Company / division: Tesla
Elon Musk Tweets About Future Tesla Products Including Semi and Pickup Trucks and a Convertible (Apr 13, 2017)
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Tesla is now worth more than Ford after delivering a record number of cars for the quarter – Recode (Apr 3, 2017)
There are two things here: firstly, Tesla’s Q1 delivery number, and secondly what’s happened to its share price since it was announced. Stock valuations are interesting, but far from definitive as indications of what companies are worth or who’s “winning” in any meaningful sense. Tesla’s stock price is all about trajectory, and an unusual (perhaps even unwarranted) amount of investor confidence and enthusiasm that the company which is currently very small and unprofitable compared to its legacy peers will quickly catch up on both fronts. That, in turn, requires believing in Tesla’s manufacturing projections, which require a massive increase in its growth rate, from 56% annual growth in the past year to something much faster to hit its 500k target for 2018, which would be a six-fold increase over its 2016 numbers. Long-term, it seems very likely Tesla will reach that kind of scale, but given its track record, there’s every reason to believe it will hit this and other related targets later than it has projected. On that basis, then, the valuation seems that much less justifiable on the basis of any near-to-medium-term results.
via Recode
Ford leads self-driving tech pack, outpacing Waymo, Tesla, Uber: study – USA Today (Apr 3, 2017)
This article is based on a study by a company called Navigant Research, and it seems to be an evaluating of companies’ strategic assets rather than any actual capabilities today, so it’s worth noting that context for their rankings of companies here. Notably, they rank traditional carmakers in the first six spots, with Waymo apparently the first non-traditional / tech company in the rankings. That’s notable, because all the numbers suggest Waymo is out in front in testing of autonomous driving technology in California by a long way, and although we don’t have equivalent data for Michigan, where Ford does much of its testing, I’d be surprised if it had done many more miles. So this is mostly an evaluation of the benefits the big automakers derive from their existing massive scale and capabilities in building vehicles and bringing them to market, something none of the pure tech companies has (Tesla, of course, has some small-scale manufacturing capability and is looking to ramp fast, but comes in 12th in the rankings nonetheless). This jives with my perception that, even as these tech companies do increasingly well in developing their own technology, they’re very unlikely in most cases to build the cars, and as such the traditional car companies are still in a position of strength and potential leadership when it comes to actually building and deploying the technology.
via USA Today
China’s Tencent Buys 5% Stake in Tesla – WSJ (Mar 28, 2017)
Tencent has been one of the most active Chinese investors in the US tech industry, and here’s another investment. It already has stakes in both Uber and Lyft, and although Baidu has been making bigger direct investments in autonomous driving in the US, Tencent’s indirect investments in transportation in the US are growing. This is a nice vote of confidence in Tesla at a time when it’s trying to raise money to fund the Model 3 manufacturing ramp, and it also gives Tencent decent exposure to what has been a nice growth stock so far this year.
via WSJ
Musk Goes Back to Wall Street to Bring the Model 3 to Market – Bloomberg (Mar 15, 2017)
I think it’s safe to say that Tesla’s plans for Model 3 manufacturing represent the biggest test the company and Elon Musk have faced by a long way. The ramp contemplated is so rapid and takes the company so far beyond its historical production rate that it seems almost impossible for it to meet its targets. And yet here it is raising more money to fund what’s going to be a massive capital spend in the first half of the year to prepare for that production run that’s scheduled to begin in July. In the first half of last year, the company spent around half a billion dollars on capex, and it plans to spend $2-2.5 billion in the first half of 2017, which gives some sense of just how big the leap is from anything the company has done in the past. That’s going to cause a massive cash drain, hence the new funding. Musk continues to execute extremely well on his long-term plans eventually, but hitting short-term targets continues to be his big weakness, and it feels like the Model 3 is either going to be the worst example of that flaw or the biggest possible exception to the pattern. I’m betting it’s the former.
via Bloomberg
Self-driving car numbers double on California roads – Financial Times (Mar 9, 2017)
California and Michigan have to be the two states where the most testing of autonomous vehicle technology is being done, with the former home to most of the tech companies in the space and the latter the home of several legacy automakers. The FT is here citing data from the California DMV, which you can see in its raw form here. What’s fascinating is the mix of companies here, as I’ve said before – there are several traditional carmakers (VW, Mercedes, Nissan, BMW, Honda, Ford, and Subaru), several big names from the tech world (Waymo, Tesla, Uber, Baidu, Faraday Future, and Cruise [now part of GM]), and a variety of other smaller companies. But Waymo has by far the largest number of cars and miles driven (and most accidents). But the California DMV is certainly the source of some of the most interesting data on self-driving testing anywhere in the world right now.
via Financial Times
This Insurance Startup Wants to Cover Tomorrow’s Self-Driving Cars – Backchannel (Mar 9, 2017)
Pay-as-you-drive insurance isn’t a brand new concept – indeed, I remember a colleague writing a report on this about five years ago when I was at Ovum. The basic concept is that the insurance company finds a way to measure actual driving behavior and then offers lower rates to those drivers who drive most safely. There are a number of pilots and active programs underway already, and this Tesla program just takes it a step further by focusing on drivers who turn on the Autopilot feature. Outside of this program, Root measures actual driving behavior through an app, but with Autopilot-enabled Teslas, there’s apparently no such hurdle to overcome. That’s great validation for Tesla (especially given the recent worries over its latest software), and also for autonomous driving technology as a whole – a key argument made by essentially all of its proponents is that it will be safer than human drivers. I’ll be curious to see if this program eventually gets expanded to cover other ADAS systems (since Autopilot is technically ADAS rather than autonomous technology), and whether Root’s data backs up Tesla’s claims about safety over time.
via Backchannel
Tesla Drivers Are Paying Big Bucks to Test Flawed Self-Driving Software – Backchannel (Mar 7, 2017)
It’s impossible to imagine any major car manufacturer putting out an ADAS system or autonomous driving technology that was as unready (and as apparently unsafe) as Tesla’s Autopilot software currently appears to be – it would be catastrophic for their brands and reputations. That’s probably the single biggest difference between Tesla and the major legacy automakers at this point, and it’s simultaneously what allows Tesla to move so much faster and what may end up causing major image, safety, and regulatory problems for the company as well. Moving fast and breaking things may be a fine motto for a social network, but it’s clearly not the right approach for a car. The very fact that the current feature set is said to be in beta feels like completely the wrong model for this environment. Tesla seems to be being helped by the fact that many of its drivers are early adopter types and eager to test even technology that isn’t completely ready, but I’m guessing they will feel differently if they or family members are hurt or killed in an accident because of this faulty steering and other erratic behavior. Tesla really ought to pull these updates and roll cars back to previous versions until it fixes the problems.
via Backchannel
Tesla Reports Q4 2016 Financial Results (Feb 22, 2017)
The last in our trio of financial results today comes from Tesla. This Wall Street Journal piece from this morning does a great job highlighting some of the investor enthusiasm about Tesla in the face of its continued failure to hit expectations and deliver on its own production and other promises. In the end, today’s results were a mixed bag – both production and deliveries in Q4 were down slightly on Q3 but well up on Q4 last year, revenue was up almost double year on year, and the Solar City business looks to be breaking even on gross margin. But overall, the company had big net losses, ate massive amounts of cash in the quarter, and continues to be a long way from its production targets for the Model 3 which is supposed to start shipping in July. It’s also about to embark on a huge increase in battery production, with three additional Gigafactories being planned for construction starting later this year. Meanwhile, the company’s valuation is now ahead of Nissan’s, despite producing losses and massively fewer cars – the power of trajectory and belief in a disruptive business model.
via Tesla (PDF)
Samsung’s reputation nosedives in the US after Galaxy Note 7 snafu – The Verge (Feb 20, 2017)
As usual, it would be great to understand in more detail the methodology behind this survey, but it’s not available. The Verge seems to have got the rankings wrong – from what I can tell, Samsung was 7th and not 3rd last year – but it’s also worth noting that Samsung’s score dropped from 80.44 to 75.17, which sounds a lot less dramatic than dropping from 3rd (or even 7th) to 49th. The fact is that there are a lot of companies clustered together between 75 and 87 points and so a small drop in the score produces a big drop in rankings. Since the survey was also conducted in November and December last year, when the Note7 debacle was still very fresh in people’s minds, I’m guessing it would score a lot better just a few months from now. Though the Verge picked up on Samsung’s drop as their headline, it’s worth noting where other tech companies sit too: Amazon is #1 (score 86.27), Apple #5 (82.07), Google #8 (82.00), Tesla #9 (81.70), Netflix #18 (79.86), and Microsoft #20 (79.29), all of which classify as either very good or excellent. It’s also worth noting that big cable companies like Comcast and Charter score in the low 60s, which qualifies as “poor”, while the major wireless carriers score 66-72 (“fair” to “good”), with T-Mobile top and Sprint bottom.
via The Verge (official release here)
Thirty Additional Companies Join Tech Amicus Brief on Immigration Ban – USA Today (Feb 7, 2017)
This is really just an addendum to yesterday’s item about the amicus brief filed by (then) 97 tech companies, as some 30 additional companies added their names to the brief yesterday afternoon. Among them were some of the Elon Musk-controlled holdouts from the initial set, Tesla and SpaceX as well as a number of smaller companies which simply don’t seem to have been looped in to the initial effort. The remaining holdouts are increasingly conspicuous by their absence, though it remains more consumer- than enterprise-focused as a group (HP did sign on later in the day, but IBM, Oracle, and other enterprise heavyweights are still missing), and the telecoms carriers and cable companies are all missing as a group too.
via TechCrunch
Tesla Is Testing Self Driving Cars on California Roads – Bloomberg (Feb 1, 2017)
The headline is news, I guess, but far more interesting are the detailed reports each company testing autonomous vehicles in California has submitted for 2016. These reports lay out – in some cases in quite a bit of detail – the results of testing during the year, including the miles driven and the number of disengagements. This is a great counterpoint to the article last year which suggested Tesla had an edge over others in autonomous driving because its cars had driven many more miles – the reality is that Tesla’s truly autonomous cars drove just 550 miles on California roads, while Google/Waymo’s drove 636,000, or over a thousand times as many miles. What’s more, Waymo’s vehicles required just 0.2 driver interventions per thousand miles relative to Tesla’s 0.33 per mile. It’s also notable that the vast majority of Tesla’s disengagements were on wet roads – road conditions continue to be a major factor in the ability of many autonomous driving systems to function correctly, which obviously puts them a very long way from mass production and release to customers. I’m planning to dig into all these numbers some more.
via Bloomberg (see also this blog post from Waymo)
Elon Musk’s Tesla Drops ‘Motors’ From Name – WSJ (Feb 1, 2017)
Corporate name changes are always interesting, especially when they’re mostly about cutting things from the name – Apple dropped the Computer from its name ten years ago the same month as it announced the iPhone, and Snapchat changed its name to Snapchat to coincide with its announcement of Spectacles. In both those cases and Tesla’s, the name change reflects a broadening of the company’s scope – Apple had added the iPod and was adding the iPhone, and perhaps already recognized that traditional computers wouldn’t provide the majority of revenue ever again, Snap was expanding beyond just its previously eponymous app, and Tesla is expanding into both solar power and home energy storage. It’s an entirely symbolic change, but also sets Tesla further apart as a carmaker in the breadth of its ambitions. I can’t see GM changing its name for the same reason anytime soon, but Tesla’s identity is always been more about innovation and change than simply making cars.
via WSJ
Silicon Valley’s responses to Trump’s immigration executive orders, from strongest to weakest – The Verge (Jan 28, 2017)
This is a good summary of the responses from the tech industry so far to President Trump’s executive orders on immigration from Friday. It also does a nice job sorting the responses by strength – there’s quite a range in the responses, from those focusing narrowly on the practical impacts on employees of each company to those issuing broader moral condemnations of the policy. This certainly won’t be the last we hear on this topic. It’s notable that as of right now Amazon is one of the major holdouts among the big consumer tech companies.
via The Verge
Tesla sues ex-Autopilot director for taking proprietary info, poaching employees – TechCrunch (Jan 26, 2017)
Things are getting nasty between Tesla and one of its prominent former employees, Sterling Anderson, who used to run its Autopilot program. The lawsuit alleges that Anderson both took proprietary data from Tesla when he left and that he tried to poach additional Tesla employees to work on his new venture with Chris Urmson, formerly of Google’s autonomous driving unit. This lawsuit just highlights how competitive the space has become, and how eagerly many different companies including established carmakers, smaller carmakers like Tesla, big tech companies like Apple and Google (and Uber), and startups like Anderson and Urmson’s new venture Aurora are pursuing it. We’re going to see a lot of ugliness, and certainly plenty more hiring and poaching between these various companies, over the coming years.
via TechCrunch
Elon Musk: Surprise winner under Trump – CNBC (Jan 24, 2017)
Although the tech sector has generally recoiled in horror at the prospect of Donald Trump’s presidency, and cooperated only under duress with the incoming administration, Elon Musk of Tesla seems to be something of an exception. His history with Peter Thiel, Trump’s right hand man on tech issues, is a major enabler, but it seems to go beyond that. It would be fascinating if Musk rather than Thiel himself ended up becoming the bridge between the administration and the tech industry. Cooperating closely with the administration is still likely to be a double-edged sword – on the one hand, it may curry favor, but on the other it may anger Tesla customers who view Trump with distaste. It will be fascinating to watch how this plays out.
via CNBC
NHTSA Finds No Fault in Tesla Autopilot With Regard to May 2016 Fatal Crash – NHTSA (Jan 19, 2017)
This is NHTSA’s report on the Tesla Autopilot crash in May 2016, which was investigating whether the Autopilot system was at fault. The headline from Tesla’s perspective is that the Autopilot system wasn’t at fault, because it (a) operated as expected, and (b) wasn’t intended to be able to avoid such cross-traffic collisions. That’s good for Tesla, because it exonerates its system, and also because NHTSA determined that its Autosteer system increases safety by 40%. Incidentally, the report also classifies Autopilot as a Level 2 system, whereas I’ve seen some people incorrectly refer to its as Level 3. The key here is that Level 3 systems allow the driver to stop paying attention, whereas Level 2 systems require full driver attention at all times. The problem in this crash was that the driver treated the system as a Level 3 system (which the term Autopilot somewhat implies), and paid insufficient attention to notice the truck crossing the car’s path. Tesla’s system may not have been at fault, but there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s not doing enough to train drivers not to treat its Level 2 system as something more – though NHTSA didn’t address that point in its report.
via NHTSA Finds No Fault in Tesla Autopilot With Regard to May 2016 Fatal Crash – NHTSA (PDF) – see also news coverage of the report on Techmeme
Building the Supercharger Network for the Future – Tesla (Jan 12, 2017)
Tesla announced the outlines of this new approach several months ago, but has now fleshed out some of the details – it will begin charging for using more than 400kWh annually at its supercharging (rapid charging) stations for new cars sold from this month onward, but the rates will be very low – apparently just $120 to drive across the US from New York to Los Angeles. The motivation here is that this charging infrastructure remains absolutely critical to the owner experience for electric cars, and densifying the network is expensive. As such, Tesla wants to recoup some (though apparently not all) the costs from those who actually use it. One of the big challenges for the big auto manufacturers is not just matching the performance of Tesla’s cars but matching its charging infrastructure over time too, and some have partnered in Europe to accelerate this rollout.
via Building the Supercharger Network for the Future | Tesla
Creator of Apple’s Swift Leaves for Tesla – Tesla PR (Jan 10, 2017)
This is one of those bits of news that’s almost impossible not to see as symbolic – a top software engineer leaves an Apple that has appeared to be struggling for Tesla, the car tech startup that can do no wrong. Both of those, of course, are exaggerations and Apple has poached many employees from Tesla over the last couple of years too. But the fact that Chris Lattner, an extremely well respected software engineer, chose to leave at the very least says something is currently more attractive for him at Tesla than at Apple. If Apple’s car efforts are in as much flux as they’ve recently seemed, and if cars are what Lattner wants to work on next, then that’s not all that surprising. And it’s impossible to know at this point whether there’s something more to it than that. (Update, Jan. 11 2017: see also this news)
via Welcome Chris Lattner | Tesla
Tesla fails to come through on its promise to deliver 80,000 to 90,000 cars in 2016 – Recode (Jan 3, 2017)
The shortfall mentioned here was modest, and was entirely due to delivery rather than production issues. The bigger issue is that, even if it had hit 80 or 90k deliveries in 2016, its targets for 2017 and especially 2018 are higher still, with 2018 apparently ramping to 400,000. That’s still an incredibly steep hill to climb, and I’m doubtful Tesla can up production that quickly. There may be a lot of disappointed Tesla 3 reservers come 2018…
via Tesla fails to come through on its promise to deliver 80,000 to 90,000 cars in 2016 – Recode