It is the night before Christmas and it is 2 AM. The only one stirring is Tesla’s Starman (Eli Burton) as he sits in his Tesla opening the gift that Santa Musk has given. Eli, aka Starman from My Tesla Adventure, gives us a preview of Tesla’s Full Self Driving technology and also a first look at Tesla’s latest software version 2019.40.50.1 update. Eli shows us several new and exciting things that came with this Christmas Eve update.
When asked for the top reasons the EV drivers got their cars, we got similar responses as in previous years. The largest portion of buyers in every group referenced the environmental benefits. As before, Tesla buyers in the various markets were more likely to select “fun & convenience” and “I love new tech” than other EV drivers.
For years, we have asked respondents what vehicle body type they prefer for an EV. The answers may surprise you. Despite the crossover and SUV craze, our respondents in North America indicated they prefer a sedan or hatchback.
Yesterday, a Twitter user named Zack reported that he discovered a way to get your update faster than just waiting and waiting and waiting.
I cannot speak for the rest of the $58.78 billion market cap of Tesla [TSLA], but from my perspective as a tiny, tiny, tiny shareholder and as someone who has obsessively covered Tesla professionally for several years, I’ve got a few thoughts on why it is Tesla has surpassed GM and Ford to become the most valuable American automaker. Let’s look at this in 7 parts.
During Tesla’s 3rd quarter conference call last night, Elon Musk got a very important question regarding the widespread skepticism that Tesla will be able to roll out “feature complete full self driving” by the end of this year (only 69 days from now). This questioner asked him to define what “feature complete” means and give a list of features that establish a baseline. He answered it this way:
This attempted Tesla car jacking could have turned out deadly, but instead, thankfully, not only was the would-be thief caught, but people can laugh at his awkward and failed attempt to steal the car.
Eli Burton got to show Alex from “E for Electric” just how cool Advanced Summon is in his Model S P100D. The video is 15 minutes long and Eli comes in at about 3 minutes into the video after Alex introduces him. [Editor’s note: This is a unique and interesting video, so I encourage you to check it out.]
Friend & longtime Tesla employee* David Havasi and I play with Smart Summon in a difficult situation. More dramatically, I’ve got a collection of fun and dramatic Smart Summon videos from Twitter to show you.
Before we begin, I wanted to give an update for Elon Musk on the Tesla Model A my youngest daughter designed.
