telsa

Revitalizing downtown Las Vegas with 100 Tesla Model S cars

Tony Hsieh made shopping for shoes easy. It also made him a fortune when he sold Zappos to Amazon for around $850 million. Lately, he has been focusing on revitalizing downtown Las Vegas, and 100 of Tesla's all-electric Model S cars are part of the plan.

With a base price of $52,400 (after a $7,500 federal tax credit), the Teslas are part of a collaborative transportation system designed to free people from owning cars and at less than the monthly cost of traditional car ownership. Called Project 100, the transportation system will also include more than 100 … Read more

Tesla: You can't 'brick' Model S batteries

Tesla Motors today detailed measures to prevent a full discharge of the batteries in its forthcoming Model S, saying drivers of the electric sedan would have to be particularly negligent to cause a costly battery replacement.

The company published a response to a blog earlier this week that recounted the problem of "bricked" Tesla Roadster batteries. The blog claimed that five owners of the Roadster electric sports car allowed their batteries to be completely discharged, rendering them inoperable.

Tesla on Wednesday did not deny the stories of Roadster battery problems but noted that Roadsters can remain unplugged for several weeks … Read more

Will Mazda pull a NUMMI in Flat Rock?

TOKYO--It has been a tough run for U.S.-Japan joint automaking ventures in North America.

They once were hailed as learning labs where ailing Detroit manufacturers could assimilate the wisdom of the East. But in recent years they have crumbled under financial stress and shifting alliances.

In 2009, General Motors walked out on its 25-year-old joint venture with Toyota, New United Motor Manufacturing, in Fremont, Calif. Later that year, Suzuki bailed on its CAMI joint plant with GM in Canada.

Now Mazda Motor seems poised to pull out of its longtime manufacturing partnership with Ford.

At issue is the … Read more

Needs of big firms foretell Intel, Nvidia battle

As Intel prepares to invade Nvidia turf, large companies at the Intel server chip rollout Monday stated--in some cases quite objectively--what graphics chip suppliers need to do to make this technology more palatable for high-performance computing.

Besides competing in the gaming graphics market, Intel is eying large high-performance computing customers such as Dreamworks Animation (whose "Monsters vs. Aliens" opened last weekend to large box office numbers) for its future Larrabee graphics chip.

Nvidia is already a player in the so-called General Purpose GPU space, which applies graphics processing units (GPUs) to high-performance computing. As described by Nvidia, high-performance … Read more

Tesla Motors CEO: Model S is cheaper than it looks

After wowing the auto press with the sleek design of Tesla Motors' all-electric Model S, company CEO Elon Musk is now making an economic argument to consumers--and, perhaps, the U.S. government--for buying the luxury sedan.

After months of anticipation, Tesla on Thursday took the covers off the Model S, an electric sedan priced at $56,400 but that qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit.

In a newsletter to customers on Friday, Musk, who is also product architect at Tesla, touted the many benefits of electric vehicles over gasoline cars, including price.

"The ownership cost of Model … Read more

Tesla: Model S to have fast-charging battery

Telsa Motor's Model S sedan--set to debut March 26--will have 440-volt fast-charging battery capability, wrote Rachel Konrad, spokesperson for Tesla Motors, to CNET in an e-mail.

Although Konrad could not say how long it would take to charge the Model S sedan using either a 440-volt charger or the standard 220-volt charger, the Tesla Roadster's battery can be fully charged in about 3.5 hours using a 220V/70A system, she wrote.

The Model S is expected to have a driving range of 225 miles on a full charge. It's not a fair comparison, but Nissan's … Read more