In today’s article, we'll be
talking about Tesla Motors, a name that emerged a few years ago with an
unfamiliar idea and their revolutionary vision of turning the automotive
industry towards environment friendliness. At first it wasn't taken seriously,
but led by its visionary CEO Elon Musk the company has become a multi-billion
dollar enterprise with almost 5 billion dollars in equity, 23 billion in assets
and 7 billion dollars in revenue. Last year, Tesla has taken off with a vast
momentum and with us closing in on the release of the model 3, it seems like
we're looking at a new iconic automobile brand.
Enough with the introduction, let's
get to it. Here are 15 things you didn't know about Tesla
N° 1
Elon Musk is not the founder
of Tesla, but he wanted in. Although Elon Musk is the mastermind who turned
Tesla into the multibillion-dollar giant it is today, he wasn't the only person
behind the idea. Tesla was started by these guys: Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
and later Elon Musk, JB Straubel and Ian Wright joined in. As mentioned, the
company was the brainchild of Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning in the first
place and they were tackling a problem Elon had great interest in, so he joined
the company in its early days. Because Elon didn't quite agree with the
strategy of the at the time CEO of the company, he sort of pushed him out and
installed himself as CEO and company's chief designer. With his constant
relentless innovation, business prowess and a charisma that made him one of the
most popular and iconic figures of the 21st century, he managed to transform
what was a small project into what is seen today as the most innovative car
company in the world. Remaining today from the original group aside from Musk
himself, is only JB Straubel who serves as the chief technical officer.
N° 2
Tesla Motors was the first car
manufacturer to be launched from Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has never
exactly been the place to be if you're an automaker, the place is for tech
companies and that's what makes Tesla so extraordinary. Tesla is not the
conventional automaker and in some repects, you can say that what it's doing is
more in place at Silicon Valley than it would have been in Detroit or Michigan,
where the so called big guys are based. Despite the human resource technology,
the company lacked access to several important resources that you don't get in
the area, in comparison to North America which to this day is still considered
the place where cars get made
N° 3
The Tesla Model S was the
first premium electric sedan in the world. The model S vehicle which Tesla
launched in 2012 was the world's first premium 100% electric vehicle, despite
having built it from the ground up, Tesla did not compromise on one single feature
when it made the Model S for the sake of technological innovation. The car is
actually very competitive if we disregard it being electric, the Model S is a
comfortable, full utility family sedan with room for seven passengers, with the
acceleration of a sports car being able to go from zero to 60 miles per hour in
under five seconds. This is where the technology part comes in, the car has a
narrow artificial intelligence installed on itself which means that it is able
to learn as it is used, it learns about the driver about the roads and its environment.
If one car learned something
interesting, that knowledge is distributed to all other Tesla's on the road;
this is called swarm intelligence. Because of its technical elegance premium
status and of course technological breakthrough the Model S was the first
electric vehicle to win the renowned Motor Trend Car of the Year award in 2013,
it is also the highest evaluated car by Consumer Reports and holds the first
rank in terms of consumer satisfaction ratings
N° 4
Tesla's innovations are all
open-source. In June 2014 Tesla went out on a limb and tore down its patent
wall it used to have in the lobby of its headquarters, from that time on every
Tesla innovation would be open for use by any innovator out there with a promise
that the company wouldn't initiate lawsuits against anyone who would use it in
good faith. In the post that Elon Musk put up at the time on the company's
blog, he said that Tesla's real competition wasn't with the very small
percentage of electric cars being produced by other automakers, but rather with
the 100 million regular cars produced every year that are contributing to the
demise of the environment, therefore anyone is welcome to use the company's
technology to help the green movement achieve further progress. It was a great
PR move and it also put Tesla in the right position against the big companies
who would want to bury their patents in court which would have been a long and expensive
process.
N° 5
The Tesla Model X is the most
expensive basic Tesla model. The Model X is the super car of the Tesla brand at
the moment, with a price tag of one 140 thousand dollars, the Model X is not
exactly a conventional SUV, it's basically a sports car with the body of an SUV
and the interior of a rocket ship. The Model X can go from 0 to 60 miles per
hour in 3.2 seconds reaching a top speed of 155 miles per hour. It features a
mind-blowing bio weapon defense system in case the air around the vehicle
becomes unbreathable and it has computer-controlled gullwing back doors that give
it an unbeatable sharp smart look that you won't find in your typical SUV
N° 6
The most expensive Tesla ever
sold was an upgraded model S at 205 820 Dollars, this Model S upgraded by
T sport line is believed to be the most expensive tesla vehicle ever sold at least
so far. Above its 123 thousand dollar baseline, the car has 82 thousand dollars
worth of upgrades including a dazzling 25 thousand dollar interior, a carbon-fiber
body kit and $7,500 wheels
N° 7
In October last year, Tesla announced
that all Tesla vehicles will be produced carrying self-driving hardware and
technology. Right now, Tesla vehicles are packed with everything needed for
full self-driving capabilities with eight surround cameras providing 360 degree
visibility at up to a range of 250 meters, 12 updated ultrasonic sensors that
complement this vision, a forward-facing radar that is capable of seeing
through heavy rain fog dust and even the car in front of it. In order to
process all this information, the computer inside the car is a breakthrough in
automotive technology, this resulting in way better road decisions than a human
could ever make. Despite the technology being in its early stages, musk thinks
he'll be at 100% autonomy in the next two years and three more for the
government to allow self-driving cars everywhere. At the current date, multiple
Tesla's are gathering data and learning how to drive themselves, despite a few
small incidents, the autopilot on the Tesla is dramatically outperforming the
average human driver, with Tesla's goal being to get it to at least 10 times
safer than driving it yourself
N° 8
Tesla cars can have their
systems updated over-the-air in smartphone manner. If you're a proud owner of a
Tesla vehicle, then whatever the company has new in terms of software, your car
will be receiving it whether it's in your garage or you're driving on the road.
This is certainly one of the many revolutionary things Tesla has brought
through to our world, now a car being outdated is not really an option except
in terms of hardware. But make sure that your Tesla's electronic system will be
as new as it gets without any effort of yours that's a luxury no other
automaker has yet provided. For example, a Tesla owner last year complained
that there was a slight problem with the way the car was steering, so he
reached out to the company and they told him to bring the car over the next
day, that night the Tesla engineers wirelessly went through all the data from
the computer of his car and adjusted it remotely. The next morning before the
owner could drive it to the factory, the car had already been fixed and was
behaving as new.
N° 9
The car could be summoned to
you or send over to make you money in the future.
Tesla has just launched the
first version of the summon application which currently makes you able while
driving your Tesla Model S or Model X, to leave it in the driveway once you get
home and you can trust it to open the garage door, park itself and close it
back, you can also call for it in the morning. Despite this being in the beta
stage at this point, the vision of the project is so you would be able to get
in your car the car would drive you to work, you get out of the car and it goes
on its way when, you're done the car comes back and picks you up. One of the
revolutionary things Elon Musk is considering is creating a network of Tesla's where
if you want, you could rent out your autonomous car when you're not using it. For
example when you get to work, you could enable your car to be used by the network
sort of like a taxi or an Uber, while the driverless car picks up and delivers
people to their destination on its own, it's generating income for you. Once this
is implemented, the model 3 which costs roughly $40,000 could generate in
excess of $20,000 per year on its own
N° 10
Elon Musk admitted that the first
Tesla Model “the Roadster” was a complete disaster. in May 2016, Tesla was holding
its annual shareholders meeting and during that meeting Elon Musk opened up
completely about his thoughts on the Tesla endeavor at its outset, he said that
the first Tesla Model the Roadster was a failure. In 2008 when the roadster was
reviewed on top gear, Jeremy Clarkson said it was a barely running science
experiment but that it stood no chance at the Top Gear track, which Tesla
responded to by suing the show. Musk also confessed in the meeting that his bet
on the company when he first co-founded it was a mere 10 % chance of survival,
he also said that their efforts were completely clueless but that they had a
cause they wanted to serve in order to create a positive effect. Despite being
a failure from the single product standpoint, the few customers they got in the
beginning including celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger was what got them
closer to a Model S and that in turn got them to the model 3.
N° 11
The latest Tesla Model S P 100
D with the ludicrous upgrade is the fastest accelerating production car in the
world. The Model S P 100 D has set a blistering 2.28 seconds 0 to 60 miles per hour
record, the fastest for any production car; Yes! even faster than the Bugatti Chiron
which can do 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds, and this is a car that costs under 150
thousand dollars compared to most supercars which are strong in the seven-figure
area.
N° 12
Tesla has a huge network of
superchargers spread all over the world so they're making a play not only in
the car industry but also on the energy as fuel side. Although Tesla vehicles
are intended to be charged at home just like a mobile phone, there are 810
supercharger stations with 5195 superchargers spread everywhere in North America,
Western Europe and China. And although that number might sound low right now,
it's rapidly increasing to support the demand for electric cars. The purpose of
these supercharger stations is to aid those making long trips. Recharging your
car will take as little as stopping at a gas station for coffee, lately there have started to arise complaints
from Tesla drivers that have been standing in queues at the supercharger
stations which brings us to another innovation. Musk announced that each station
might come with a battery swap aisle where you just drive in, your battery is
changed with a full one and off you go. The service will come at a premium but
it allows you to get to 100 percent really fast, currently Tesla is focused on expanding its supercharger
network because this will be one of its main revenue sources in the future.
Experts estimate that the capital investment needed in order for supercharger
networks to compete with gas stations in terms of availability is around 7.5
billion dollars with an average cost of 250 thousand dollars per station. Since
the current driving time from 1 Tesla supercharger to another is 30 minutes
whereas in the case of a gas station it's only 4 minutes. Tesla is planning to
double the number of stations by the end of 2017.
N° 13
Tesla Model X is currently the
safest car in the world right now. There's been a lot of debate and controversy
when two years ago the Tesla Model S achieved a record score of 5.4 out of 5,
more than any other car ever tested. Wait what? how can they get more than a
maximum number of points? Well when the NHTSA tests a vehicle safety parameters,
they look at all the available data and because the car is electric it cannot
explode in the case of impact unlike fossil fuel cars. Also, because the way
the battery was designed, it has a much lower center of gravity than the rest
of the cars, making it very unlikely to roll over. With the introduction of the
SUV mode,l Tesla pushed it even further adding a ton of features that have
never been seen or heard of before which increases the safety of the
passengers. We guess Volvo has to step up their game now.
N° 14
The Tesla Giga factory will be
the second largest building in the world from a footprint perspective. That's right!
Not only is the Giga factory being built in the middle of the Nevada desert the
biggest battery factory, in the world it is also the second largest when it comes
to footprint, being only overtaken by the Boeing factory. That title goes to it
easy, the five billion dollar factory will be the biggest factory in the world and
above that, it will be the second largest building. Set on 929 kilometers squared,
that's not even the most fascinating part; the Giga factory will supply itself
with all the energy it needs from 100% renewable sources using solar panels on
its roof as well as geothermal and wind power. This factory is so incredible
that it's estimated that 100 smaller buildings could supply the entire world
with the energy; it means 100 Giga factories would be enough for the entire
world to shift to renewable energy. When it starts operating at its full
capacity next year; the factory is designed to produce millions of lithium-ion
batteries, more batteries annually than the entire human species produced ever.
With the factory in place Tesla will be able to increase its car production to
five times for the current 100,000 cars per year to a half a million, six thousand
people will be working at the Giga Factory with robots doing most of the manual
work, what Tesla aims at is making its vehicles as affordable as possible
through economies of scale.
N° 15
Elon Musk almost sold Tesla to
Google at a certain point. Early 2013, Tesla was this close from going bankrupt,
the Model S wasn't selling enough, there were several buyers complaining about
the cars and the company was lacking access to capital and resort. So as Elon
Musk put his staff on crisis mode, he was negotiating a deal with his friend
Google CEO at the time Larry Page, to sell Tesla. Before quitting, musk decided
to give it one final push. The company went at full capacity to solve their
deficiencies, senior executives were fired, younger employees were promoted and
musk gathered staff from every department and decided to make a relentless
sales team out of them. He was quoted as saying “I don't care what job you're doing
your new job is delivering cars”. Later in May of the same year,
Tesla shocked everyone when it
posted its first-ever quarterly profit, this is the type of situation that
years from now someone will make a movie about and win awards.
The thing that excites us most
about the future of the automobile industry is the self-driving part and the
fact that the car becomes an autonomous asset which could generate revenue for
you, this brings us to a very serious question in terms of what an artificial
intelligence on a car might actually mean. That's why we wanted to ask you guys
the same question that has been bugging the smartest minds in the world right
now, imagine you're sitting in the backseat of a self-driving Tesla that's
cruising along, at some point disaster happens and you're faced with an imminent
situation either the car runs over people killing innocent civilians or it
rails out onto an obstacle killing the passenger, the dilemma is what should
the car do in this situation? Taking out every other possibility and imagining
just these two are left, should the car go ahead and kill multiple civilians or
the passenger? Basic math would say if there are more civilians in danger
outside the car than inside it should save them but then we are in the position
that nobody would want to buy a car that would sacrifice the owner to save
others. Please let us know in the comments what do you think the car should do
in this situation?