Category: Tesla

While Uber and Lyft have been dominating the ridesharing industry and revolutionizing urban mobility, they’re likely to meet a new top competitor in Tesla. 

The company has had its own ridesharing app in the works for some time. Uber and Lyft are at a disadvantage, as neither of them has made a profit.

Much of this has been attributed to how they’ve relied heavily on venture capital and IPO filings to stay afloat which has put them in a bind.

A loss of $1 billion like Uber took in 2019 will take its toll.Uber’s profit margins have been a point of increasing concern for investors. The company collects fares from each ride to pay off its revenue and operating costs, but the amount it earns doesn’t even cover that expense.

Therefore, Uber has continued to lose money every quarter since their IPO in 2017. The debate over whether the Transportation Network Companies (TNC) will remain unprofitable or could be a booming new industry of the future continues.

A new competitor with something greater to offer entering the picture could change all of that. This has led many to keep their eyes on Tesla to see how it performs because of its advancements. While talk of an autonomous driving network is on the horizon, Tesla is set to launch their ridesharing app with drivers.

Because of this, the company will be able to utilize one of its latest services — a car insurance program. Drivers for the Tesla network will be covered directly through the company.

It is believed that a human-driven ridesharing app will give Tesla multiple advantages over the competition, especially when it comes to financial and insurance efficiency.

Continue reading… “Tesla to launch ridesharing app, with Tesla’s Driver Insurance”

By Kirsten Korosec

Tesla has enabled the in-car camera in its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to monitor drivers when its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system is being used.

In a software update, Tesla indicated the “cabin camera above the rearview mirror can now detect and alert driver inattentiveness while Autopilot is engaged.” Notably, Tesla has a closed loop system for the data, meaning imagery captured by the camera does not leave the car. The system cannot save or transit information unless data sharing is enabled, according to Tesla. The firmware update was cited by a number of Tesla owners, industry watchers and bloggers who are active on Twitter.

Tesla has faced criticism for not activating a driver monitoring system within the vehicle even as evidence mounted that owners were misusing the system. Owners have posted dozens of videos on YouTube and TikTok abusing the Autopilot system — some of whom have filmed themselves sitting in the backseat as the vehicle drives along the highway. Several fatal crashes involving Tesla vehicles that had Autopilot engaged has put more pressure on the company to act.

Until now, Tesla has not used the camera installed in its vehicles and instead relied on sensors in the steering wheel that measured torque — a method that is supposed to require the driver to keep their hands on the wheel. Drivers have documented and shared on social media how to trick the sensors into thinking a human is holding the wheel.

Continue reading… “Tesla has activated its in-car camera to monitor drivers using Autopilot”

Aria Alamalhodaei

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to turn every home into a distributed power plant that would generate, store and even deliver energy back into the electricity grid, all using the company’s products.

While the company has been selling solar and energy storage products for years, a new company policy to only sell solar coupled with the energy storage products, along with Musk’s comments Monday, reveal a strategy that aims to scale these businesses by appealing to utilities.

“This is a prosperous future both for Tesla and for the utilities,” he said. “If this is not done, the utilities will fail to serve their customers. They won’t be able to do it,” Musk said during an investor call, noting the rolling blackouts in California last summer and the more recent grid failure in Texas as evidence that grid reliability has become a bigger concern.

Last week, the company changed its website to prevent customers from only buying solar or its Powerwall energy storage product and instead required purchasing a system. Musk later announced the move in a tweet, stating “solar power will feed exclusively to Powerwall” and that “Powerwall will interface only between utility meter and house main breaker panel, enabling super simple install and seamless whole house backup during utility dropouts.”

Continue reading… “Tesla wants to make every home a distributed power plant”

By Trevor Mogg

Tesla boss Elon Musk revealed a couple of years ago that he wants to stick some rocket thrusters on the second-generation Roadster as part of a special “SpaceX package” when the electric sports car launches in 2022.

And now he says he wants it to hover, too.

Chatting with Joe Rogan in a podcast released this week, Musk said that his team of crack engineers is currently trying to work out how the Tesla Roadster can be made to hover “without, you know, killing people.”

“I thought, maybe we could make it hover, but not too high,” Musk told Rogan during the chat. “So maybe it could hover, like, a meter above the ground, or something. So if you plummet, you blow out the suspension but you’re not going to die.”

He added that he thought his team could add a thruster “where the license plate flips down, James Bond-style, and there’d be a rocket thruster behind it that gives you three tons of thrust.”

Continue reading… “Elon Musk wants the upcoming Tesla Roadster to hover”

By Simon Alvarez

The Tesla Semi has its own fair share of critics, and even today, some notable voices such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believe that the Class 8 all-electric truck is not feasible. When one looks at the currently available information about the upcoming vehicle, however, one would see that the Tesla Semi is vastly underestimated. 

One of the key criticisms surrounding the Tesla Semi is its weight, which skeptics would claim is far too much to be economically viable. Tesla has not shared any specifics surrounding the Semi’s weight, though the company did note that the vehicle consumes less than 2 kWh per mile. As noted by the OBF in a YouTube video, this would translate to the Semi likely having a battery that’s roughly around 600 kWh to 1,000 kWh, depending on whether the vehicle features a 300 or 500-mile range. 

Continue reading… “THE TESLA SEMI’S ECONOMICAL ADVANTAGE IS FRIGHTENINGLY UNDERESTIMATED”