Tesla has been promising a special event to celebrate the opening of its battery factory in Nevada for a while now. Attending the event was even part of the prizes of Tesla’s second round of the Model S owner referral program. Now it finally has a date: July 29th. The company sent out the invitations to the top Model S referrers last night. expand full story

Earlier this week, Tesla confirmed having closed its recent secondary offering with $1.7 billion in net proceeds to finance its Model 3 production program, but part of the offering was also a significant set of transactions in order for Elon Musk to exercise 5,503,972 stock options and then sell 2,782,670 shares to pay taxes.

In a SEC filing issued last night, Tesla confirmed that Musk sold the shares at $213.22 for a total of just over $593 million. After the transaction, Musk’s stake in Tesla stands at 31,100,644 shares worth just over $7 billion. expand full story

The fine folks at GM have given us a shiny new (OK, 500 miles) electric blue 2017 Chevy Volt to test drive for the next week. I’m keeping a diary of my experiences every day here and will wrap up the week with my conclusions. Catch up on Day 1.

Day 2:

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A new study from Green Street Advisors and first reported by CNBC shows that total tenant sales in 24 malls with a Tesla store are on average $105 higher per square foot than in malls were Tesla has no retail presence. The study concludes that the effect is not only due to Tesla’s own high average of sales per square foot, but that the automaker is also driving overall mall sales. expand full story

During the Model 3 unveiling event in March, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made an important announcement curcial to the success of the Model 3: the expansion of its two networks of charging stations. He said that Tesla will double the number of Superchargers to 7,000 units and quadruple the number of Destination chargers to 15,000 units within the next 2 years.

We reported last month that the company already started expanding the Supercharger with permits or started construction at 11 new locations (~90 new Superchargers) since the unveiling event. Now Tesla announced an expansion in Canada with 5 new locations – all in eastern Canada. expand full story

A Tesla Model S driver published a video of his car crashing into a van while on Autopilot which acts as a great PSA to remind Tesla drivers not to always rely on the Autopilot and be ready to take control at all time. In this particular case, the video shows quite clearly what went wrong and the data could actually be useful to Tesla to help prevent the event from happening again. expand full story

The PSA group, which includes the French automotive brands Peugeot, Citroën and DS, announced this week 2 new electric vehicle platforms on which the company will build 4 new all-electric vehicles and 7 new plug-in hybrids by 2021. The company says that the first models will hit the market in 2019 expand full story

The fine folks at GM have given us a shiny new (OK, 500 miles) electric blue 2017 Chevy Volt to test drive for the next week. I’m keeping a diary of my experiences every day here and will wrap up the week with my conclusions. (Day 2)

Day 1, Delivery and Setup expand full story

Just a week ago, Tesla (TSLA) announced a new public stock offering to raise between $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion – depending on the underwriters exercising their option to purchase additional shares – in order to finance its ambitious Model 3 production program.

In a SEC filing today, Tesla confirmed having closed the offering and that the net proceeds were “approximately $1.7 billion, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.” expand full story

If you can handle watching a Tesla Model X getting ripped apart, Brock Archer and Advanced Extrication have an interesting video for you to better understand the Model X’s unique structure and its Falcon Wing doors. expand full story