Surprising facts about Elon Musk’s electric car maker.
Electric car maker Tesla surprised many this week when co-founder and CEO Elon Musk announced the
company would buy solar installer SolarCity. Musk is the chairman of
SolarCity and the largest shareholder in both Tesla and SolarCity (Musk
is recusing himself from the vote).
While Wall Street has so far panned the deal—sending shares of Tesla TSLA-0.13%
plummeting—some industry watchers see the two companies as an
inevitable pairing, groomed to be joined from the start. Both have
tried hard to own their own manufacturing, investing huge amounts
building massive factories, and both are focused on the applications of
how to use cleaner and more sustainable energy.
Was it always Musk’s intention to merge them? Perhaps. Here are five other things you may not know about Tesla.
1). Tesla Is Constructing One of the World’s Largest Buildings Construction of the Tesla’s Gigafactory outside Reno in February 2015.Photograph by James Glover — Reuters
The huge battery factory will sprawl across 5.8 million square feet,
making it one of the largest buildings by footprint anywhere in the
world. When completed, the facility is supposed to churn out enough
batteries to power 500,000 electric cars per year, which is about the
equivalent of the entire world’s lithium-ion battery production.
2). Tesla Is a Tiny Automaker Tesla Model S automobiles stand on raised cradles at the Tesla Motors assembly plant in Tilburg, Netherlands.Photograph by Jasper Juinen — Bloomberg via Getty Images
Despite the amount of attention and headlines that Tesla receives
daily, the company still produces a very small volume of cars. Tesla has
shipped about 100,000 cars to customers over the course of its
lifetime. By comparison, the U.S. auto industry delivered over 17 million cars last year, and it is expected to ship a similar number this year. BMW, Lexus and Mercedes all sold over 340,000 luxury cars in just 2015. 3). Tesla Almost Died a Bunch of Times (And Was Nearly Bought By Google)
In an effort to build an independent electric car company—a feat that
no one else has accomplished—Musk has taken some big gambles, some of
which haven’t paid off. The company has been on a roller coaster ride
throughout its life, which Musk detailed
during the company’s annual shareholders meeting recently. Tesla has
run through cash and come perilously close to collapse. In 2013, Tesla
only had two weeks of cash left after struggling with production of its
Model S car, and Musk was close to selling his company to Google, which was co-founded by Larry Page, a Musk pal. 4). Tesla Makes Batteries for Buildings and the Power Grid An image of a Tesla battery bank for a utility.Tesla
Tesla already packages batteries to power its electric cars, but last
year Tesla launched a division that packages similar batteries to be
used for buildings, homes and the power grid. Connected together in big
battery farms, utilities can use Tesla batteries to store solar energy
produced during the day to be used at night, or use the batteries to
help manage supply and demand of energy on the power grid. Some
companies, like this winery in Northern California,
are using the batteries to lower their energy bills by shifting their
energy usage onto batteries when the cost of grid power goes up. 5). Tesla Already Has Nearly 400,000 Orders for its Model 3
Courtesy of Tesla
Earlier this year, Tesla opened up reservations for its low cost
Model 3 car, which won’t be delivered to customers until late 2017 at
the earliest. Despite the long wait time, within a couple weeks of the
unveiling of the Model 3, Tesla said almost 400,000 people had put down
$1,000 (refundable) reservations for the $35,000 car. Musk called the response “the biggest one-week launch of any product ever.”
Tesla is updating the
look of the Model S to make it more closely align with the Model X SUV.
It announced Thursday, June 9, 2016 plans to offer a cheaper option of
the Model S.Courtesy of Tesla
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