Tesla Motors - Page 5

On December 12 2017 09:22 Laserist wrote:
AI chip? I'd rather call it a regular processor tbh.

On December 13 2017 02:39 jalstar wrote:


AI chips iirc are not CPUs, they are more similar to GPUs.

On December 13 2017 06:44 ZeromuS wrote:
I just want an affordable electric vehicle that can get me from A to B without having to worry about charging every night or if I get caught in traffic in the winter.

The rest can be dealt with via fast charging and inftrastructure. If I can get 300km down the road then charge up and go another 300 and wait an hour for the charge, I could live with it. If I had to do a longer trip than 600km I would just rent a gas car

Beverage companies are continuing to drink Elon Musk’s Kool-Aid. A few days after Anheuser-Busch made the largest preorder of Tesla’s all-electric Semi trucks, PepsiCo swooped in with the new top order. According to Reuters, the soda and snack giant has reserved 100 Semi trucks in a bid to reduce fleet emissions and cut down on fuel costs.

Each reservation requires a $20,000 deposit, so that’s $2 million in Tesla’s bank account right now (assuming PepsiCo placed its order after Tesla raised the deposit amount from the original price of $5,000). And if the trucks end up retailing for around $150,000, that would put the company’s bill to the automaker at $15 million. (That’s if and when the trucks end up shipping — which, knowing Tesla, could be a moving target.)

The trucks would only represent a fraction of PepsiCo’s 10,000-vehicle fleet, but a company executive told Reuters the Semis would be put to use for short-haul deliveries:

PepsiCo intends to deploy Tesla Semis for shipments of snack foods and beverages between manufacturing and distribution facilities and direct to retailers within the 500-mile (800-km) range promised by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.

The semi-trucks will complement PepsiCo’s U.S. fleet of nearly 10,000 big rigs and are a key part of its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain by a total of at least 20 percent by 2030, said Mike O‘Connell, the senior director of North American supply chain for PepsiCo subsidiary Frito-Lay.

PepsiCo is analyzing what routes are best for its Tesla trucks in North America but sees a wide range of uses for lighter loads like snacks or shorter shipments of heavier beverages, O‘Connell said.

Since it was unveiled last month, Tesla has racked up a fair number of preorders from several big-name players in shipping and logistics. The day after the announcement, Walmart said it had preordered 15 trucks, while JB Hunt Transport Services said it had reserved “multiple” new Tesla trucks as well.

In the weeks that followed, others lined up to put their deposit down, including Ryder, DHL, and Canadian supermarket chain Loblaw. (Jalopnik just published a nice roundup of all the companies that have said they plan to purchase the trucks.)

Which beverage company will be next to preorder some Tesla Semis? Coca-Cola? Nestle? InBev? Or will it be Kraft, owners of Kool-Aid?

On December 13 2017 06:44 ZeromuS wrote:
I just want an affordable electric vehicle that can get me from A to B without having to worry about charging every night or if I get caught in traffic in the winter.

The rest can be dealt with via fast charging and inftrastructure. If I can get 300km down the road then charge up and go another 300 and wait an hour for the charge, I could live with it. If I had to do a longer trip than 600km I would just rent a gas car

Several Tesla suppliers are now reporting that Model 3 production is increasing rapidly and they are back to working on Tesla’s guidance of 5,000 units per week in December, which was delayed last month.

In October, a few days before Tesla’s earnings and the announcement of the Model 3 production ramp-up delay, Taiwanese auto component maker Hota Industrial Mfg. Co announced that Tesla slashed its orders for Model 3 parts by 40% (5,000 per week to 3,000).

Now the same supplier, which makes gears and axles, told Taiwanese media that Tesla increased the demand for parts back to 5,000 units per week this month.

Chairman Shen Guorong even said that they now have to mobilize the whole company and work overtime in order to comply with the change and that they are even shipping parts by airplanes instead of boats.

The report also cites other Taiwanese suppliers for Tesla’s Model 3 saying that production is now increasing following the bottlenecks.

While it’s certainly great news that the suppliers have to increase their production sooner than anticipated – at least following the announced delay, it’s important to keep in mind that there can be an important delay between the part orders and the actual assembly due to transit time.

If the parts are being produced at 5,000 per week now, it can take up to a month before Tesla can put them in a Model 3, which would mean that the 5,000 per week production level would be achieved in January. Though it’s still earlier than the end of Q1 2018, which was the anticipation since the delay announced last month.

But if they are even shipping by air, that’s a very good indicator of a production increase in the short-term.

As we reported yesterday, Tesla is definitely ramping up Model 3 deliveries this week, but the level of deliveries wasn’t high enough to correlate it to a significant production increase just yet.

But it’s now starting to make more sense with this new information coming from the supply chain.

After the announcement of the delay, Musk changed his guidance to “a few thousand units per week” in December. It looks like it might be happening. Maybe we should expect new batches of invitations to configure the Model 3 to be sent out to regular reservation holders.

Tesla Inc. has kicked off production of its long-awaited electricity-producing shingles that Elon Musk says will transform the rooftop solar industry.

Manufacturing of the photovoltaic glass tiles began last month at a factory in Buffalo built with backing from New York State, the company said in an email Tuesday. It comes more than a year after Tesla unveiled the shingles to a mix of fanfare and skepticism.

The appeal: a sleek, clean solar product, especially for homeowners seeking to replace aging roofs. The tiles -- from most angles -- look like ordinary shingles. They allow light to pass from above and onto a standard flat solar cell.

Tesla, the biggest U.S. installer of rooftop-solar systems, piloted the product on the homes of several employees. The company expects to begin installing roofs for customers within the next few months.

Solar shingles will cost more than a conventional roof along with photovoltaic panels -- but not “wickedly so,” said Hugh Bromley, a New York-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst. He estimates a Tesla roof would cost about $57,000 for a 2,000-square-foot house, compared to about $41,000 for terracotta tiles along with a 5-kilowatt solar-panel system. A plain-old asphalt roof with panels would run about $22,000, Bromley said.

“It may actually do well in overseas markets where solar-photovoltaic is cheap and homeowners are used to paying a premium for building materials and cars -- such as Australia,” Bromley said in an email.

Tesla started production of solar cells and panels about four months ago at its Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo. New York committed $750 million to help build the 1.2 million-square-foot factory, which currently employs about 500 people. The plant will eventually create nearly 3,000 jobs in Western New York and nearly 5,000 statewide, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in 2015.

On November 22 2019 17:37 Harris1st wrote:
Lol it's actually bullet proof. WTF Elon

On November 22 2019 21:25 Sadist wrote:
That Truck looks hideous. I wonder if itll sell. Cool idea though.


I dont think people who buy pickups are typically in Teslas wheelhouse so I have a hard time thinking theyll be making a dent in any current truck buyers from other OEMs. Id guess this is just another option for someone whod already consider a Tesla anyway