Blog
June2016
A Grain of Salt
A few things need to be cleared up about the supposed safety of Model S suspensions:
First, there is no safety defect with the suspensions in either the Model S or Model X. Since we own all of our service centers, we are aware of every incident that happens with our customer cars and we are aware of every part that gets replaced. Whenever there is even a potential issue with one of those parts, we investigate fully. This, combined with extensive durability testing, gives us high confidence in our suspensions. With respect to the car that is discussed in the blog post that led to yesterday’s news (more on the blog post below), the suspension ball joint experienced very abnormal rust. We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt.
May2016
Response to Mercury News article, entitled “The Hidden Workforce Expanding Tesla’s Factory”
At Tesla, we aspire to operate on the principles of hard work and exceptional performance, but always tempered by fairness, justice and kindness. There are times when mistakes are made, but those are the standards to which we hold ourselves. With respect to the person at the center of this weekend’s article in the Mercury News, those standards were not met. We are taking action to address this individual's situation and to put in place additional oversight to ensure that our workplace rules are followed even by sub-subcontractors to prevent such a thing from happening again.
Putting the Tesla HEPA Filter and Bioweapon Defense Mode to the Test
Air pollution has a significant and pervasive impact on public health. According to the World Health Organization, it is now considered "the world's largest single environmental health risk," with more than three million people dying every year as a result. This is more than twice the number of people that die in vehicle accidents each year.
April2016
The Week that Electric Vehicles Went Mainstream
A week ago, we started taking reservations for Model 3, and the excitement has been incredible. We’ve now received more than 325,000 reservations, which corresponds to about $14 billion in implied future sales, making this the single biggest one-week launch of any product ever. This interest has spread completely organically. Unlike other major product launches, we haven’t advertised or paid for any endorsements.
March2016
Reserving your Model 3
Along with the excitement and anticipation for Model 3, we know everyone has a few questions. Here are the details so that you know what to expect both on March 31st when reservations open and in the months ahead before you take delivery of your Model 3.
February2016
Enhancing Safety and Convenience with Summon
Early this year, Tesla 7.1 software introduced an array of new Autopilot features to further enhance the convenience and safety of the driving experience. While many of these features move the ball forward toward a safer autonomous future, none is more significant than the remote parking technology known as Summon.
January2016
Summon Your Tesla from Your Phone
Last Fall, Tesla Version 7.0 software introduced a range of new Autopilot active safety and convenience features to give you more confidence behind the wheel, increase your safety on the road, and make highway driving more enjoyable. The release of Tesla Version 7.1 software continues our improvements to self-driving technology. This release expands Autopilot functionality and introduces the first iteration of Summon.
October2015
Your Autopilot has arrived
Tesla's commitment to developing and refining the technologies to enable self-driving capability is a core part of our mission. In October of last year we started equipping Model S with hardware to allow for the incremental introduction of self-driving technology: a forward radar, a forward-looking camera, 12 long-range ultrasonic sensors positioned to sense 16 feet around the car in every direction at all speeds, and a high-precision digitally-controlled electric assist braking system. Today's Tesla Version 7.0 software release allows those tools to deliver a range of new active safety and convenience features, designed to work in conjunction with the automated driving capabilities already offered in Model S.
Journalists Trespass, Assault Tesla employees at the Gigafactory
Last Friday at approximately 11:50 am, a Tesla safety manager received a complaint about two trespassers taking pictures at the Gigafactory. The Tesla employee requested assistance and the Storey County Sheriff’s department was alerted.
September2015
Tesla All Wheel Drive (Dual Motor) Power and Torque Specifications
Attempting to directly correlate horsepower ratings in petroleum burning vehicles to horsepower in an electric vehicle is a difficult challenge. The physics of an electric vehicle propulsion system are very different from a gasoline one. In an EV, electrochemical reactions in the lithium ion cells create electricity. That electricity flows through power electronics that control the voltage and current, then it flows to electromagnets in the motor that create powerful magnetic fields rotating the shaft to turn the wheels. The power required to rotate this shaft has the most correlation to traditional measures of horsepower. However, the chain actually begins in the electrochemical reactions that happen in the battery pack. Depending on the battery's temperature, state of charge and age, the amount of electricity extracted can vary widely.