#TeslaModel3

There’s a big to-do coming up in Tesla’s social calendar. Dubbed “Battery Day,” the occasion seems to have something to do with…well, you can probably read.

Battery Day, on which Tesla will presumably storm the beaches of electrification technology, is slated for September 15th — the same day as a postponed shareholder meeting.

Hoping to reduce the coronavirus pandemic’s strain on its balance sheet, Tesla slashed prices on three of its four models on Wednesday. While the company posted a surprise first-quarter profit last month, no one expects Q2 to be similarly rosy.

Tesla only recently fired up its Fremont, California assembly plant amid a cloud of threats and a lawsuit targeting Alameda County officials. With sales severely hampered by both the weeks-long shutdown and state-level stay-at-home orders, getting new Teslas out of the factory and into driveways becomes even more important than it was before. Perhaps consumers respond well to lower prices…

By “you,” we mean those of you not living in China. In that country, however, customers will soon have access to a Tesla Model 3 variant with more range than what’s available in North America.

As Tesla’s Shanghai assembly plant ramps up production and adds more variation to its offerings, Tesla is in a good position to dominate the country’s “new energy vehicle” market. It also frees itself from import tariffs that suppressed sales via higher sticker prices.

Timing is everything, a famous person (possibly Gerald Ford) once said, and it would seem Tesla is in a position to capitalize on the returning consumer strength of the Chinese marketplace.

In a week that will be remembered by many Chinese as bringing about a return of free will and movement, such as that country can offer, Tesla plans to begin offering a domestically built Model 3 with considerable range.

Some 12 years and one month ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk delivered the firm’s first electric vehicle… to himself. Fast-forward to today, and electric vehicle are sprouting from automakers the world over — including the “legacy” automakers Teslaphiles so often deride as out of touch.

On Monday, the company that opened the floodgates for EV proliferation marked a production milestone once thought of as inconceivable: its millionth car.

In a recent earnings report that, unlike Nissan’s, actually pleased investors, Tesla claimed its new Model Y crossover would see its first U.S. deliveries in March of this year. Great news for antsy reservation holders, but some worry the appearance of America’s Favourite Bodystyle will have a harmful impact on the automaker’s current best-seller, the Model 3.

Tesla’s fourth-quarter 2019 earning report, released Wednesday night, gave analysts and investors what they’d been looking for. In the midst of a global production ramp-up, the electric automaker posted a second consecutive quarterly profit ⁠— offering compelling news about a new model in the process.

That vehicle is the Model Y, a Model 3-based compact crossover that’s apparently already rolling off the assembly line in Fremont, California.

The evidence keeps stacking up against Tesla. As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigates crash after crash involving Tesla vehicles under the influence (or suspected influence) of Autopilot, when is enough too much?

Cars crash all the time, but vehicles believed to be piloted by an advanced driver-assist system at the time of the collision earn themselves an investigation from a federal agency. Such is the case with the latest Tesla crash, with occurred in Indiana on December 29th.

The fatal collision between a Model 3 and a parked fire truck is the third such investigation opened by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a month.

Tesla’s first foreign assembly plant will make its first deliveries — to a handful of employees — on December 30th, just shy of a goal marker it set for itself at the beginning of the year.

Construction of the automaker’s $2 billion Shanghai facility kicked off back in January with a promise to reach a production rate of 1,000-plus vehicles per week by the end of the year. While the plant’s production rate is not known, it received the necessary regulatory approvals for production in September, with the first Model 3s assembled in October.

The country’s new car market might be in a state of turmoil, but Tesla’s plans for China haven’t changed. It still wants to capture a big chunk of the country’s “new energy” vehicle market, and the creation of a wholly owned assembly plant, plus a range of local suppliers, makes the company’s goal a near certainty.

As it struggles to ramp up production at its Shanghai facility, Tesla plans to go on a price-slashing spree in 2020, a report claims.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it will investigate a 12th crash relating to Tesla Motors’ Autopilot system. The automaker has found itself under increased scrutiny as the public grows increasingly weary of technological gaps in today’s advanced driving aids. Truth be told, it’s probably shouldering more of the burden than it needs to. Whereas most driving aids manage to fly beneath the radar, Tesla’s marketing of Autopilot has always framed it as being on the cusp of true autonomy.

It’s always just one over-the-air-update away from genuine self-driving capabilities.

That’s why you don’t read reports about some poor dolt in a Toyota rear-ending someone and the government doing a deep dive on Safety Sense to figure out why. Nobody cares, and there aren’t countless examples of people taking their hands off the wheel of their Camry with confidence after being confused into thinking it could drive itself. But it happens in Tesla models with uncomfortable frequency, even among drivers who really should know better.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration took exception to Tesla’s suggestion that a person is less likely to suffer injury in its vehicles than those built any other manufacturer, documents reveal. Advocacy group PlainSite obtained the docs via a FOI request, shedding light on both the NHTSA’s concern re: Tesla’s safety claims, as well as subpoenas issued in the pursuit of information following several Tesla crashes.

Last October, the NHTSA fired off a crease and desist letter to Tesla after the automaker claimed the agency’s crash data showed its Model 3 surpassed the five-star ranking issued for the model. This was a misleading statement and improper use of data, the NHTSA said. Since that time, crashes involving Tesla vehicles have earned the company additional scrutiny from the road safety regulator.

Months after promising a $35,000 base Model 3 in the United States, Tesla appears to have only just recently begun offering the “Standard Range” variant to the public. The vehicle comes with locked features and a 10-percent reduction in maximum range. However, most of the models milling around on public roads appear to be Standard Range Plus variants waiting on an over-the-air update to convert them into a normal SR.

Meanwhile, Tesla is looking at the Chinese market and calculating what the Model 3 will be worth there. It’s even asking Asian customers to hazard a guess as to what its base MSRP will be, claiming it has a big announcement scheduled for May 31st.

Ten months. That’s how long Tesla’s CEO claims this month’s offering of $2.7 billion in stock and convertible notes bought the struggling automaker.

Hungry for cash to fuel new model development, a Shanghai Gigafactory, and an assembly line on which to build the upcoming Model Y crossover, Tesla has resorted to endless measures to trim costs, from moving to an online sales model and attempting to cull the bulk of its sales staff, to general staff reductions, to reducing build configurations. Vehicles prices seem to change by the week.

And still it’s not enough. To keep the automaker afloat, Musk told employees, the company will need to count every penny.