Musk Email Congratulates Staff, More Electric Buses and No New Versions Of i3 & i8 | 3 April 2018
Episode 76, Apr 02, 2018, 11:01 PM
Elon’s Late Late April Fool | Has Musk Taken Control Of Model 3 Production Line? | Email To Model 3 Staff Suggests Over 2,000 Weekly Rate | Tesla Throws Some Shade On Twitter | More Electric Buses For London | End Of The Line For i3 and i8
Tuesday 3rd April 2018.
ELON’S LATE, LATE APRIL FOOLS
- And so the tradition goes, you must play your April Fools joke before Midday. Well they’re the rules and, if we can learn one thing from Elon Musk, he doesn’t play by the rules. Well at least not anyone else’s apart from his own. And thus late on the 1st April he sent out his jokes about Tesla. If you missed it, he said: “Despite intense efforts to raise money, including a last-ditch mass sale of Easter Eggs, we are sad to report that Tesla has gone completely and totally bankrupt. So bankrupt, you can't believe it.”
- He later followed up by tweeting an image of himself “passed out against a Tesla Model 3”, apparently using Tesla packaging as a blanket. He later tweeted: There are many chapters of bankruptcy and, as critics so rightly pointed out, Tesla has them *all*, including Chapter 14 and a half (the worst one).”
- After a shocker of a week, some would argue the worst in years if you look at the stock price fall, he’s got a sense of humour that few other CEO’s would have. And that’s probably why Tesla has so many fanboys and fangirls.
IS 2,000/WEEK A SUCCESS OR FAIL FOR MODEL 3?
- And not only if he CEO, but it appears he’s the new Head of Model 3 Production. According to Amir Efrati on Twitter, who in his biog says formerly of the WSJ and has a Twitter blue mark, claims Elon musk has taken direct control of the Model 3 production line. The article claims: “ Musk appears to have pushed aside the company’s senior vice president of engineering, Doug Field, who had been overseeing manufacturing in recent months. Until the move by Mr. Musk, Mr. Field had been consolidating power since joining Tesla from Apple in 2013. Mr. Musk had given Mr. Field several chances to raise output, but the company has repeatedly missed its Model 3 production targets over the past year, including after Mr. Field took over manufacturing.”
- At 12:01am Eastern yesterday, he sent an email Tesla staff about the Model 3, ahead of the earning call, saying the ramp up to this level has been “extremely difficult,”but Musk noted “we are finally here. It took five years to reach the 2000/week production rate for S and X combined, but only nine months to achieve that output with Model 3,” he wrote.
- And by finally here he means if they just hit the production rate of 2,000 Model 3s a week. It was back in January that we heard they were pushing back the 5,000 a week target by one quarter, and by now they should have been making 2,500 a week.
- And that’s the curious thing about the targets, which everyone has an opinion on, so where do you stand? Should Tesla and Elon just have said we play to make 1.5k a week in Q1. That way they would have smashed the target. OR is it better to shoot really high, narrowly miss it, but actually end up doing better than an average target because you’ve stretched everyone? Let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter.
- Bloomberg recently predicted 1,200 which would be a massively embarrassing fail for an organisation which has recently pitched themselves as the de facto ‘Tesla Tracker’.
MODEL X CRASH SPILLS ONTO TWITTER
- Finally on Tesla for now, an article on Tesla Motors Club said that the investigators working on the Model X crash in California were unhappy with Tesla. The NTSB didn’t appreciate Tesla revealing the black box data such as the fact the driver had been reminded to put his hands back on the wheel and that Autopilot was engaged at the time. Elon Musk responded to the NTSB via twitter pointing out that the NHTSA regulates cars, not the NTSB. He added Tesla releases critical crash data affecting public safety immediately and always will. "To do otherwise would be unsafe," said Musk.
ON THE (ELECTRIC) BUSES
- On the podcast I’ve mentioned the difference between electric vehicles and electric miles, and why it’s important to electrify the vehicles which travel the farthest. Some estimates say your personal car is in use for 4% of the time you own it.
- Well ChargedEVs have another great story about electric buses, saying: “London’s world-famous red buses are steadily going electric. Route 153 serves many of the City of London’s most congested streets, between Finsbury Park in the north and Moorgate in the heart of the financial district. This route will be the fourth in the capital to go fully electric, with a new fleet consisting of eleven 10.8-meter single-deck Enviro200EV electric buses, jointly manufactured by China-based BYD and Scotland-based Alexander Dennis. The depot will be served by charging points manufactured by BYD. Buses provided by the BYD/Alexander Dennis partnership have already accumulated over a million miles of emissions-free operation in London, Liverpool and Nottingham.
END OF THE LINE FOR i3 AND i8
- Onto the BMW i3 and i8 next, and between Carbuzz and Automotive news report that: “Automotive Newsreports that with the BMW i4 and iNext EVs set to debut in 2020 and 2021, the i3 and i8 will likely no longer be needed. Or, in other words, neither will be redesigned. “These cars are very unique”, said Stefan Juraschek, head of electric powertrain for BMW. “These two cars were not (developed) as a family that we can expand in different (ways) or maybe five or 10 derivatives.” Instead, they were (and still are) technological showcases. For 2017, the i3 received a series of updates and it’s now a full EV while the refreshed i8 coupe and new roadster remains a plug-in hybrid only.”
- I also tried to chase up any news about a larger BMW i3 battery but the most recent thing I could find was 2 months old. The latest is that sometime in 2018 BMW will squeeze a 40kWh battery into the i3, effectively doubling the capacity of the launch car in 2013.
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