A Tesla Model S Caught Fire During a Test Drive in France

A Tesla Model S caught fire during a test drive in France on Monday.

The vehicle supposedly made a loud noise and sent a warning on the dashboard that there was a problem with charging, Electrek reports. The Tesla TSLA -1.87% employee then told the driver to pull the car over and had all passengers exit the vehicle.

Tesla And SolarCity: The Sting, Part Deux

Summary

ESG investors are gluttons for punishment: false environmental claims on top of dubious accounting.

SolarCity was ahead on “selling the payments” because their value prop was highly dubious. Maybe Tesla will soon learn.

The new Tesla will be neither an energy company nor green.

Tesla’s Elon Musk Buying Over Half of SolarCity Bond Offer

Musk’s purchase of the so-called “solar bonds” comes after money-losing SolarCity last week said it would cut operating costs to bring expenses in line with its reduced solar installation outlook.

SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive and Chief Technology Officer Peter Rive are each buying another $17.5 million of the $124 million offer, according to the SolarCity filing.

Don’t Go Against The Family — Musk, Cousins Buy $100 Million In SolarCity

“This is something that we have been thinking about and debated for many years,” Musk, who recused himself from the vote, said in June following the decision.

The move to meld the two companies has all the earmarks of being a family affair.

Tesla Is Worse Than Solyndra

Yet despite all the public celebration, both Solyndra and Tesla stand as warnings of the dangers in deputizing bureaucrats to play bankers and venture capitalists. In both loans, the government walked away laughably undercompensated for the risk it accepted in the startup companies. In fact, the Tesla deal was arguably far more costly for America than the Solyndra fiasco.

Solyndra exposed the first way the taxpayer could lose out. The traditional advantage of making a loan (as opposed to buying stock in a company) is that lenders often get paid something even when the borrowing company fails, because they hold collateral. Solyndra’s bankruptcy revealed the ephemeral value of the government’s collateral. Taxpayers have yet to recover a penny from the company.

SolarCity Has a Big Problem On Its Hands

The slippery slope of a debt-filled company

SolarCity’s value quickly evaporates and even goes negative if we just discount the company’s cash flows at an appropriate discount rate. And I would argue that the assumptions that go into the current NPV calculation are too aggressive, and the 8% discount rate is also too low.

It looks like SolarCity is desperate for cash, and the only way investors are going to give it to them is by raising the cost. That’s a slippery slope for any solar company.

This is a growing problem for SolarCity, and will become a problem for Tesla Motors if it acquires the solar installer. Debt is fuel for SolarCity’s business, and the cost of fuel is going up big time.

Why NASA thinks the Tesla Autopilot is a bad idea

NASA has been studying the pyschological effects of automation for decades, and thus may have something to teach Tesla, notes Scientific American.

“News flash: cars in 2017 equal airplanes in 1983,” Stephen Casner—a research psychologist at NASA’s Human Systems Integration Division—told the magazine.

For the public at large, the name “Autopilot” seems to imply a similarity to the automated systems that help fly planes, although the capabilities of the Tesla system are much more limited.

Stop Elon From Failing Again

THE ONE STOP DATABASE ON STOPPING ELON MUSK