us can now get into one Tesla Model Y trim for a lower price, while the loftier version makes a previously optional Performance Package standard.

Tesla has cut pricing on the Model Y Long Range by $3,000 while also giving the Performance trim a boost.

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Elon Musk: Level 5 Autonomous Driving 'Very Close'

Tesla is reportedly “very close” to achieving complete driving autonomy, according to CEO Elon Musk.

“I’m extremely confident that level 5 or essentially complete autonomy will happen and I think will happen very quickly,” Musk said during a video message for the opening of Shanghai’s annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference.

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Tesla Now the Earth's Most Valuable Automaker

With the automotive industry seeing losses across the board, most investors could do nothing but watch in horror as sales reports showed the post-lockdown recovery had not yet begun. But there was a faction that ignored the carnage taking place around them and continued to pump money into their preferred auto brand until it became the most valuable automaker in the world.

While it’s a sin for you not to know, we are obviously discussing Tesla Motors — the infallible, gleaming beacon of modern-day motoring.

The firm officially surpassed mega-giant Toyota on Wednesday, with shares trading as high as $1,228 before tapering off in the evening with a market cap of around $220 billion.

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Musk to Toiling Masses: Greater Yields Mean Victory!

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reportedly cracking the whip again, spurring his company’s workforce into a frenzy of car-building as the end of the second quarter looms.

After posting a surprising first-quarter profit in early April, Tesla warned that the full weight of the coronavirus pandemic — and related lockdowns and sales implosion — would land on its balance sheet in Q2. To keep investor enthusiasm alive, the push is on to make those numbers as rosy as possible.

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  • Cprescott Fisker is another brand that Heir Yutz has killed.
  • Dwford Every country is allowed to have trade restrictions except the US.
  • 1995 SC Are there any mitigation systems that would have prevented this though? We had a ship hit a bridge in Jacksonville a few years back and it was basically dumb luck it didn't collapse. This looked like a direct hit.
  • Cprescott Oh, well.
  • 28-Cars-Later "The Chinese Ministry of Commerce claimed the Inflation Reduction Act is “discriminatory”"This what your mainstream social communism has wrought: a foreign power, major geopolitical rival and the #1 global industrial competitor cries "racism" when an act of Congress in any way presents a challenge - and the saddest part is there are Americans who will process this claim and agree if only in their own minds. To be clear, Wo xihuan Zhongguoren but the under 40yo PRC raised Mainlanders I've interacted with do believe they are a master race - but that's fine right?