Nissan’s ProPILOT Assist Success Just The Beginning, Company Says
Nissan’s semi-autonomous driving system called ProPILOT Assist detects road and traffic situations.
Nissan’s semi-autonomous driving system called ProPILOT Assist detects road and traffic situations.
In a recent email to employees, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will restructure and flatten its management structure, according to the Wall Street Journal.
When it comes to electric vehicles, it’s all about the batteries. The appearance of powerful, low-cost batteries was the technological advance that made modern EVs possible. Tesla’s battery technology is one of the major reasons it has been able to leapfrog the legacy automakers. And it’s batteries that hold the key to the future of electrification: the quest to deliver EVs that can truly replace fossil fuel vehicles centers on improving battery technology.
Missed the past week? Don’t want to scroll through 100 or so stories to pick out the ones that you think will be interesting? Below are the 20 CleanTechnica stories from the past week that got the most reader love, plus a couple more. (Fair warning: Approximately half of them relate to Tesla.)
A new video from Trevor at the Model 3 Owners Club documents the first delivery of a Tesla Model 3 in Canada. The first Model 3 delivery in the northern country is thought by many to be the start of a wave of deliveries in the back half of the second quarter as Tesla attempts to defer hitting the critical 200,000th delivery of its vehicles in the United States.
Last Friday, a Tesla Model S crashed into the rear of a fire truck at a red light. We don’t know yet if Autopilot was active at the time, but does it really matter whether or not it was?
China is the hottest kid on the block when it comes to cleantech. As such, we try to keep an exceptionally close eye on what’s going on there and share regular reports of the most significant news of the past month or quarter.
Panasonic confirmed in recent days that it has not locked in a deal yet with Tesla for its Chinese Gigafactory. Several Panasonic executives commented on the matter, noting that plans are “not solidified yet” and that “nothing is set in stone.” It’s unclear if that’s glass-half-full or glass-half-empty commentary, but the next line leads one to think it’s in the plans.
In the ongoing tug-of-war between Tesla bulls and bears, one of the most controversial subjects these days is the gross margin that Model 3 can generate at a 5,000 cars per week production rate as well as the rate when production lines have fully matured. Bears had previously focused on whether Tesla could successfully ramp up Model 3 production quickly enough so as to hit the 5,000 per week production number before Tesla’s cash position becomes compromised, but with the company now consistently turning out thousands of Model 3s per week and evidence of additional gains, the emphasis has shifted to the profitability of those cars produced, and this is where the concept of gross margin becomes key.
Tesla’s board recently approved one of the largest (and most talked about) CEO compensation packages in history. While much has been written about Elon Musk’s milestone-based, decade-long pay package, Harvard Business Review’s George Serafeim argues, “Elon Musk’s unusual compensation plan isn’t really about compensation at all.”