Tesla News

As expected, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder yesterday signed a bill that bans Tesla Motors from selling its electric cars directly to buyers online in the state. The bill removes one word--"its"--from existing state franchise law, which had originally been enacted to prevent franchised dealers from...

Elon Musk says the carmaker may switch to a "hybrid system" of Tesla Stores and franchised dealers in the future.

Each of its two previous models came to market later than projected, and now the third vehicle from Tesla Motors--the Model X electric crossover utility vehicle--may slip a bit more too. At least that's the expectation of Adam Jonas, the financial analyst from Morgan Stanley who's an avid follower...

Are car dealers winning battles against Tesla Motors, and its direct-sales model, that will set them up to lose the bigger war? For almost five years, state dealer associations have lobbied legislators to change laws to make Tesla's direct-sales model illegal, requiring that all new cars be sold...

Last week, while the press and Tesla owners were entranced by the introduction of the dual-motor Tesla Model S P85D with all-wheel drive, Tesla quietly changed the listed horsepower ratings for all three single-motor versions of its Model S electric sport sedan. Since their introduction in 2012...

Tesla Motors will open it first battery-swapping station before the end of the year.

How can you add all-wheel drive to an electric car, making it hundreds of pounds heavier--and still increase its efficiency and range? Amid all of last week's hoopla over the blazing performance of the all-wheel-drive Tesla Model S P85D--0 to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, 155-mph top speed--what really...

It's baaaaaaaaack. The U.S. Department of Energy's $25 billion low-interest loan program may be about to start awarding new loans. The DoE's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program endured intense political criticism for funding not only electric-car maker Tesla Motors but also...

In the end, the online rumors proved to be largely accurate. Last night, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk revealed an all-wheel-drive version of the Tesla Model S electric luxury car--known as 'D'--whose most powerful P85D version will accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in just 3.2 seconds. DON'T MISS: Tesla...

While Tesla Motors now sells electric cars in North America, parts of Europe, and--perhaps most importantly--China, it continues to expand its sales footprint. The most recent addition is Japan, a notoriously closed market where only one of the three largest makers has any interest at all in...

Historically, auto dealerships have made as much or more money selling used cars as new ones. Since electric-car maker Tesla Motors doesn't have dealerships, but sells cars online directly to buyers, that has left the supply of used Teslas solely to individual owners who may want to sell. Now...

Tesla adds two safety systems to the Model S electric car.

The Internets exploded yesterday following a photo tweeted by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, with the caption, "About time to unveil the D and something else". Feverish speculation over what it meant took up terabytes of server space. Then, yesterday afternoon, a photo surfaced that purports to show a...

Do you ever get the sense that Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has fun in his job? Last night, at 6:31 pm Pacific time, he tweeted a photo with the caption, "About time to unveil the D and something else". The photo showed a roller door with the letter "D" on it, the shadowy front end of what appeared...

Tesla Motors sales in China are "robust," and the company may have as many as 4,000 reservations for its Model S--which it only started selling in China five months ago. The upbeat assessment came from Patrick Archambault, a Goldman Sachs analyst who has followed Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] since its...

Caveat emptor. Or, for those less conversant in Latin, buyer beware. That's the lesson that should always be applied when buying a used car. Especially one with obvious damage. Especially a used electric car that's been so badly damaged that it's been declared a total writeoff by an insurance...

Sometimes you almost have to feel sorry for car dealers--or, more specifically, their ineptness at the public-relations end of their fight against electric-car maker Tesla Motors and its direct Internet sales to car buyers. Consider Bruce Anderson, president of the Iowa Automobile Dealers...

When an unknown automotive startup from Silicon Valley unveiled an all-electric sports car with supercar performance back in 2006, the shock was enough to make industry giant GM sit up and pay attention. That, plus the desire to gain some of the green halo seized by Toyota's Prius hybrid, led GM's...

Carmaking is very, very, very expensive. A conventional vehicle platform or architecture generally costs about $1 billion to design, engineer, test, certify, and put into production. And the various models derived from that architecture usually last about seven years. Multiply that by multiple...

Today, most plug-in electric car buyers qualify for a Federal income-tax credit of $2,500 to $7,500--but Senator Harry Reid thinks those incentives should be expanded. He proposes to overcome one challenge with that incentive: Buyers must wait up to 15 months to realize the benefit, which they...