Tesla previously offered buyers who bought a Model S EV free supercharging for life, then stopped doing that and began to charge owners. Tesla fans were unhappy with that move, and then Tesla angered the users again this week when it announced that it would be increasing Supercharger pricing. Prices in the US rose from 24 cents per kWh to 32 cents per kWh for about a 33% increase in some markets.
It's a pretty big day for Tesla, as it's been given to go-ahead to start delivering Model 3 orders in Europe. This news comes as the company makes cutbacks to get it on the road to profitability while at the same time scaling up production on the Model 3. Tesla expects that European deliveries will begin next month, so its looking to jump on this approval right away.
Some things are too good to last. Then again, Tesla isn’t running a charity and it was only a matter of time before it actually started charging full price for the user of its Supercharger network. However, the sudden jump in price could very well be a rude awakening for those who’ve gotten used to dirt cheap charging prices. The good news is that Tesla’s might still be the best offer in town.
Elon Musk delivered a company update for Tesla today, and it's basically a rollercoaster of ups and downs. The update - an email that was sent to employees this morning and later shared on Tesla's website - details the successes and difficulties the company faced throughout 2018. It also talks about goals for 2019, and what the company needs to sacrifice in order to meet those goals.
The Tesla customer referral program is being closed down, with CEO Elon Musk claiming the word-of-mouth promotion was costing too much. The scheme gave new Tesla owners who had been referred by an existing owner a bonus, as well as rewarding those existing owners with a series of awards.
Tesla is axing its most affordable Model S and Model X cars, doing away with the entry-level battery options and pushing starting prices up by as much as $18,000 in the process. The news was broken by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who revealed that would-be buyers of the soon to be discontinued cars now only have a few days to complete their orders.
Tesla has revealed its fourth quarter 2018 results, saying that its production grew to 86,555 vehicles during the most recent quarter. The majority of production went toward the Model 3 at 61,394 vehicles, a 15-percent increase over Q3. In addition to its production increases, Tesla said that it will slash the price of its vehicles by $2,000 in the US.
A simple headlamp change has earned the Tesla Model 3 an all-important tick on its safety ratings, nudging the electric car further up the roster of recommended vehicles. The automaker's most affordable model had previously been granted a mere "acceptable" rating for its lights, as the IIHS attempts to coax car companies into adopting better bulbs across the board.
Tesla EVs have been involved in quite a few accidents, some fatal, and in all those that involve Autopilot, the company makes the same explanation. The feature is only meant for driver assistance, not full automation. Soon, however, it might have to change its tune, and its excuses, because based on still CEO Elon Musk’s tweets about mind-blowing features being tested, that’s exactly what Autopilot might soon be.
Modern cars may be computers on wheels, but even Tesla probably wasn't expecting Model 3 owners to go to the effort of rooting the EV and running Ubuntu on it. That's just what one person has spent an estimated 100 hours in doing, though, and in the process confirming exactly what hardware the Model 3's touchscreen-dominated dashboard runs, as well as getting owners of the car tentatively excited about future modifications.
Now that production of the new Model 3 is starting to stabilize, and with more and more hitting the roads in the US, Tesla has starting rolling out one of its most anticipated new software updates. Yesterday the car company released the new Track Mode feature for Model 3 Performance versions, allowing drivers to take their EV to the racetrack and really let loose with some aggressive driving.
Starman is on one heck of a road trip since Tesla launched it and Elon Musk's own Tesla Roadster into space. As cool as it was to see SpaceX and Musk shoot a car into space for it to orbit millions of years, there were some very unhappy scientists out there who feared the car might crash into a planet eventually and contaminate it. The Tesla might even hit the Earth in about 10 million years.