Since Elon Musk and Tesla Motors is always spinning news for the media, we realized we needed a weekly feature to cover what the Teslaratti are saying.
Telsa S Survivors
Four teenagers survived a crash in a Tesla S in Germany due to large front crumple, making some to comment that it’s hard to die in a Tesla. There have been deaths in Tesla S car including an elderly man who drove into a swimming pool, a Tesla thief who died in a hospital after a crash into a pole, a man died after a Tesla S was hit by dump truck in Winnipeg.
Growth Team Grows
Tesla has been listing jobs that it is building a growth team, including a rock star data scientist. Tesla hired former Facebook’s Growth Product Manager, Praveen Arichandran, as its new Director of Growth Programs and Sisun Lee from Uber’s growth team.
Musk Sleeps at Factory
After firing two executives for Tesla X issues, CEO Elon Musk has reportedly taken matters into his own hands. He’s even sleeping in a sleeping bag on the Fremont factory floor. During a conference earning call, Musk noted that he’s spending quite a bit of time on the factory floor right now to personally oversee quality improvements on Model X.
Panasonic Invests Big in Tesla Gigafactory
According to report from Nevada’s Office of Economic Development, Panasonic invested more in the Tesla Gigafactory during the last quarter than it did since the beginning of the project. Panasonic invested $131 million in Q1 2016 which is 35% greater than the amount invested in Q4 2015. Gigafactory is expected to begin producing its first battery cells by the end of 2016.
Projected Sales Increase
Elon Musk projects sales of 80,000 to 90,000 electric cars in 2016, and t will produce 500,000 cars per year by 2018, rather than 2020.
Some believe that many of 400,000 deposits to for the Tesla 3 are from China. Tesla currently ships all cars to China from its assembly plant in Fremont, California and the costs increase prices for Chinese buyers.
Disco Easter Eggs
A software surprise occurs in a Tesla’s Model S by pressing the button on your charge cable 10 times in quick succession, while your car is locked and charging. The ligth around the charger shows a rainbow light disco mode.
Superchargers Charge Too Much
Yearly Supercharger use among Tesla cars now exceeds 1,000kWh. According to Seeking Alpha, this use is both much higher than before and too high for the company’s reserves.
BioWeapon Mode Clears the Air
Tesla’s bloggers touted the air filtration systems of the Tesla X and Tesla S.
The HEPA filtration system capable of stripping the outside air of pollen, bacteria, and pollution before they enter the cabin and systematically scrubbing the air inside the cabin to eliminate any trace of these particles.
BioWeapon Defense Mode Tested
A Model X was placed in a large bubble contaminated with extreme levels of pollution (1,000 µg/m3 of PM2.5 vs. the EPA’s “good” air quality index limit of 12 µg/m3). The falcon doors were clsoed and Bioweapon Defense Mode was activated. n less than two minutes, the HEPA filtration system had filter the air in Model X, bringing pollution levels from an extremely dangerous 1,000 µg/m3 to levels so low as to be undetectable (below the noise floor).
