Hasta La Gadget!

“It doesn’t help to have a car that’s cheap, but that sucks.” This isn’t the sort of direct language that you typically hear from a CEO these days, but this is exactly the kind of material you can expect from Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk. Over the course of our conversation, Musk (who earlier co-founded PayPal and who also heads up SpaceX) went on the record calling journalists who didn’t understand the benefits of leases “dumbasses” and pledged that use of the company’s Supercharger stations will always, forever and ever, be free. Candid responses such as these are not new for Mr. Musk, having certainly caused some turmoil in the past, and they do make for quite an interesting interview. Join us as we explore why the cheapest Model S was scrapped and we ask just when we can expect the fabled, and truly affordable, third-generation Tesla.

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Thinking of picking up the budget Tesla Model S? Think again: the electric automaker just announced that it won’t be sending its 40 kWh battery pack option into production, citing a lack of customer demand. Customers who opted for the lower range configuration will still get a car, of course, but it will be a 60 kWh machine with software restrictions on range. It sounds like a raw deal, but Tesla promises customers that the artificially limited Model S will reap unexpected benefits from the battery swap — that is, improved acceleration and a higher top speed. All of the company’s 60 kWh cars will be built with Supercharger hardware, too. Finally, the company announced that it surpassed its first quarter sales goal, having delivered 4,750 Model S vehicles on its planned 4,500. This gives it a head start on its year-end goal of delivering 20,000 cars in 2013 and presumably secures the Q1 profits it promised shareholders back in February. Curious onlookers and Department of Energy collectors can find the details after the break.

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If you’re one Elon Musk, you’re probably ready for just about anything to take the place of the only story dominating the Tesla tagline for the past few weeks. Of course, a $90 million net loss isn’t the ideal story to overtake the Model S kerfuffle, but hey — at least the company’s aiming to pull in a profit next quarter. In a bid to keep investors focused on the positive, the automaker’s Q4 2012 shareholder letter notes that Tesla is officially predicting its first quarterly profit in Q1 2013, sliding up from “late 2013.”

For the quarter that just wrapped, the firm saw revenues of $306 million (a 500 percent increase sequentially from the $50.1 million seen in Q3 2012), and it ended the year with $221 million in total cash after having made the first quarterly principal payment of $12.7 million to repay the loan to the U.S. Department of Energy. Tesla also plans to deliver some 20,000 Model S vehicles in 2013, with around 4,500 of those happening in Q1. Europeans and Asians can expect their deliveries in “summer” / “late this year” (respectively), with the first Model X deliveries to occur in early 2014. Musk also told investors that it plans to “spend significantly less on capital expenditures” in 2013 compared to 2012, helping to (hopefully) generate “slightly positive net income on a non-GAAP basis” in Q1 2013.

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Source: Tesla

Between data logs, rebuttals and general drama, it’s easy to get confused: can a Tesla Model S make the trek from Washington DC to Connecticut? A small group of Tesla fans decided to see for themselves. Meeting in DC over the weekend, seven drivers from the Tesla Motors Club forums banded together to recreate the reporter’s infamous trip to Tesla’s Milford Connecticut Supercharger, minus the Manhattan detour. The long and short? The team made the trip successfully, albeit with some minor hiccups. Most of the drivers had no trouble topping off their Tesla’s at max range, ensuring they had enough charge to complete each leg of the trip — but one car stubbornly refused to top off at a Delaware Supercharger.

After about an hour of troubleshooting, Tesla pushed a firmware update to the vehicle, found and diagnosed another bug and got the car back on the road. The lesson? A carefully planned electric road trip can lead to success, but technical errors do happen. Even so, the team had no qualms teasing the NYT reporter for his troubles, referring to “Brodering” as the act of running out of power due to human error. All in all, it seems good times were had — what else could you ask of a weekend excursion? Check out the team’s Twitter feed at the adjacent source link for additional driver updates, or check out straßenversion for a passenger account of the trip’s first leg.

[Thanks, Aravind]

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Source: straßenversion, Tesla Road Trip (Twitter)

It’s been hard to miss, this brouhaha that’s been boiling over between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and The New York Times — specifically with reporter John M. Broder. Broder published a piece over the weekend called “Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway” in which he panned the Model S for inaccurate range estimates and drastically reduced range in cold weather. In fact, about the only thing he didn’t hate was the tow truck driver who was ultimately dispatched to pick up him and the charge-depleted Tesla he had been driving through Connecticut.

Musk, likely still stinging from an even more vitriolic 2011 takedown by Top Gear, was quick to take to Twitter and call the article “fake.” He later backed that up with comprehensive data logs recorded, apparently, without Broder’s knowledge. That data, at least at surface value, shows the Times piece is at best misleading — at worst libelous.

Case closed? Oh no, this is just beginning. In posting this data, and in chastising Broder’s driving habits, Musk inadvertently refocused the situation onto himself. Instead of asking how the Times allowed this piece to be published, many are instead asking whether it’s right for Tesla to be placing any sort of expectations on reviewers. And then, of course, there’s the disconcerting Big Brother aspect of the whole case. Who’s in the right? Who’s in the wrong? Let’s try to find out.

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