How Tesla changed the world

Tesla is one of the most valuable companies on Earth, and its CEO, Elon Musk, is the richest man in the world. Tesla started its journey in July 2003 as Tesla Motors with other shareholders. The company’s name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, investing $6.5 million, Elon Musk took the position of becoming the largest shareholder of the company and serving as the CEO of Tesla since 2008.

According to the opinion of Musk, the purpose of Tesla is to help expedite the move to sustainable transport and energy, obtained through electric vehicles and solar power. Tesla started production of its first car model, the Roadster sports car, in 2009.This was followed by the Model S sedan in 2012, the Model X SUV in 2015, the Model 3 sedan in 2017, and the Model Y crossover in 2020. The Model 3 is the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide, and, in June 2021, became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally.

Tesla’s global sales were 936,222 cars in 2021, an 87% increase over the previous year,[10] and cumulative sales totaled 3 million cars as of August 2022

During the founding period of Tesla, electric vehicles were very much expensive. Elon Musk stated that Tesla’s strategy was to first produce high-price, low-volume vehicles, such as sports cars, for which customers are less sensitive to price in 2006.This would allow them to progressively bring down the cost of batteries, which in turn would allow them to offer cheaper and higher volume cars. Tesla’s first vehicle, the Roadster, was low-volume (fewer than 2,500 were produced) and priced at over $100,000. The next models, the Model S and Model X, are more affordable but still luxury vehicles. The most recent models, the Model 3 and the Model Y, are priced still lower, and aimed at a higher volume market,[219][220] selling over 100,000 vehicles each quarter. Tesla continuously updates the hardware of its cars rather than waiting for a new model year, as opposed to nearly every other car manufacturer.

Tesla allows its competitors to license its technology, stating that it wants to help its competitors accelerate the world’s use of sustainable energy. Tesla retains control of its other intellectual property, such as trademarks and trade secrets to prevent direct copying of its technology.

The first retail store of Tesla was opened in 2008 in Los Angeles, followed by others in major U.S. cities. As of June 2022, Tesla operates 196 stores and galleries in the United States, has stores and galleries in 34 other countries, and has 655 service centers globally.

Tesla recalls 321,000 vehicles in the US for tail light problem

Tesla tycoon Elon Musk will take the stand on November 20 as part of a trial over his $50 billion pay package as CEO of the electric car giant.

Musk will testify in the same Delaware court where he faced a lawsuit by Twitter to make sure hewent through with his buyout of the social platform.

The $44 billion purchase of Twitter has put Musk under a deluge of scrutiny after he conducted massive layoffs, scared advertisers and opened the platform to fake accounts.

The unrelated Tesla case is based on a complaint by shareholder Richard Tornetta, who accused Musk and the company’s board of directors of failing in their duties when they authorized the pay plan.

Tornetta alleges that Musk dictated his terms to directors who were not sufficiently independent from their star CEO to object to a package worth around $51 billion at recent share prices.

The Tesla shareholder accuses Musk of “unjustified enrichment” and asked for the annulment of a pay program that helped make the entrepreneur the richest man in the world.

According to a legal filing, Musk earned the equivalent of $52.4 billion in Tesla stock options over four and a half years after virtually all of the company’s targets were met.

When the plan was adopted it was valued at a total of $56 billion.

The non-jury trial began Monday with testimony from Ira Ehrenpreis, head of the compensation committee on Tesla’s board of directors, who said the targets set were “extraordinarily ambitious and difficult”.

Ehrenpreis argued that the board wanted to spur Musk to focus on Tesla at a time when the company was still struggling to gain traction.

The trial will run through Friday and is being presided over by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who was to preside over the Twitter case.

There is no deadline for her decision which could take months.

It’s “highly unusual” for this kind of case to be brought to trial, Jill Fisch, Law professor at the University of Pennsylvania told.

“There aren’t all that many successful challenges to executive compensation (as) the courts have typically treated this as a business decision,” she added.

But the court found in this case that Musk’s ownership of about 22 percent of Tesla and his role as CEO “could have an undue impact” on the board and other shareholders, she noted.

Musk canceled an in-person appearance on Sunday at an event on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali to be in court.

Asked why he had not traveled to the tropical Indonesian island, the new Twitter boss joked that his “workload has recently increased quite a lot” after his takeover of the social media giant.

Tesla hoping its electric Semi will be heavy duty ‘game changer’

US automaker Tesla on December, 1 delivered its first battery-powered heavy duty truck, dubbed “Semi,” and built to tackle long hauls with the handling of a sporty sedan.

“That thing looks like it came from the future,” Telsa chief Elon Musk said while handing over the keys to PepsiCo executives at the vehicle maker’s Nevada manufacturing plant.

With its sleek design, the Semi has been highly anticipated since Musk unveiled a prototype in 2017, but the launch of full-scale production was delayed well past the initial 2019 expectation.

“The sheer amount of drama between five years ago and now is insane,” Musk told a small audience invited to the factory for an event marking the occasion.

“A lot has happened in the world. But, here we are. It’s real.”

In the meantime, other manufacturers have entered the market, from traditional truck makers such as Daimler, Volvo and China’s BYD, to startups like US company Nikola.

The competition has also begun to roll out their deliveries, and have many orders of their own waiting to fill.

However, the truck that “the market has been waiting for... is the one from Tesla,” says Dave Mullaney, a transportation specialist with sustainability think tank RMI.

Legacy manufacturers have primarily converted their diesel-designed trucks to electric.

Tesla’s Semi, on the other hand, “was designed to be electric from the very first design,” says Mullaney.

If the vehicle lives up to expectations, “it’s going to be a huge difference,” he adds.

Musk reiterated the claim Thursday that a Semi had driven 500 miles (800 kilometers) with a total weight of nearly 82,000 pounds (more than 37 metric tons).

The range of electric vehicles currently on offer is only between 250 to 300 miles.

“You have all the power you need to get the job done,” Musk said of the Tesla Semi.

The use of electric light duty vehicles for short-haul deliveries has been steadily growing, but new regulations are pushing manufacturers and transporters to speed up the transition and build out long-haul capabilities.

The most populous US state, California, has passed a law phasing out combustion engine trucks, which has since been followed by other states.

The European Union is also expected to debate similar standards in the coming months.

And on the PR front, companies are also facing pressure to take more environmentally conscious actions.

They “want to be on the right side of history,” says Marie Cheron of the Europe-based association Transport & Environment.

Those who do not commit to a decarbonization strategy, some of whom say they are waiting for technologies to improve, “are falling behind,” she says.

While making up a scant portion of vehicles on the road, diesel-powered semi trucks account for about a fifth of climate-harming emissions spewed by traffic, according to Musk.

“So from a health standpoint, particularly in cities, this is a huge impact,” Musk said of the shift to electric semis.

Mike Roeth, director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency, says that another motivation to transition is that drivers who have been able to test them, “love the electric trucks a lot.”

“They’re very quiet, they don’t have the smells of the exhaust, and they are comfortable to drive.”

For the adoption of electric trucks to accelerate, their range must truly live up to promises and batteries ideally would shrink, several analysts told AFP.

The charging infrastructure must also be built out to handle multiple trucks powering up simultaneously and have storage capacity to work during power outages.

The biggest factor, however, will be the price. The Semi price was not disclosed at the Tesla event.

RMI’s Mullaney says that an electric truck currently costs about 70 percent more to buy than a diesel truck, but in terms of fuel and maintenance, it’s cheaper.

With the first delivery accomplished, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says that Tesla must now “prove they can produce at scale, they need to execute.”

In late October, Musk said that Tesla is aiming to build 50,000 Semis by 2024.

Ives says Musk’s attention is unfortunately focused on his newest acquisition, Twitter, and “the circus show there takes away a monumental moment in Tesla history.”

Tesla’s worldwide wings

Europe

Tesla opened its first European store in June 2009 in London. Tesla’s European headquarters are in the Netherlands. Tesla operates facilities in Tilburg, including a 62,000-square-foot (5,800 m2) European Distribution Centre and an 835,800-square-foot (77,650 m2) final assembly facility that adds drivetrain, battery and software to imported car bodies to reduce import tax, which depends on the location of final assembly.

Asia

Tesla opened its first Japanese showroom in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2010. By 2013, showrooms and service centers were operating in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Two showrooms opened in South Korea in March 2017 and a service center opened there in late 2017. In August 2017, Taiwan opened its first service center and showroom.

Rest of the world

Tesla opened the first Australian showroom in Sydney in 2010 followed by a showroom and service center in Melbourne in 2015. By 2019, Tesla had opened 4 service centers in Australia. In 2012, Tesla opened its first store in Canada in Toronto.

The first expansion of Tesla in the Middle East was with the opening of a showroom and a service center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), in 2017. Five ultra-fast superchargers were also built between cities in the UAE, with a planned 50 destination chargers by the end of 2017. One of the first Tesla customers was Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority which ordered 200 Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles that were added to Dubai Taxi Corporation’s fleet. In May 2017, a service center and store in Amman, Jordan was opened. In January 2020 a “pop-up” store in Tel Aviv, Israel was opened as well as a research and development center.

From beginning to today, Tesla’s and Musk journey is praiseworthy and both of their services, successes and achievement changed the world technologically.

Source from AFP and Wikipedia