Sorry, But Tesla’s Cool Electric Cars Can’t Compete As Long As Fracking Exists

If you were among the brave few who bought a Tesla Roadster in 2008, you purchased your government-subsidized $100,000-plus electric car when a barrel of oil cost as much as $162 in today’s dollars. “Peak oil” was an article of faith — as crude supplies ran out, ever-higher oil prices would destroy demand for the internal combustion engine and other fossil-fuel monstrosities. But now, if you’re one of the 500,000 wannabe Tesla owners who, according to CEO Elon Musk, has put down a $1,000 deposit on a $35,000 Model 3, the company’s new mass-market electric sedan, you’re probably just as familiar with a fashionable new green conceit. Now the article of faith is “peak demand” for oil, the idea that electric cars will soon make oil obsolete.

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Elon Musk Had a Hilarious Response to More Than 60,000 People Canceling Their Tesla Model 3 Orders

By Justin Bariso Founder, Insight 

The Tesla Model 3, the mass-market electrical vehicle that may completely change the automotive industry, is here-and people are excited.

Well, most people, anyway. There are more than a few customers who are also disappointed.

About 63,000 people have canceled preorders for the electric car over the course of the past year, as revealed earlier this week by Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the company’s quarterly earnings call. (The number of orders dropped from about 518,000 to 455,000, Musk said.)

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Tesla Reports Losses

The electric-car maker lost $0.69 per share on an adjusted basis. This was the first earnings release since shareholders approved the electric-car maker’s acquisition of SolarCity — a $2.6 billion deal that merged the two companies CEO Elon Musk oversaw.

As Tesla continues to burn through cash and tackle competition, analysts are parsing the earnings release and call for information on how the company plans to manage its capital.

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Yes, Elon Musk Is Actually Really Boring

Musk is a serious person, but he can also be something of a loose cannon, making outlandish statements designed to troll the press or simply amuse himself. In a 2015 interview with Stephen Colbert he semi-seriously endorsed dropping nuclear weapons on Mars; last year he implied on Twitter that he’s developing an Iron Man-style flying suit for the Pentagon. Most reporters assumed that the tunnel thing was another one of his jokes.

Musk wouldn’t seem to be in a particularly good ideological position to benefit from Trump’s infrastructure largesse. He’s a climate change hawk who was so closely identified with the Obama administration that Mitt Romney attacked Tesla during the 2012 debates. (Tesla had received a government-guaranteed loan in 2010.) In the next presidential election, Musk supported Hillary Clinton for president, describing Trump, in an interview with CNBC, as a man who “doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”

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Elon Musk, UAW spar over Tesla plant conditions

The United Auto Workers signaled Friday that it’s gathering support to unionize Tesla’s assembly plant after someone claiming to be an employee of the automaker publicly criticized the company over factory conditions.

The UAW confirmed Friday that Tesla workers “have approached the UAW, and we welcome them with open arms.”

The union said those workers included Jose Moran, who published a blog post Thursday on a site called Medium alleging that “preventable injuries happen often,” workers are forced into “excessive mandatory overtime,” dissent is stifled and compensation is inadequate.

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Tesla customers cancel Model 3 orders over Musk Flip-Flopping

No fewer than five Tesla customers told BuzzFeed Monday that they’ve canceled plans to purchase the car maker’s highly anticipated Model 3 after Mr. Musk agreed to participate in two White House advisory groups, particularly in light of the president authorizing a broad executive order last week limiting the intake of refugees and restricting immigration.

Despite telling CNBC prior to Election Day that Mr. Trump was “not the right guy” for the White House, the 45-year-old South African-born entrepreneur has since accepted roles on the president’s economic advisory group and manufacturing council.

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Tesla Aims to Cut Crashes (And Misses)

Musk was expanding on a report published last week by the U.S. National Highway Safety Administration that not only exonerated AutoPilot of having a role in a fatal crash in Florida last summer but added that airbag deployments indicated that the crash rate had fallen nearly 40 percent, to 0.8 per million miles driven, down from 1.3 per million miles before the original version of AutoPilot was installed.

The fatal crash had cast a pall over Tesla’s system, prompting some critics to say that the company had overpromised simply by choosing the name AutoPilot. Tesla acknowledges that AutoPilot is not—yet—a truly autonomous system but rather a package of driver-assistance features, such as emergency collision avoidance, lane keeping, and active cruise control.

On Saturday Musk warned customers who were about to have access to the newly downloaded software package that there might be a need to adjust the hardware—specifically the angle of the cameras.

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