Waymo Comments on Autopilot Crash, Blames Driver

While the investigation into Tesla’s most recent Autopilot-rated fatality continues, Waymo chimed in to remind everyone that the company’s self-driving system isn’t actually self-driving at all. That almost makes it sound like the Google offshoot is coming to the defense of Tesla Motors. However, the truth of the matter is this was a golden opportunity for Waymo to sneak in another humblebrag that its autonomous technology is the genuine article and that most of its competitors are playing catch-up.

It’s a valid point. We shouldn’t forget that Tesla’s Autopilot is not representative of true autonomy and the burden of safety still falls squarely on the driver. But the manufacturer didn’t always market it that way, and only updated the system to require hands on the wheel after the first fatality. This incident is different from the recent Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona. But just how different is debatable and largely dependent on what qualifies as “self-driving” to the average person.

“Tesla has driver-assist technology and that’s very different from our approach,” explained Waymo CEO John Krafcik last week, before Tesla revealed that Autopilot was engaged during the Model X crash. “If there’s an accident in a Tesla, the human in the driver’s seat is ultimately responsible for paying attention. We don’t know what happened here, but there was no self-driving.”

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Elon Musk Takes Heat for Poorly Timed April Fools' Joke, Remaining Auto Pranks Boring

April Fools’ Day is a great holiday when you’re 12 years old but, as an adult, there are only so many people you can trick into drinking spoiled milk outside of your own family without getting into trouble. The world just doesn’t have the same level of patience for a matured prankster. Corporate foolery is even less palatable, usually because it’s far too tame to be genuinely entertaining, or results in some social blunder highlighting a genuine problem.

The automotive industry frequently engages in April Fools’ pranks, but this year was rather dull. Porsche’s phony Mission E tractor was cute but felt a little lazy and Honda UK’s chop-topped CR-V resulted in some members of the press requesting Honda actually built it — something none of us agree with, as that monstrosity would be a pillar of bad taste. The best of the bunch was probably McLaren’s weird take on promoting efficiency, in which the supercar maker hinted everyone will become a soulless robot. It wasn’t the best we’ve seen; still, the staff clearly enjoyed taking a playful shot at its more uptight rivals.

Then there was Tesla’s joke, which saw CEO Elon Musk issue a series of tweets about the company’s pretend bankruptcy. The timing on this was admittedly not great. Tesla had a really bad month involving a stock price attempting to bore its way to the center of the earth, the biggest recall in its history, another Model 3 production shortfall, and an Autopilot-related fatality in California.

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Tesla Shareholders Confirm Musk's Money

Tesla investors approved an incentive package on Wednesday that could ultimately net CEO Elon Musk around $56 billion. There is a catch, however. He has to elevate the company’s share price to almost comically high levels. Having already covered the deal, we noted some opposition from analysts, but not shareholders — all of whom seem overwhelmingly happy to oblige Musk if he improves their wealth, as well.

Investment advisor Glass Lewis & Co. said offering the CEO an additional 12 percent in stock options (currently valued at around $2.6 billion) was unnecessary since he is already a major shareholder and the move could dilute value for other investors. But most agreed Musk was too important to risk losing and agreed to the package to keep him in charge of the company, despite Musk stating this was his intent all along.

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Tesla and UAW Assume Battle Stations

The United Automobile Workers have had its eyes on Tesla Motors for years. However, it wasn’t until the start of 2017 when unionization efforts at the automaker’s Fremont, California factory really started ramping up. Following complaints that the automaker failed to ensure effective safety measures, Tesla employee Jose Moran published a blog post that openly criticized the company for overworking its staff in unsafe conditions. Moran also said payment was insufficient and promotions were unfair — suggesting unionization was the only way to protect employees.

Soon afterwards, the UAW began filing a slew of complaints to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) while Tesla was confronted with racial discrimination lawsuits. Widespread reports of worksite injuries also surfaced. The California Department of Industrial Relations saw over 180 Tesla employees applying for compensation as a result of serious injuries between 2012 and 2017. Now, the UAW is accusing the automaker of intimidating pro-union employees and terminating those it could not sway.

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Tesla Motors Losing More Executives, Company Probably Not Doomed

There’s something about EV manufacturers that elevates the turnover rate of high-ranking employees. It seemed like we reported on Faraday Future losing executives almost daily for two consecutive years, but Tesla now appears to have its own difficulty retaining talent. The automaker lost two of its senior financial executives this month as it prepares to report on the Model 3 sedan’s progress (or lack thereof).

Is this the beginning of the end for the EV manufacturer? Probably not. It’s easy to obsess about Tesla’s status and speculate endlessly on the health of the brand, but the company’s all-important stock price has yet to crash and Elon Musk has promised to remain at its helm for the foreseeable future. However, the firm may need to do some housekeeping to ensure it doesn’t lose the trust of its investors.

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Tesla Talks on Track, China Says, Despite Musk's Trade Rant

Earlier this month, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk called into question the fairness of China’s automotive trade practice via a handful of tweets to President Donald Trump.

“Do you think the US [and] China should have equal [and] fair rules for cars? Meaning, same import duties, ownership constraints [and] other factors,” Musk asked. “For example, an American car going to China pays 25 [percent] import duty, but a Chinese car coming to the US only pays 2.5 [percent], a tenfold difference.”

While Trump used Musk’s Twitter outburst as proof of China’s trade imbalance with the United States, the media began to wonder if the Tesla CEO was having an unpleasant time negotiating with the nation. In 2017, the automaker appeared to be on the cusp of a deal to build a factory in Shanghai — allowing it to cut costs within the region by a third. Fortunately for the brand, Musk’s trade concerns haven’t derailed progress. The Shanghai government has confirmed its talks with Tesla are progressing well.

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Tesla Stalled Model 3 Production Last Month to Get Ducks in a Row

Tesla temporarily stopped production of the Model 3. Considering everyone keeps wondering when the company will finally reach its first-quarter production target of 2,500 units per week, that’s big news. The Tesla faithful will, no doubt, consider the decision another incredibly shrewd move from the geniuses working within the company, while the opposition will claim it’s further proof that the firm isn’t capable of building cars at the scale it has promised.

Sticking with the facts, we knew Tesla had Gigafactory tooling waiting to be shipped from Germany at the start of February. However, the temporary shutdown occurred between February 20th and the 24th — a bit too early for the equipment to have made it stateside. The suspended production also took place at the main factory in Fremont, California, and not the Nevada-based Gigafactory. Model 3 vehicle registrations also dropped significantly in the days following the shutdown.

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Tesla's New Strategy of 'Not Paying' Elon Musk Costs $2.6 Billion

Tesla Motors previously announced that its CEO, Elon Musk, wouldn’t be paid unless its already high stock valuation continued to climb. His compensation package — valued at roughly $2.6 billion — is tied to a dozen operational milestones, all of them primarily linked to the company’s share price. However, the board has left the strategy’s fate in the hands of its shareholders, who will vote on the motion come March 21st.

In addition to Musk’s existing stock options, that bonus could result in a total payday of more than $55.8 billion over the next decade. That’s too much, according to proxy advisor Glass Lewis & Co. With the CEO already so finically invested in the company, Glass Lewis doesn’t believe any fee would have a meaningful impact on Musks’ involvement. He already owns at least 20 percent of Tesla’s stock, so any improvement in its valuation would already benefit him immensely.

“Any relative comparison of the grant’s size would be akin to stacking nickels against dollars,” Glass Lewis & Co. said in a report from February.

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New Video Footage Proves Tesla's Semi Is Needlessly Fast

Footage of Tesla’s electric semi truck has been circulating around the internet all month — proving the vehicle is more tangible than some might have previously argued. There appears to be at least two test platforms milling around California right now, and one of them is laying rubber on low-speed industrial roads.

While we’re not sure of the logistical merits of an electric semi offering blisteringly fast cab-only acceleration, Tesla’s truck certainly looks capable of trouncing your average bobtailed hauler. There’s even video evidence to back up this claim. However, fleet managers won’t give a rat’s ass about this, as it has nothing to do with optimizing efficiency.

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Tesla Still Has Tooling For the Model 3 Waiting for Pickup a Continent Away

Tesla claims it’s closing in on its goal to produce 2,500 Model 3 sedans a week, even though the original deadline for that target is a few months past. However, a problem remains. Despite having all the tooling needed to hit its mark, some of the essential components are still in Germany when they should be in the United States.

While the automaker still claims it can reach 2,500 unit per week by the end of March, the new automated system for module production needs to be shipped from Grohmann Automation in Dausfeld, Germany, to the company’s Gigafactory, located outside Reno, Nevada. That’s a long distance to ship a lot of hardware in roughly a month’s time, leaving many wondering if Tesla is about to break another promise to investors.

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Tesla's New Strategy Includes 'Not Paying' Elon Musk and an Astronomical Share Price

Tesla Motors has announced that its CEO, Elon Musk, won’t be paid unless its already high stock valuation blasts into the stratosphere. The executive’s compensation is now tied to a dozen operational milestones. The first of these requires bringing the company’s current market cap to $100 billion, followed by 11 more set at $50 billion increments.

Agreeing to the program, Musk now has to stay with Tesla until 2028 as both its executive chair and product officer. While this does allow him to bring in another CEO sometime in the future, the company is likely hoping to dispel any speculation that he would abandon the position. It’s good to see Musk putting some serious skin into the game but, as a multi-billionaire, his not being paid unless Tesla’s stock valuation climbs isn’t the biggest threat to his financial security.

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Time's Up: Tesla Missed the Deadline for Its Nationwide Autonomous Test Drive

While The Truth About Cars has occasionally been accused for having it in for Tesla, the honest-to-god-truth is that we just possess a severe aversion to unbridled hype. Autonomous cars have made a lot of progress in the last few years, but there’s something about the way manufacturers talk about them that makes us want to say, “Interesting, but we’ll believe it when we see it.”

Automakers love making grandiose claims and Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk may be the prince of hyperbolic statements and lofty promises. He should be commended for delivering on many of them. Still, though there have been many occasions where the other shoe dropped and it was our job to report it. We’re having to do that again, now that Tesla has missed its initial deadline to dazzle the world with an autonomous cross-country road trip.

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Tesla CEO Issues Pickup Promise, Hints at Full-sized Model

Tesla Motors or, more accurately, company CEO Elon Musk has hinted at the prospect of an electric pickup for quite some time. But neither the automaker nor the CEO ever issued any kind of concrete guarantee on it, even after other manufacturers had already beaten it to the punch.

However, Musk is now officially promising the pickup will be made immediately after the Model Y crossover arrives sometime between 2019 and 2020. Of course, he also promised that Model 3 deliveries would hit its stride before the end of this year. So let’s consider this more of an assurance that Tesla will produce the electric truck and not so much an indication of when you might see one on public roads.

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Here's What Brown Can Do for Tesla Motors

The United Parcel Service said Tuesday it will purchase 125 all-electric semi trucks from Tesla, surpassing PepsiCo’s order to make it the largest known order for the vehicle thus far. While the purchase isn’t tantamount to UPS making a complete shift to an electric fleet, the company has previously stated it wants to convert up to 1,500 delivery trucks in New York to battery electric units and has been researching non-traditional powertrains for some time.

With so many of its trips taking place between distribution hubs, a medium-range EV truck boasting a high capacity could be a good fit for UPS. At the very least, Tesla seems to think so — the delivery service provided the automaker with extensive data on how its trucks function on real-world routes in order to evaluate how the hulking BEVs might perform in its fleet. Of course, the cooperative experience also helps both companies promote themselves as leaders in the green revolution.

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Hedge Fund Manager Convinced Tesla Shares Will Collapse

American investment manager and short-seller extraordinaire Jim Chanos claims Tesla is “headed for a brick wall.” Having deemed the automaker as structurally unprofitable, Chanos said, “Three years ago, this company was supposed to be making money [today]. And now, it’s supposed to be making money by 2020. I’m guessing by 2019, we’ll hear about 2025.”

However, while Tesla has taken on massive amounts of debt to ensure its evolution as company, investors haven’t seemed to mind. Its stock price has climbed from $33 a share in 2013 to almost $380 in September of 2017. As a short-seller, Chanos says he’s lost money on the company in the past since the stock price never seems to go down, and that’s what he finds the most alarming.

“Nobody is buying Tesla stock based upon the current business,” he said. “It’s all based on the future and the hope for half-a-million to a million Model 3s per year.”

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