Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit

[SteveG3]

Just had a tour of most of the major financial forums in "progressive" Canada.

I am kind of in disbelief on how most view TSLA.

TSLA definitely has an image problem. Ponzi Scheme due to the way it raises funds (This should be rectified by having positive cash flow all the time. I believe even a tiny little negative for 1 quarter for the foreseeable future will be weakness to be exploited).

SEC headlines further reinforces the Fraud appearance. It is best if SEC future meddling can be shutdown once and for all.

The reason why this raises an eyebrow is because Canadians are usually not very interested in these things. For such FUD to reach into Canadian investors's mind for an American company means it is a pretty strong message.

(bolding above added)

It is experiences like this I had in mind when I posted the following over the weekend,


"For years now, literally the overwhelming majority of mainstream media has tried to undermine public confidence in Tesla, Elon Musk and their products... even create distaste for them. This has been done by a flood of misinformation that Tesla/Elon responding to would only lead to a 100X volume of misrepresentation of that response in an unflattering way, mischaracterization of Tesla/Musk as unstable/infantile/distasteful & pointing blame at the messenger (the press) instead of dealing with their problems, and regurgitation of the false narratives Tesla/Elon were trying to respond to. We've already seen this repeated many, many times.

For years I've been saying this misinformation campaign will carry on for years. Unlike other misinformation gamesmanship, like, "Dem" "Republican" squabbling, there is not substantial portion of the mainstream media calling out the BS flood directed at Tesla. ie, Tesla has no major media "calling out" and countering the BS flung at it as the "Dems" and "Repubs" both do. Virtually every grossly distorted or plainly false narrative re Tesla has in effect a police escort to be shouted through the media's massive megaphones, so-called "left," "right," and "center." Just consider how Mark Speigel has been on CNBC, in the NY Times, etc. He calls himself a hedge fund manager, yet has less AUM ($10 million) than the Tesla holdings of a few of us here on TMC.

At the earliest, this might subside circa 2023 as I see it.

Elon/Tesla can't stop it.

We can't stop it.

The best we can do, is get the message at least as widely out there that the source of this attempt to deligitimize Elon/Tesla & the products IS NOT LEGITIMATE JOURNALISM.

We cannot get this to stop, but, we can substantially reduce it's effectiveness by raising awareness that the overwhelming majority of "coverage" of Tesla is privately funded commentary designed to persuade to the contrary of what the facts are. The sheer volume of "coverage" of every minute detail re Tesla is actually a barometer of how this is a campaign of bucking against reality/facts. When all you have is BS to try to promote your perceived interests, a little won't do... you try to flood the entire public perception of the topic with your BS. I'm sure even members of the public who are not aware of how misleading and false nearly all the reporting on Tesla they've seen is, have noticed that there is a comically disproportionate amount of media "coverage" of every minute detail re Tesla. That is, they've already noticed a striking phenomena that helps to demonstrate that there is a propaganda campaign directed toward misinforming them about Tesla/Musk/Tesla products.

(...snip...)

The fossil fuel economy has used virtually all of mainstream media to flood the zone of public perception of Musk/Tesla & their products with "*sugar*." We can try refuting it until we are blue in the face, but, we do not have 1/10,000 the megaphone that this campaign does via mass media.

The best we can do via social media is get the point across it is not a competition of Tesla vs. ICE mfg products, but, rather,

like the proverb of "teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish," it is a question of whether the public just takes for granted the BS about Tesla the media has flooded us all with, or actually learns directly about what Tesla is offering and how it can improve our world. Never mind rebutting the million false narratives blasted out to virtually every human not living under a rock... get it well known to as close to as many people as possible that their perception of Tesla/Musk/Products has been polluted by a massive machine pumping out false narratives.This can be done with simple concise messaging."

 

[jbcarioca]

I think you've missed the point of me mentioning Opel.

It wasn't meant as a direct literal analogy to Tesla's current situation but rather as an example of how FUD can cause (additional) damage to a brand. It's about the delta between actual and perceived brand value.




Not true, Opel did indeed receive FUD, a lot, actually.

...

I just 'liked' your response. Frankly I think both of our positions have some merit. Without question Opel suffered during that period because of GM ownership. We all know the late 1980's and early 1990's were very difficult for the industry almost everywhere. The FUD from many sources was deafening, for sure, but with Opel the target was exceedingly easy to hit because of the tone-deaf GM of the era. I cannot disagree that VAG, BMW and DB all had their shares of catastrophes during that era. Just thinking of DB/Chrysler 1998, BMW/Rover 1994, VW/BMW Rols-Royce mess exemplifies the situation.

That era transformed BMW and DB into multinational companies and began the further globalization of what because VAG. It is not possible to overestimate these events, nor the fear of GM and the encroaching Japanese. This book ihas a pretty good summary of the era:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ational_to_a_Transnational_Automobile_Company

The fundamental problem in all that is the none of those events were really technological, but were more about business philosophy and strategy. It was the era of multinational operation, not national champions. So GM, one of the early protagonists from the 1920's (bought Opel in 1929), seemed ripe for attack.

In the current era the Chinese are the ones with technological threat (Huawei, BYD etc) while Tesla is the single stellar standout providing visible tangible threat to BMW and DB, not to mention others, on top of which Tesla achieved a breakthrough in China that was lusted after by all of them. Just think: GM, BMW, DB, VAG all make the largest part of their bottom lines from China and none have their wholly- owned factories. What is more, none have their own supply of high-volume BEV production supply nor have any managed to have low-cobalt battery production. so:

Of course all of those generate serious FUD. Further Tesla has even outfoxed CharIN by joining and actually delivering a working, approved CCS adapter for EU S and X. So what happens when Tesla refreshes those two models, or builds in the EU or introduces Model Y, the Semi and actually makes a model that supports Autobahn driving as well as an ICE? This is a war!

So, despite some Opel analogies, the difference this time is that for the first time since the automatic transmission, some bizarre flamboyant noisy crude pseudo-American company is beating them at their technological heart, and they cannot reply quickly.

It seems to me that careful examination of these factors for Germany, Japan, Korea, the US and China provide all the evidence we need to maintain a bullish position, but do so without taking short-term risk. That is precisely why, in my opinion, TSLA operates with quite healthy acid-test ratios and ensures that their liquidity cannot pose the existential risk that it did back in Model S and X days.

Mod: Original post Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019 Investors' Roundtable

 

[jhm]

Got to hear John Mellott, former publisher of Atlanta Journal-Constitution, discuss the evolution of news media. He was very clear about the following points:

News is business.
Advertisers are the customers.
Readers/viewers are the product.
Media organization focus immense research on how viewer react to stories to optimize attention.

So from this perspective, journalist have a basic financial motive to report on whatever builds an audience, and news outlets will compete with each other for this audience.

How does this help us understand the onslaught of negative reporting on Musk and Tesla? We can think about how there is a market for such reporting. There had been an earlier market for news that featured how forward looking Musk and Tesla were, but this story got old after several years. Journalist who took a more critical view of Musk started to attract more attention. As the audience shifted to such stories, reporters competed with each other to get the attention of this audience. We saw mild mannered reporter Dana Hull go from being the Tesla fanboy's friend to becoming the trollfriend of $TSLAQ. This transformation only took about a year.

Well, I am starting to get the feeling that anti-Tesla sentiment has played out. It is bizarre, debased, and worse than all that not so interesting anymore. We may see the news media shift to new, more balanced, even sympathetic coverage. Even the Fox Business coverage is suggestive that playing Musk as the beaten down victim of the SEC who nevertheless struggles on to make great American cars (analogous to Trump getting beaten up over silly tweets) may just be the narrative that plays to their audience. So if the research shows strong response, Fox will keep pushing this sort of coverage. Moreover, because media outlets compete for audience, these competitors will be trying out new narratives around Musk and Tesla too. So I do think the anti-Tesla framing is overplayed and a loser for media going forward. Musk is too big a personality for the media to simply leave him alone. So I think we will see some new media framing. Once the industry figures out how best to grab audience again, the whole pack could start heading in that direction.

I do think Tesla is in a good place for this sort of media pivot. The stock price is thoroughly beaten down in spite of huge gains in fundamental, Musk is the "victim" of regulator overreach, Tesla bear predictions and shorts are an fn joke, Tesla is the one US automaker that growing aggressively at home and abroad, presidential race will include outlooks on job creation and ingenuity, and so on and so on. So there really are a lot of interesting story lines the media can latch onto.

But be careful. If the media pivots and the stock price shoots to $500 or $600, know that the media can pivot yet again and the stock price tumble back to $370 all over again. So don't lose your bearings in the next hype cycle.

Mod: link to original post. -ggr

 

[generalenthu]

Its here, Article 9 Paragraph 2b:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:140:0001:0015:EN:PDF

The established targets are here, Table 3-1:
https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/ICCT_Pocketbook_2018_Final_20181205.pdf

Edit: there's quite a bit of info here on how the CO2 targets are computed. I don’t see anything like that 5% exclusion you mentioned. Where did you see it?
https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EU-LCV-CO2-2030_ICCTupdate_20190123.pdf

Thanks @Prunesquallor !

I did some digging into this, and was surprised at the conclusion. I posted this on the quarterly results discussion thread, but probably should be elsewhere, or its own thread. I am x-posting here as the feedback is quicker.
_____________________
Did a deep-dive into what FCA would have paid for pooling with Tesla, and the issue here is pretty involved relative to anything I read on MSM.

To set the stage, here are the targets that automakers have to hit in 2019, and where they are, as of 2017. The targets for 2019 are the same as 2015. They effectively go up in 2020 (ignoring worst 5%), and full compliance by 2021

Source: https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EU-LCV-CO2-2030_ICCTupdate_20190123.pdf

On the surface, 2019 doesn't seem like an issue as everyone is below target. But the devil is in the footnotes. Beginning 1/1/2019, EU mandated WLTP to replace NEDC, which is more realistic. This caused about a 25% increase in CO2 g/km of emissions on paper. So the bureaucrats came up with a NEDC-Correlated (NEDC-c) measure that converts back the WLTP numbers to NEDC-c. There is a good bit to read here, but effectively, the NEDC-c numbers are about 8% (10g/km) more than the old NEDC numbers.

Source: JATO Warns of Widening Disparity between WLTP Correlated NEDC Values and existing NEDC Data - JATO


So, this delta pushes FCA over the edge. Assuming the 10 g/km penalty, FCA ends up at 130 against a target of 124. Assuming some optimizations, they probably can optimize to 5 g/km in the hole. Now they sell around 900k per year in EU, which translates to roughly 95 Euro per g/km times 900k vehicles. That is 95*5*900,000 which is roughly 430 million Euro in fines for 2019.

This market gets pretty tight for everyone in 2019, except for Toyota. That doesn't leave a lot of options for FCA, leaving Tesla in a fairly decent negotiating position. Given this, I think ARK's $0.5B estimate is unlikely. I'd reckon they went roughly 50-50 for about a 200-250 million Euro deal. Interestingly, Tesla only needs about 45K deliveries to pull FCA into compliance. This explains them leaving the pool open, potentially for Ford. Ford probably decided to pass purely for reputational reasons or didn't want to help Tesla.

The real fun starts in 2020 though, where these 0 g/km EVs are pure gold. EU is on track to levy 95*30*15million (95Euro/g * 30 g/km shortfall * 15 million sales) in fines - Or a mindboggling 40 Billion every year. An EV at 0 g/km is worth 9k Euro (95*95) in avoided fines. Tesla could easily sell these credits for a small 10% haircut until it gets to 15-20% market share. And it gets progressively worse for the legacy manufacturers as the limits keep going down. No wonder the likes of LG Chem are playing hardball because next year, the European manufacturers don't have an option to not try building EVs.

Where the eff is the European Gigafactory?

Mod: original post here. --ggr

 

[ReflexFunds]

I see a future where many old cars are junked, and most of the rest are converted to be autonomous via add-on kits, with a small minority still driven manually, until laws ultimately ban manual cars from public roads, or at least require special (expensive) permits. I see a future where Tesla most likely becomes be the iOS of autonomous technology, in a crowded market of a thousand commodity Android variants. That crowded market consists of offerings from, who knows, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and probably some other company not known yet.

This week's move to bundle Autopilot by default in M3 orders is the beginning of the commodification. Years from now, the public won't really care who makes their cars autonomous. There will be a "good enough" level that lets other autonomy suppliers thrive. Will autonomy-powered car-sharing networks really be the key to Tesla climbing to $4000/share as ARK believes? Maybe. Will competitors figure out autonomy/car-sharing networks that are "good enough" to compete with Tesla? I'm sure they will. In the tech biz, there are always fast followers.

In the end will the public care about the Tesla version versus others? Some will, most I expect won't, just like most people buy Android smartphones because they're "good enough" and they don't care to pay the tax for premium Apple products. But enough will buy into the Apple branding/positioning of Tesla to give it a shot at a near-trillion-dollar valuation. Which is why I'm in for the long run. But I don't think the long run is Tesla dominating everything. The pie will be huge and many players can have healthy slices.

I agree there will be several players in the AV market, but I think if Tesla gets there first, there are a number of reasons to think it can generate a significant, if not majority, % of the industry's profits over the long term. Of course, the AV car transition will be a huge disruption to the global economy and its very hard to predict how it all plays out.

A few reasons why I think Tesla stands to dominate the market if it gets there first:

• Autonomous taxi fleets have network effects. The largest fleet will offer the shortest passenger wait time and also likely the highest car utilisation rates and hence highest revenue per car. Just read Uber's IPO prospectus for how important they think these effects are.
• This is a software/app business and these tend to gravitate towards 1 dominant leader and 1-2 other competitors in each region. People do not generally download more than 2 or 3 apps to perform the same task and it will be very difficult for competitor number 3 or 4 to get the necessary network effects and scale to compete. Many of the extremely expensive AV R&D projects will have funding cut once they realise they have been too slow.
• Regulation is likely to favour the first movers who are likely to maintain a safety lead. The first mover will always have the data advantage and should in theory always be safest. This continuously raises the bar for regulatory approval for competing software. Why approve a new self driving car algorithm if it is demonstrably 3-4x more dangerous than the current self driving market leaders? Additionally, city streets could start to get flooded with driverless taxis. At some point the number of these vehicles will be limited and the companies which got there fleets in place early will be at an advantage. It is also very likely these fleets are required to be electric for pollution reasons.
• Tesla's vertical integration of its AV solution will provide a significant cost advantage and likely allow it to price rides lower than competitors while making higher profit per mile. Many competitors will use an AI vision solution from one company, driving software solution from another, hardware from another, and the car itself from yet another provider. These shared costs and shared development will handicap pricing power and slowdown development.
• Tesla's EV technology will provide another significant cost advantage vs competitors. EV AVs generally will be significantly more profitable than ICE AVs due to lower fuel costs and lower maintenance costs, but Teslas in particular will also benefit from lower depreciation per mile because they have been designed for durability. Tesla will likely be able to travel 500k-1 million miles rather than competitors designed for 150-200k. Tesla car will also benefit from high efficiency and high safety while being a much more enjoyable ride.
• Tesla's close relationship with customers, rather than via dealership networks, will make it much easier to establish its planned AirBnB style service. This model saves capital costs on fleet expansion, but also saves cash on parking spaces and charging infrastructure as this can take place at customer's homes.
• The first mover bounty is ridiculously high for the period before the market gets saturated with self driving cars. The first 1-3 million self driving cars on the road are still going to be massively outnumbered by the 30 million+ global taxi fleet. This means there is no incentive to charge less than Uber/Lyft per mile until the global taxi fleet is saturated with 3-5m self driving cars and competition begins to drive the cost of cars down. In fact many customers could be willing to pay a premium over Uber/Lyft for the novelty, increased safety, and premium Tesla passenger experience. If Tesla switches on 1 million self driving cars and is first to market, each of those cars could potentially generate over $200k cash flow per year (after electricity, service, cleaning costs etc) until the market starts to get saturated with 3 million+ self driving cars. Even when other companies deliver self driving technology, it is going to take a long time to get a global fleet of enough numbers to put the entire global taxi industry out of business and start to significantly reduce price charged per mile. In the first years i expect the majority of Tesla owners will be persuaded to send their $40-60k cars to work for Tesla's fleet for $30-50k annual profit. It doesn't make business sense for Tesla to give its customers a larger share of the profit than it needs to to persuade everyone to send their cars to work. So I can see Tesla keeping $150k cash flow per car and its 1 million self driving car fleet making Tesla $150bn cash flow in year one.

How many people are going to choose to use an app other than Tesla Network, when Tesla offers you 1) the safest drive (both in terms of crash probability and probability of injury if in a crash), 2) the lowest cost drive per mile, 3) the lowest wait time, 4) the funnest drive, 5) the most environmentally friendly drive.

Of course this is all theoretical until Andrej, Elon and the team deliver... But I agree with Elon, it appears quite obvious to me that Tesla are in the lead by a significant distance. I think the closest competitor is likely Mobileye, but their progress is much less transparent, and they will be handicapped by much less vertical integration and less aggressive ambition.

Mod: Original here. --ggr

 

[jbcarioca]

I disagree. FSD safety is, fundamentally, not primarily a political problem, but an insurance underwriter risk model problem, which is a well understood industry.

Vehicle safety regulators and organizations also tend to be pretty close to the insurance industry: the IIHS for example, the other big vehicle safety testing organization besides the NHTSA, is funded by the car insurance industry. It's in the name:

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety - Wikipedia

"The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is a U.S. nonprofit organization funded by auto insurance companies, established in 1959 and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It works to reduce the number of motor vehicle traffic collisions, and the rate of injuries and amount of property damage in the crashes that still occur. It carries out research and produces ratings for popular passenger vehicles as well as for certain consumer products such as child car booster seats. It also conducts research on road design and traffic regulations, and has been involved in promoting policy decisions."​

And from a risk POV what matters isn't how good "attentive drivers" are, because they are not the ones driving cars and getting into accidents. Instead our cars are driven home by tens of millions of people who after a long workday are stressed out a bit, are tired and are fundamentally inattentive and impatient. Saving their lives is what is the FSD computer's job.

Once FSD is 3x better than the average driver then the insurance companies will start insisting on FSD driving the car, not human drivers, and will happily raise rates on non-FSD drivers! With luxury cars about half of all accident related costs are health costs. So avoiding accidents at any cost has huge market value and this will drive adoption.

This is really basic and I'm surprised that even @neroden has missed this.

Actually, the IIHS is devoted to reducing motor vehicle insurance payouts. That is slightly different than your implication. Thus you concentrate on accidents while IIHS is all about payouts, by design. Nothing nefarious about that but there are two components. Those are Loss frequency and loss severity.

Tesla data is all about loss frequency. Were that the whole story FSD would be a solid IIHS winner, but that is not the whole story.

Loss Severity has multiple components also, but the two largest ones are Collision Repair and Injury. Collision repair for Tesla is very expensive although within the rough range of other luxury class vehicles, since all that advanced technology does cost more to repair than do less advanced vehicles. Injury costs are dramatically lower for Tesla than for comparable vehicles, all to the good.

Great! Now what drives the IIHS fro the public is not what drives their insurance company rate impact. In fact Collision is the largest single auto insurance cost category. That is primarily due to very high frequency coupled with loss severity adjustments.

Loss severity is by far the highest when high speed difference between vehicles is involved with associated injuries. That combination is vastly reduced for Tesla and almost certainly FSD will reduce that category substantially. That will not bring about major insurance cost reductions primarily due to collision loss frequency and relative severity when compared to other vehicles.

Finally, insurance company profitability is primarily derived from investment income with underwriting designed to be slightly better than break even, actuarially speaking. When Warren Buffet speaks of auto insurance probable loss of profitability resulting from autonomy his reference is to loss of investment income rather than any other factor.

There are few easily digested actuarial texts, but an solid understanding of statistics can readily explain how IIHS seems often to be at odds with what we otherwise expect. Remember they have two primary audiences the insurance companies and politicians. Their actual primary function is to help avoid any US Federal insurance rules. In that they have been spectacularly successful. Their data are normally unassailable given their assumptions. Sorry for shouting on that last part. It is the most important one.

Original post here: Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019 Investors' Roundtable

 

[Fact Checking]

I'll give a different scenario. Let's go for a true worst case scenario. Tesla NEVER gets "sleep in your car" done.

This assumes that computing power cannot reach the levels of processing of the human brain.

According to this estimate that's not the case:

Neuron firing rates in humans​

The firing rate in the neocortex (which hosts 80% of the brain's neurons) is between 0.3 and 1.8 per second. With 80 billion neurons in the neocortex that's a firing rate of about 24-144 billion per second.

The average number of synapses per neuron is 10,000 - while the average information content of a synapse is 0.1 bits, or ~100 bits per neuron.

So the NN processing speed of the entire human neocortex is ~2,400-14,000 billion bits per second. Now the operations it performs per firing is addition and multiplication and capping - which we can recognize with a ~10x complexity factor, so the net speed is about 24,000-140,000 billion bits of simple arithmetic operations per second. (This is probably generous to the brain.)

The Tesla AI chip computes ~144,000 billion mini-floats per second (144 TOPS), where a mini-float is 8 bits. So the total processing power is ~1,152,000 billion bits of simple arithmetic operations per second.

So if we believe these estimates then the Tesla chip is already comfortably beyond the NN processing power of the human brain, by a factor of ~8x.

Put differently, every Tesla camera has as much NN computing power allocated as a single dedicated human brain watching that camera 24/7 ...

What the human brain arguably does much better is information storage: 1,000,000 billion synapses can store about 1,250 TB of data, which is a lot more than what Tesla can store in their NNs.

But if we accept that "legally safe driving" requires only a very small subset of the vast amount of data a human brain stores, then the Tesla AI chip can already do an order of magnitude better job, with vastly superior control latencies.

That is going to save lives, and this will be apparent from the accident statistics.

Mod: Original post here. --ggr

 

[jbcarioca]

Locating GF1 in US hasn't helped reduce FUD here

True, although it could be material that Fremont in in California and GF-1 in Nevada, GF-2 in New York.
From a political perspective TSLA has not located where political support might be material. Grand Rapids does have some techies. One might assume that further locations might well be chosen with political acumen analogous to that deployed in China.

TSLA has matured to the point that political factors now must be a factor considered in geographical dispersion of employment and investment.

Were I advising Tesla I'd certainly be examining such issues. Excluding Shanghai, until now the considerations were, it appears, almost entirely based on net cost of setup. There were some superb choices so far. Frankly it is difficult to argue against deals like Fremont and Buffalo, and Sparks had some powerful features also. For none of the three was competitive FUD a factor, nor has it been for Shanghai.

For GF-4 the story is very different. EU countries are mostly fragile politically, and in/close to recession. German auto companies are threatened. EU emissions mandates are making German business near panic. Tesla can have a positive force as it appears to be having in China.

FWIW, It is probably opportune to think of GF-5 in the US Midwest. Some cooperative deals with other vehicle manufacturers could have positive results too.
Do any of us seriously think that more than one of the ICE giants would not welcome cooperation?

After all, people, SpaceX has not been nearly so confrontational as many assume it to have been. NASA and DOD have been visibly frustrated with the consequences of which Eisenhower warned, the "military-industrial complex". The traditional auto companies, oil companies, public utilities and dealer groups have not been so unconditionally pleasant from a political view. Until now there has been no alternative.

I do not advocate a pollyannish view, but I do suggest there is plentiful resentment of the high-handed demands from autos, oil, gas and their cohorts.
It is time to make certain that self-centered politicians begin to understand their self-interest aligned with renewables while diminishing reliance on fossil fuel.
This, and TSLA, can only thrive when the public discourse can be changed in much of the world, a few politicians at a time.

Mod: original here. --ggr

 

[ReflexFunds]

Given so much debate about Waymo/ vision vs lidar here lately, I thought I’d write a bit more about why I think Tesla has the best approach.


Tesla’s hardware light, data heavy strategy, vs the hardware heavy, data light approach of competitors.

The key advantage of Tesla’s fleet and its strategy is for the march of 9s. Tesla’s strategy makes it much more difficult to get to say 99.9% because first they need to solve distance and velocity using vision alone which is an extremely difficult challenge. For Lidar much of the hard part of the initial problem is taken care of with expensive hardware rather than software. 3D maps approaches are similarly attempting to reduce software difficulty at the expense of higher labour intensity and a more brittle less scalable solution. Unfortunately expensive Lidar hardware makes it impossible to imbed into consumer vehicles, so Waymo cannot use Tesla’s strategy of using consumers to buy the training fleet and to train the cars. At $10k profit per car and 15k miles per year, Tesla makes $0.7 profit for every mile added to annual fleet mileage capacity, with $0 cost per mile for training drivers, fuel etc. At $150k car+tax+hardware+retrofit cost and 25k miles per year, Waymo spends $6 per mile of additional annual fleet mileage capacity, in addition to $2-3/mile of fuel, maintenance & safety/training driver wage cost.

Once Tesla solves vision, its data cost and annual fleet mileage advantage takes over and the speed of progress should accelerate significantly relative to a data light, labour/simulation heavy Lidar solution.

Tesla’s resources so far have been focussed on creating capability building blocks and infrastructure for the future. While Tesla is solving the more common problems with self-driving, the utilisation rate of its fleet data and fleet computers is very low. I expect the utilisation rate of the fleet for shadow mode validation and edge case identification and prioritisation is higher, but Tesla doesn’t currently need full data from all the cars. But every 9 tackled by Tesla will require a 10x larger data set of high quality/diverse data, so as they move forward the fleet data utilisation will increase (and they have room to increase it orders of magnitude even within its current fleet).

Once Tesla has to start increasing the utilisation rate of its fleet data, the volume of data collected becomes increasingly impractical to process centrally, so Tesla has put in place a system for the cars themselves to prioritise what data is collected and to do much of the processing before sending the result back to Tesla. Everything Tesla has done so far has been geared towards preparing for the march of 9s and making sure their system is quickly scalable as they cross off scenarios from their priority problem list.

Elon’s recent confidence is because he thinks Tesla has now solved vision (to a degree where it is almost equivalent to Lidar) and has just rolled out the computer hardware needed, and he has confidence Tesla have a strong infrastructure in place as they transition to dealing with the march of 9s. He may be wrong. Who knows.

Just as data light Lidar solutions are likely to hit a roadblock when they hit full fleet data utilisation rates, Tesla’s solution is also likely to hit a roadblock at a later 9 if its neural networks aren’t trained to identify causation in addition to correlation. Where this roadblock will be and if we get to Robotaxis before it is hit is debatable, but it seems blindingly obvious that Waymo’s data bottleneck will be hit earlier unless they invest much more heavily or pivot strategy to a vision first solution which can be bought by consumers.

Mod: original post here. --ggr.

 

[jhm]

Well, GMAC tried to do that and did succeed in becoming a giant mortgage originator, among other things. Back when they began more tan 100 years ago they wanted financing in order to sell cars they otherwise might not sell. That worked astoundingly well. Tesla, with insurance, is probably copying that Sloan-era GM policy. That they have better data, if they can deploy it properly, is unquestionable. @neroden is prone to hubris regarding actuarial science IMHO, but he's correct that Tesla often is unable to execute on their promises based on their superior data.

I am reminded of Long Term Capital Management again. To wit: Superior data and superior analytics do not guarantee excellent results.

For Tesla there is never a question about superior data nor superior intellect. Their question is always about successful execution.

After all making consistent profits in auto insurance is never a sure thing. Actuarial decisions based on anything other than collision loss severity and insured driving record is fraught. The always reliable postal code classification, included in the Tesla generic application, is a wonderful surrogate for those two factors. Auto insurance actuaries are truly adept in engineering multi-collinearity into their algorithms and very, very few people seem to notice, fewer know what that means and even fewer care. Basically that means that auto insurance rates are generally built on reliable layers of prejudice.

So the question is whether Tesla can actually do better. Maybe, but I'll be surprised if they succeed in any consequential way. OTOH, they may well be able to make a bit of money, and betting against Elon as a disruptor is by no means a sure thing.

A decade ago, I was an employee at GMAC Insurance. All the different GMAC companies were quite distinct though owned by GM. We had our own CEO, for example. GMAC Insurance was arguably the most reliable earnings engine for all of GM and GMAC.

In fact, underwriting profit is rather predictable and stable. What was significantly harder was to actually grow the business. Pricing is highly regulated and very slow to change. What matters more is the flow of new accounts and attrition. If you price some segment too high, for example, you have more difficulty attracting and retaining overpriced customers. So via adverse selection the composition of the book tends to shift where those that were overpriced get replace by those that are relatively underpriced. So loss rates increase to the level you priced at even as the book shrinks as a whole.

The advantage at the time that a carrier like Progressive had was that they had highly segmented and accurately priced rates. This was more robust against adverse selection than what most carriers could pull off. The strategy of showing prospects the rates of competitors was in fact very smart competitively. For example, if a competitor was offering a driver a substantially lower premium, chances were very good that that carrier was underpriced for that risk. By showing this to potential customers one of two things would happen: the driver would go to the competitor which was underpricing the risk and make that competitor less profitable, or the driver would trust Progressive enough to pay a higher premium than they could get elsewhere. In that case, Progressive would be better assured that they had not underpriced the risk and would lock in a more profitable and likely retainable customer. As an insurer you want to avoid rate chasers and attract stable customer willing to pay a fair price. So my view of auto insurance is that it is primarily marketing business. Attract and retain the best customer, and you can do very well financially.

So I think Tesla has several advantages it can exploit to build up a nice little insurance book.

1. Tesla has a very attractive customer base to market insurance to. Very high income and creditworthiness. This is a high mix of preferred.
2. Tesla customer base is also strongly engaged with the Tesla brand, mission, and is very loyal. This is an auto insurance marketers dream prospect base.
3. Tesla owners drive vehicles that are easily mispriced and likely over priced by the competition. Especially the passive safety of AP/FSD is likely to be mispriced by most of the industry.
4. Insurance sales can be integrated seamlessly into Tesla online sales channel. As customer builds car online, Tesla can capture sufficient information to provide insurance quote. This quote gives a shopper confidence that they can find affordable insurance. But then there is the convenience of buying that insurance at the time the order is placed for the car.
5. Tesla NN likely has advanced driver analytics already and can be used to modify and augment driver behavior where it is substandard.

It is probably hard for most people to appreciate just how important item 4 is. Consider that most insurance carriers spend $600 to $1200 in marketing and sales cost to acquire 1 new customer. It is the holy grail of auto insurance marketers to be able to touch prospects when they are actually in the market for buying new insurance. When someone is buying a car, they are definitely in market for insurance. And in fact, insurability questions can make it harder to decide to buy a given car. If you've already got the prospect online and can quote them, this is the absolute cheapest sales channel. Tesla can likely get info on the other vehicles in the household and quote all of them. And it is super convenient for the customer. Remember that you don't care to insure aggressive price sensitive rate shoppers. What you want are the laziest car insurance premium payers out there. This is virtually a "and would you like fries with that" sort of upsell. The most lazy auto insurance customers will simply click the box to add insurance to their order for a new car and click to insure their other car too, all without even calling their current insurance carrier or looking at their deck page. OMG, this is exactly who you want on your insurance book of business. So putting the pieces together, I would suspect an insurance acquisition cost well below $100, and this is huge considering how desirable this customer base is.

I'd also point out to people that the actual underwriting losses in auto insurance is only about 65% of the premium paid. Most of the other expenses beyond the priced actuarial risk is marketing, sale and administrative expenses. It's that other 35% of premium where insurance companies make their profit or loss. (Plus the premiums get invested too for a profit, but that is a separate post.)

Absolutely, Tesla does not need to compete on price for this business. It needs fair pricing, but not price competitive pricing. That is not what this play is about. Rather it about customer relationship marketing, low acquisition cost, and really high value prospects.

Original post here: Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019 Investors' Roundtable

 

[ReflexFunds]

What would be your first move as Tesla if it turns out that S/X/3 demand is insufficient to hit profitability for Q2-Q4 (and after that unclear)?

I'm curious what the most obvious levers and of what significance. And I mean somewhat dramatic (hundreds of millions $$ in impact not saving coffee filters in the break room, or charging per sheet at the office printer).

This is a good question since it’s clearly on investor’s minds so i think it's worth answering in detail.

To start with, I think it’s important to note that cash flow breakeven is much more important than profit and I think Tesla can get Q2-Q4 to cash flow breakeven even with disappointing demand.

• Cash flow is difficult to adjust into a run rate format, but in Q1 free cash flow was very close to zero excluding 1) working capital movements 2) one off cash/deferred revenue received from FCA and FSD special offer and 3) one off cash exceptional restructuring costs. This is the cash flow Tesla would make if it maintained production & deliveries at 51k Model 3 and 12k S&X on a long term basis (working capital is only a significant cash flow item if production and deliveries do not match and if volume is increasing or decreasing significantly quarter on quarter).
• So this is the baseline we are starting with, and clearly several key variables will change run rate free cash flow from this current level of 0 including: 1) change in car volume (likely to increase from Q1 levels), 2) change in cash gross profit per car, 3) change in opex, 4) change in capex (likely to increase from Q1 levels) and 5) will production and deliveries not match (this will cause a one off inventory change in the cash flow, but Tesla will reduce production rather than continue building inventory indefinitely).
• To build GF3 and start installing Model Y equipment, Tesla Is guiding for capex of $2-2.5bn in 2019. This implies c.$0.6-0.7bn per quarter in Q2-Q4 or c.$0.4bn higher than Q1 capex. So adjusting for the increased pace of growth investment but maintaining deliveries flat with Q1, Tesla is on track to reduce cash balance by $0.4bn per quarter in Q2-Q4.
• In addition to this, Tesla intends to continue to end the wave of deliveries at quarter end – they have already made a significant inventory investment towards this already (partly by accident through delayed Q1 deliveries) but this may require another $0.5-1bn inventory investment over the next two quarters. This does have the benefit of making quarter end cash balance much closer to intra-quarter minimum cash balance – which means Tesla’s quarter end liquidity can potentially reduce to as low at c.$0.5-1bn.
• So in total we have Tesla investing $1.7bn to $2.2bn cash balance over Q2-Q4 2019 if all else is kept equal with Q1. This would leave them with $2.2-2.7bn cash balance at year end together with $1bn undrawn bank lines – so $2.2bn to $3.2bn excess liquidity.
• So even with this worst case of no improvement from Q1 will leave Tesla with enough cash to get GF3 into production and likely also Model Y, at which point positive cash flow and profit becomes extremely easy.

But, is it reasonable to assume Tesla deliveries do not improve from 51k Model 3 and 12k S&X over Q2-Q4? This seems extremely unlikely.

• On Model S/X demand side Q1 was impacted by 1) tax credit demand pull forward, 2) discontinuation of the most popular base models for most of the quarter, 3) Customers waiting for a highly rumoured refresh, 4) unfavourable auto market seasonality. In Q2 none of these are still issues (the limitation is mostly ramping production back up to speed), in addition to benefits from lower pricing.
• On Model 3 side – Now Tesla has 1) SR+ availability increasing affordability, 2) SR+ availability meaning current limited cell supply can produce more cars, 3) lower pricing, 4) faded tax credit demand pull forward impact, 5) much better charging speeds, 6) availability in more countries.
• And higher deliveries will also mean higher cash gross profit for each car due to operating leverage benefits on production staff costs. This will however be offset to some degree by reduced ASP now SR+ is available.
• Cash profit per car is also heavily dependent on FSD take rate. Whether or not you believe in Robotaxis, it seems almost guaranteed that Tesla’s new HW3 and recent pace of progress will lead to significantly upgraded FSD functionality this year which is very likely to lead to a higher FSD take rate.
• So all together, these changes vs Q1 should comfortably take Q2-Q4 cash flow to breakeven, even without tesla getting close to their 360-400k delivery guidance. This is why Tesla Is guiding for positive free cash flow in all remaining quarters this year, even despite the delivery wave unwind.

But this does not mean demand is not an issue at all.

• I think Tesla is most likely going to be able to sell full production this year without any significant actions.
• But it is definitely true that demand is significantly lower than justified by Tesla's product/price superiority due to 1) lacking public awareness of the TCO of EVs, the performance and price of Tesla’s and the huge number of people killed by ICE emissions and 2) heavy PR and FUD attacks against Tesla trying to create a misleading impression of poor quality, fire danger, crash danger, insolvency risk, range anxiety etc.
• Whether Tesla demand would be 1.5x or 5x current production if the whole world was well educated about Tesla vehicles, I don’t know, but to some extent I'm sure Tesla is negatively impacted by this.
• My guess is this is currently impacting Tesla’s pricing power and Tesla would raise prices if people were better educated and demand far outpaced supply.
• But It is also possible that this public ignorance and miseducation will lead to Model 3 demand levels below production capacity. If this scenario plays out Tesla may choose to make some of the more drastic changes you are referring to.

What can Tesla do in the (unlikely given current information in my view) scenario that Model 3 demand does fall below production capacity?

• The first short term move will be to move Model 3 from three to two shifts of production. Most if not all parts of the production line should be able to produce at 4.5k per week on two shifts. This will prevent production outpacing supply and prevent inventory cash outflows.
• Tesla can raise more capital (within 24 hours) if they decide they need more cash to bridge to Model Y production.
• Elon will be forced to finally accept that advertising is a necessary evil for the greater good. If Tesla spends money to better educate people about the benefits of EVs and specs of Teslas Tesla will definitely get incremental demand.
• Tesla could partner with a dealership to open up another new sales channel. FCA in Europe seems an obvious partner given FCA reduces its emissions penalties by $10k for every extra car Tesla sells in Europe next year.
• Tesla could form a JV with an auto company using Tesla’s leading EV powertrain and battery technology. I’m sure many companies would be willing to partner on this given how far ahead Tesla is on technology – it will be Tesla holding out to go it alone at the moment. If Tesla puts its technology into a new brand, it can sell its technology through a new sales channel without comprising on its core Tesla business model.

What about after 2019?

• Tesla’s struggle to get to profitability and positive cash flow is entirely due to operating leverage and lack of scale. Most auto competitors have far lower gross profit per car relative to Tesla, but they need to sell 5 million to 10 million cars per year to leverage their fixed opex costs. Tesla is designing a more efficient business model that is close to breakeven with only c0.25 million cars per year.
• Tesla’s battle gets far easier when they have more factories and more car models. The gross profit from each new factory flows straight through to Tesla’s bottom line and will very rapidly turn Tesla profitable. GF3 will without a doubt increase China demand beyond current levels with lower production costs. Model Y and Semi will without a doubt plug significant new gross profit into Tesla’s largely flat fixed cost base. So in 2020 Tesla’s battle gets far easier, and its very difficult to see a scenario where their current cash balance does not bridge them to Model Y production and positive free cash flow.
• In addition, our best information is that Tesla will get around $0.6bn yoy increase in profit in the EU in 2020 from increased emissions pooling payments.
• Of course, if Tesla does deliver on Robotaxis as Elon expects, all profit and cash flow questions will be answered for good overnight.

Mod: Original post here. --ggr

 

[shrspeedblade]

Tales of the Rideshare Monkey Vol.2

So, a little over a month back I gave some impressions of my experiences driving Uber/Lyft with my Model 3 since last July. Now, with a slightly snappier title, I figure I'd continue giving some of my impressions from out in the field since while it is anecdotal, for the most part it does give some (hopefully) good information about what I'm encountering over hundreds of interactions.

I'd like to focus specifically on perceptions of Tesla as a company and its products as it tends to be seen by different generations. This post was largely inspired by two different interactions, one just the other day and one several weeks ago. The more recent one was a high school senior who had never been in a Tesla before and was quite excited (this is pretty normal, even in N. Cal where they rival fleas on a stray dog now) to get to ride in one. With no prompting on my part, she started telling me that Teslas are the "gotta have it" car of their generation. Actually experiencing the car a little seemed to do nothing to dim that desire.

The second is an older gentleman who came dangerously close to being the first person I've ever kicked out of my car on a ride. You can disagree with me. You can even say I'm full of bullshit, but if you do that in my house or my car you're probably going to be invited to depart and take your opinions with you. In his case it was over whether my power provider, Marin Clean Energy, truly was supplying 100% renewable power as the rate plan indicates but rather that it was largely supplied by coal. There being only one coal fired plant left way down in Southern California (for the moment, I looked) I politely disagreed but seeing the futility said I wasn't going to argue about it. I'm not naive enough to think every watt of power I use comes from a windmill or solar cell, but I don't gripe at my bank for not giving me the same bills out of the ATM I put in the month before, either. Fortunately this type of person is a slim minority, but I have seen other instances of this "arrogant ignorance" as I call it and I don't much care for it. Certainty by and large seems to be the province of the pridefully foolish, and this isn't exclusive to any certain group.

As in my previous post, I see to a limited but troubling degree that the FUD is working, to a point. Elon is crazy, Tesla is nearly bankwupt, the cars are full of problems, how often do you have to replace the battery, etc. are still all reoccurring themes. I've altered my response, making it shorter and hopefully more effective than just spewing facts back at them moving forward: How is a company that is disrupting or at odds with big oil, big auto, dealerships, energy companies, Wall street, the Russian space program (Elon), and not advertising going to get anything close to a fair and honest portrayal in our media? I leave them with a big grain of salt, distilled out of a solution of critical thinking, that I hope they'll make a little use of moving forward.

On a completely different topic, I've read others make the comment and completely agree that it would be a significantly advantageous move to have the Tesla Network be available prior to FSD and let people who are interested take part. There is no doubt it would speed adoption because people are going to want to have multiple trips in an Autopilot equipped car with a human in the driver's seat (it's easy to forget how surreal this is when you live with it every day) before they'll jump into a TeslaNetwork robotaxi with the driver's seat vacant. Going even a step further and expanding the Tesla app to have sections for car management, ride requests, and ordering new vehicles would seem to have all sorts of business advantages! (I'm considering bringing this up at the investors meeting on Tuesday, but don't know if I'll be able to work up the courage.)

Mod: link to original. --ggr

 

[jbcarioca]

Put me in the "in favor of some informative type advertisements" column.

...

That would go a long way to dispel some of the FUD.

The problems you're illustrating are exactly the same ones many of us see every day. The problem, though, is one that advertising really cannot help. Why? The question is not just one of 'reach', although the economics of advertising in any form would be prohibitive were they intended for basic information. Why?
Just ask the simplest questions with 'unaided recall' ,'aided recall' then add a little 'resistance testing' with questions about Supercharging, range, performance, maintenance, updates, etc. Quickly we'll discover that short of Word of Mouth these topics will be nearly impossible to resolve.

Thinking of analogies we have numerous very old ones such as electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones, phonograph and more modern ones like electronic calculators, the internet and cellular telephones. In all of those advertising and other information dissemination became important. At the beginning, however, almost all the early adopters found out about the new technology through personal contact.

In an earlier post above I mentioned some of this. FWIW, I studied this topic intensely while pursuing academic goals. However, the reason I did that was because my 'day job' was as part fo a team doing startups around the world, all of which were doing introduction of new technologies. One thing that remains valid over the very long human evolution is that new technologies only can be widely accepted following acceptance in stages, with mass communication techniques quite useless until broad acceptance has been achieved.

With Tesla we all should learn more about this subject prior to making assumptions about the best tactics for market expansion. As such I recommend this book, the seminal work on the subject. Perhaps inevitably, the author experienced several distinct cultures on his way to writing this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Diffusion-In...=B003YUC6G4&psc=1&refRID=H5M4HPR8AW5NVQ2S00PR

By the way, one essential component of the Tesla strategy that is widely ignored is to encourage other market entrants as much as possible. Elon regularly is dismayed by the poor state of competitive products. He does not describe this in Roger-like terms, but both PayPal and SpaceX have been in analogous positions.

Please, everyone, advertising will not be useful for Tesla. Publicity will be.

Mod: Original here. --ggr

 

[Fact Checking]

It’s fun to imagine this but I seriously doubt this is the reason for the negative articles. Hiltzik and Mitchell are grizzled old journalists who I think just hate Tesla on their own, and aren’t trashing Tesla under orders of their billionaire boss. But I’m gonna find out.

So I found the incessant negativity an enmity towards Tesla by LA Times reporter Russ Mitchell puzzling, so I researched a bit into his articles to figure out what's going on. I have a theory.

First, here's the raw data:

Here's chronological list of links and headlines of all 484 articles Russ Mitchell wrote at the LA Times since 2014:

Spoiler

# "Diversity champion says Silicon Valley overlooks minority talent"
Diversity champion says Silicon Valley overlooks minority talent

# "E3, big video game show, opens in Los Angeles"
E3, big video game show, opens in Los Angeles

# "Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper wins bitcoin auction"
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper wins bitcoin auction

# "Can Apple turn its iPhone and Watch into a wallet?"
Can Apple turn its iPhone and Watch into a wallet?

# "Netropolitan.club: A Facebook for rich people"
Netropolitan.club: A Facebook for rich people

# "Larry Ellison, Oracle founder, resigns as CEO but is far from retiring"
Larry Ellison, Oracle founder, resigns as CEO but is far from retiring

# "Alibaba IPO: Stock surges 38% in market debut"
Alibaba IPO: Stock surges 38% in market debut

# "EBay agrees to spin off PayPal after pressure from activist investors"
EBay agrees to spin off PayPal after pressure from activist investors

# " In HP split, each unit to face a test"
In HP split, each unit to face a test

# "Jimmy Buffett to Spotify: Give recording artists a raise"
Jimmy Buffett to Spotify: Give recording artists a raise

# "Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel glad colleagues didn't ditch 'idiot frat boy'"
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel glad colleagues didn't ditch 'idiot frat boy'

# "Disruption? Bring it on, says Disney's CEO"
Disruption? Bring it on, says Disney's CEO

# "Google execs discuss regulation, innovation and bobble-heads"
Google execs discuss regulation, innovation and bobble-heads

# "Christian Bale a no-brainer to play Jobs, Twitter knits Fabric, more"
Christian Bale a no-brainer to play Jobs, Twitter knits Fabric, more

# "California company imported Indian workers, paid them $1.21 an hour"
California company imported Indian workers, paid them $1.21 an hour

# "Amazon's Fire phone flop: A watershed for investors?"
Amazon's Fire phone flop: A watershed for investors?

# "Investors flee Amazon as losses mount"
Investors flee Amazon as losses mount

# "Soaring SpaceX, Isaacson on Wikipedia, Asimov on creativity, and more"
Soaring SpaceX, Isaacson on Wikipedia, Asimov on creativity, and more

# "Twitter exec says it's not about the money"
Twitter exec says it's not about the money

# "Bono: Don't blame Spotify"
Bono: Don't blame Spotify

# "Obama strongly endorses tough net neutrality rules"
Obama strongly endorses tough net neutrality rules

# "FCC chairman faces balancing act on net neutrality issue"
FCC chairman faces balancing act on net neutrality issue

# "L.A. Times names Internet strategist Nicco Mele deputy publisher"
L.A. Times names Internet strategist Nicco Mele deputy publisher

# "Uber can't sweep exec's revenge campaign under the car mat"
Uber can't sweep exec's revenge campaign under the car mat

# "Silicon Valley lukewarm to Obama's immigration reform moves"
Silicon Valley lukewarm to Obama's immigration reform moves

# "Cox is letting pirates steal music online, publishers' lawsuit claims"
Cox is letting pirates steal music online, publishers' lawsuit claims

# "3 scary hacker stories and 9 productivity tips"
3 scary hacker stories and 9 productivity tips

# "Uber sued over unlawful business practices; Lyft settles"
Uber sued over unlawful business practices; Lyft settles

# "San Francisco, L.A. lawsuit against Uber stirs backlash"
San Francisco, L.A. lawsuit against Uber stirs backlash

# "Chinese search giant Baidu said ready to invest $600 million in Uber"
Chinese search giant Baidu said ready to invest $600 million in Uber

# "Uber's latest controversies: Australia, France and Tampa"
Uber's latest controversies: Australia, France and Tampa

# "Monster sues Beats Electronics, alleging fraud "
Monster sues Beats Electronics, alleging fraud

# "Uber drivers are satisfied, Uber survey shows"
Uber drivers are satisfied, Uber survey shows

# "Without naming names, Apple CEO Tim Cook jabs firms selling user data"
Without naming names, Apple CEO Tim Cook jabs firms selling user data

# "Music royalty hunter Kobalt wins Google funding"
Music royalty hunter Kobalt wins Google funding

# "Nasdaq hits 5,000 for the first time since 2000 "
Nasdaq hits 5,000 for the first time since 2000

# "Apple to launch "skinny" TV service in fall, WSJ reports"
Apple to launch "skinny" TV service in fall, WSJ reports

# "Defense chief's Stanford speech, decoded: More funding for Silicon Valley"
Defense chief's Stanford speech, decoded: More funding for Silicon Valley

# "Leak of revenue figures adds to Twitter's bad day; shares fall 18%"
Leak of revenue figures adds to Twitter's bad day; shares fall 18%

# "Why advertisers steer clear of Reddit"
Why advertisers steer clear of Reddit

# "Equal access at issue in PUC battle with Uber over data disclosure"
Equal access at issue in PUC battle with Uber over data disclosure

# "Model X: Under the hood of Tesla's SUV strategy"
Model X: Under the hood of Tesla's SUV strategy

# "Your next boss: A computer algorithm?"
Your next boss: A computer algorithm?

# "After Sony hack, Justice Department creates office to help companies stop cyberattacks"
After Sony hack, Justice Department creates office to help companies stop cyberattacks

# "Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg compares net neutrality to civil rights laws"
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg compares net neutrality to civil rights laws

# "Jimmy Iovine on Apple, music streaming and Taylor Swift"
Jimmy Iovine on Apple, music streaming and Taylor Swift

# "I met Steve Jobs, and the movie gets its subject wrong"
I met Steve Jobs, and the movie gets its subject wrong

# "Meet your new weatherman: IBM's Watson"
Meet your new weatherman: IBM's Watson

# "Cybersecurity start-ups are proliferating, but sorting out what works and what doesn't is tricky"
Cybersecurity start-ups are proliferating, but sorting out what works and what doesn't is tricky

# "Our young curmudgeon says: Don't buy these gifts. "
Our young curmudgeon says: Don't buy these gifts.

# "Volkswagen announces an $11.3-million investment in California"
Volkswagen announces an $11.3-million investment in California

# "After emissions cheating scandal, Volkswagen steers toward electric vehicles"
After emissions cheating scandal, Volkswagen steers toward electric vehicles

# "Got an old car? Thanks to three Apple renegades, you can install your own rearview camera"
Got an old car? Thanks to three Apple renegades, you can install your own rearview camera

# "Tesla's bid for SolarCity would bring two Elon Musk companies together"
Tesla's bid for SolarCity would bring two Elon Musk companies together

# "Elon Musk calls Tesla's bid for SolarCity a 'no-brainer,' but Tesla stock dives"
Elon Musk calls Tesla's bid for SolarCity a 'no-brainer,' but Tesla stock dives

# "Elon Musk's plan for Tesla to buy SolarCity raises fears of shaky financials and unclear motives"
Elon Musk's plan for Tesla to buy SolarCity raises fears of shaky financials and unclear motives

# "Faraday Future driverless cars to hit California highways"
Faraday Future driverless cars to hit California highways

# "Autonomous cars will get new federal guidelines: 'We want people who start a trip to finish it'"
Autonomous cars will get new federal guidelines: 'We want people who start a trip to finish it'

# "Controversy over Tesla 'autopilot' name keeps growing"
Controversy over Tesla 'autopilot' name keeps growing

# "Tesla's stock falls after Elon Musk reveals his 'master plan'"
Tesla's stock falls after Elon Musk reveals his 'master plan'

# "Elon Musk's master plan for Tesla is long on vision, short on specifics"
Elon Musk's master plan for Tesla is long on vision, short on specifics

# "Elon Musk is racing to get Tesla's Gigafactory battery plant completed early"
Elon Musk is racing to get Tesla's Gigafactory battery plant completed early

# "Elon Musk's Tesla Gigafactory idea was crazy, Panasonic exec thought. And yet ..."
Elon Musk's Tesla Gigafactory idea was crazy, Panasonic exec thought. And yet ...

# "Tesla's Autopilot makes for a smooth highway cruise"
Tesla's Autopilot makes for a smooth highway cruise

# "Tesla-SolarCity merger embodies Elon Musk's audacious plan for clean energy"
Tesla-SolarCity merger embodies Elon Musk's audacious plan for clean energy

# "Can Tesla go from sexy car company to clean energy empire?"
Can Tesla go from sexy car company to clean energy empire?

# "Another Tesla Autopilot crash, this time in China"
Another Tesla Autopilot crash, this time in China

# "Will that red light end soon? Audi's countdown clock can tell you"
Will that red light end soon? Audi's countdown clock can tell you

# "Audi's countdown clock tells driver when traffic lights will change"
Audi's countdown clock tells driver when traffic lights will change

# "In race to get driverless cars on the road, Ford speeds ahead"
In race to get driverless cars on the road, Ford speeds ahead

# "Uber is about to start giving rides in self-driving cars"
Uber is about to start giving rides in self-driving cars

# "Even more Ludicrous: Elon Musk says Tesla now has the world's fastest production car"
Even more Ludicrous: Elon Musk says Tesla now has the world's fastest production car

# "Will Hyundai's eco-friendly Ioniq woo hearts away from Prius?"
Will Hyundai's eco-friendly Ioniq woo hearts away from Prius?

# "Tesla Autopilot upgrade is imminent, Elon Musk says"
Tesla Autopilot upgrade is imminent, Elon Musk says

# "After SpaceX rocket crisis, Elon Musk also faces Tesla safety and cash-flow issues"
After SpaceX rocket crisis, Elon Musk also faces Tesla safety and cash-flow issues

# "Elon Musk's bad day: Rocket explosion, stocks drop, Autopilot announcement postponed"
Elon Musk's bad day: Rocket explosion, stocks drop, Autopilot announcement postponed

# "Is Elon Musk trying to do too much too fast?"
Is Elon Musk trying to do too much too fast?

# "After explosion, SpaceX satellite customer says it's due $50 million or a free ride"
After explosion, SpaceX satellite customer says it's due $50 million or a free ride

# "Mercedes 'mothership' will transport robot workers to deliver packages"
Mercedes 'mothership' will transport robot workers to deliver packages

# "Ford moves into crowd-sourced shuttle service and bicycle sharing"
Ford moves into crowd-sourced shuttle service and bicycle sharing

# "Ford reveals self-driving cars; politeness may be a problem"
Ford reveals self-driving cars; politeness may be a problem

# "Driverless cars won't always look this way"
Driverless cars won't always look this way

# "Tesla says jealousy, not Autopilot safety concerns, caused breakup with Mobileye"
Tesla says jealousy, not Autopilot safety concerns, caused breakup with Mobileye

# "Tesla Watch: Merger with SolarCity is challenged; Autopilot upgrade is panned"
Tesla Watch: Merger with SolarCity is challenged; Autopilot upgrade is panned

# "U.S. to release guidelines on driverless vehicles"
U.S. to release guidelines on driverless vehicles

# "Government paves way for driverless cars to hit the roads"
Government paves way for driverless cars to hit the roads

# "Tesla to release Autopilot update under shadow of security hack"
Tesla to release Autopilot update under shadow of security hack

# "When robots and humans take turns at the wheel"
When robots and humans take turns at the wheel

# "FTC accuses L.A. auto dealer group of using illegal, deceptive 'yo-yo' sales tactics"
FTC accuses L.A. auto dealer group of using illegal, deceptive 'yo-yo' sales tactics

# "Tesla deliveries up 70%; stock price soars too"
Tesla deliveries up 70%; stock price soars too

# "Q&A: How will we know driverless cars are safe?"
Q&A: How will we know driverless cars are safe?

# "Faraday Future decorates its Formula E racer with Italian flair"
Faraday Future decorates its Formula E racer with Italian flair

# "3 reasons to fear self-driving cars (even if they're perfectly safe)"
3 reasons to fear self-driving cars (even if they're perfectly safe)

# "Shareholders to vote on Tesla-SolarCity merger next month"
Shareholders to vote on Tesla-SolarCity merger next month

# "Beverly Hills, land of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, seeks status as driverless-car innovator"
Beverly Hills, land of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, seeks status as driverless-car innovator

# "Germany tells Tesla to stop using 'Autopilot' in its sales pitch"
Germany tells Tesla to stop using 'Autopilot' in its sales pitch

# "Tesla warns new customers of a 2-year wait for the Model 3"
Tesla warns new customers of a 2-year wait for the Model 3

# "New Teslas will have all the hardware to be driverless cars, Elon Musk says"
New Teslas will have all the hardware to be driverless cars, Elon Musk says

# "Look, no hands: A Tesla drives through Silicon Valley and finds a parking spot on its own"
Look, no hands: A Tesla drives through Silicon Valley and finds a parking spot on its own

# "Elon Musk challenges regulators to catch up to Tesla's driverless car technology"
Elon Musk challenges regulators to catch up to Tesla's driverless car technology

# "Is electric car start-up Faraday Future already running out of cash?"
Is electric car start-up Faraday Future already running out of cash?

# "This 84-year-old car guy blasts Elon Musk and Tesla, five ways"
This 84-year-old car guy blasts Elon Musk and Tesla, five ways

# "Surprise: Tesla turns a profit for the first time in three years"
Surprise: Tesla turns a profit for the first time in three years

# "Elon Musk wants to sell people solar roofs that look great. Here's his much anticipated design"
Elon Musk wants to sell people solar roofs that look great. Here's his much anticipated design

# "Elon Musk wants to sell you a better-looking solar roof"
Elon Musk wants to sell you a better-looking solar roof

# "Hacker quits plan to sell a $999 self-driving car kit"
Hacker quits plan to sell a $999 self-driving car kit

# "SolarCity to add $1 billion in revenue to Tesla after merger, firms say"
SolarCity to add $1 billion in revenue to Tesla after merger, firms say

# "Tesla adds hard-core German engineering to its 'Alien Dreadnought'"
Tesla adds hard-core German engineering to its 'Alien Dreadnought'

# "Electric cars are less than 1% of the market. Yet automakers are pushing them big time. Why?"
Electric cars are less than 1% of the market. Yet automakers are pushing them big time. Why?

# "Electric cars are less than 1% of the market. Yet automakers are pushing them big time. Why?"
Electric cars are less than 1% of the market. Yet automakers are pushing them big time. Why?

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Ford EcoSport"
L.A. Auto Show 2016: Ford EcoSport

# "Los coches eléctricos son menos del 1% del mercado, pero las automotrices pujan fuerte por ellos"
Los coches eléctricos son menos del 1% del mercado, pero las automotrices pujan fuerte por ellos

# "The Ford EcoSport is a high-tech playroom"
The Ford EcoSport is a high-tech playroom

# "'Here comes that punk. Alexa, lock my Elantra!'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-punk-alexa-lock-my-1479235792-htmlstory.html

# "With the ReachNow app, you can order up a ride in a BMW or Mini"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...achnow-app-bmw-mini-1479237530-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Mini Cooper SE Countryman All4 plug-in hybrid"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...auto-show-mini-countryman-20161115-story.html

# "The Mini Countryman — not so mini anymore"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...gger-mini-is-on-its-1479233730-htmlstory.html

# "Human drivers will bully robot cars, says CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...ll-bully-robot-cars-1479247249-htmlstory.html

# "The 1,000-horsepower, ultra-luxury electric car you’ve never heard of"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-la-auto-show-lucid-1479331782-htmlstory.html

# "Hyundai Ioniq: Buy, lease … or subscribe?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-ioniq-buy-lease-or-1479336121-htmlstory.html

# "After Faraday fails to pay bills, its contractor stops work on the car company's $1-billion factory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-factory-tesla-20161116-story.html

# "Volvo experiments with app to deliver fuel, car washes, rides to the dealer"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...with-app-to-deliver-1479402410-htmlstory.html

# "Subaru's VIZIV-7 is big, and its sales are too"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...s-big-and-its-sales-1479403075-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Subaru VIZIV-7"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...la-auto-show-subaru-viziv-20161117-story.html

# "Among subcompact crossovers, Toyota's CH-R is a cheaper, edgier-looking option"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...uto-show-toyota-chr-1479405864-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Toyota CH-R"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...y-la-auto-show-toyota-chr-20161117-story.html

# "What cars? New pavilion at the L.A. Auto Show showcases scooters, electric bikes and hoverboards"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-personal-mobility-go-pavilion-20161119-story.html

# "Our top picks from the L.A. Auto Show"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...a-auto-show-top-car-picks-20161119-story.html

# "Under Trump, fuel economy standards for cars and trucks may be scaled back"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-trump-electric-vehicles-20161121-story.html

# "Hurry up and bar Tesla from using the Autopilot name in marketing, consumer group tells DMV"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-complaint-tesla-musk-dmv-20161128-story.html

# "California-based electric car maker Lucid will build its 1,000-horsepower car in Arizona"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ctric-car-arizona-factory-20161129-story.html

# "EPA moves fast on mpg regs as inauguration draws near"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas-mileage-standards-20161130-story.html

# "Officials fear up to 40 dead in fire during concert at Oakland warehouse"
http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-oakland-warehouse-party-fire-20161203-story.html

# "Officials fear up to 40 dead in fire during concert at Oakland warehouse"
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-oakland-fire-nine-dead-warehouse-20161203-story.html

# "Why the driverless car industry is happy (so far) with Trump's pick for Transportation secretary"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chao-trump-driverless-20161205-story.html

# "Battery makers Tesla and Sonnen tout similar products but have different strategies"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sonnen-powerwall-20161207-story.html

# "Michigan law permits cars with no steering wheels"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-michigan-driverless-car-law-20161209-story.html

# "Feeling the squeeze of Uber and Lyft, Hertz looks to start-up Shift to sell its used cars "
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-hertz-shift-used-cars-20161213-story.html

# "The Bolt EV, Chevy's affordable and long-range electric car, arrives at dealerships"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chevy-bolt-ev-20161212-story.html

# "Por el crecimiento de Uber y Lyft, Hertz se une a la nueva Shift para vender sus autos usados"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/hoyl...ft-para-vender-sus-usados-20161214-story.html

# "Lucid takes the wraps off its electric luxe-mobile"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lucid-electric-car-20161214-story.html

# "Uber's self-driving cars put tech's 'move fast, break things' credo to the test"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-self-driving-sf-20161215-story.html

# "Uber pulls its self-driving cars off the streets of San Francisco"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-dmv-submit-20161221-story.html

# "The time is right to buy a used car"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-used-cars-20161221-story.html

# "Auto sales expected to match last year's record, but may be plateauing"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-new-car-sales-20161231-story.html

# "Used-car price drop makes it a good time to buy"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-used-car-prices-autotips-0105-20170103-story.html

# "Tesla begins churning out battery cells at Nevada Gigafactory"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-tesla-gigafactory-battery-20170104-story.html

# "Troubled Faraday Future unveils a 'new species' of automobile. Is it already extinct?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-unveiling-20170103-story.html

# "Nissan plans to make robot cars; human 'mobility managers' will intervene when needed"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-nissan-autonomous-ces-20170105-story.html

# "Ford announces return of Bronco SUV and Ranger midsize pickup truck"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-ford-announces-return-bronco-ranger-20170803-story.html

# "Ford's Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup truck are coming back"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ford-bronco-ranger-20170109-story.html

# "Trump's tweets are a new challenge for carmakers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-mexico-automakers-trump-20170109-story.html

# "EPA moves to preserve gas mileage requirements before Trump takes office"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-epa-mileage-standards-20170113-story.html

# "U.S. ends investigation of fatal Tesla crash and finds 'no safety defects' in car's Autopilot"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-20170119-story.html

# "California regulations for driverless cars stall as other states speed ahead"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-driverless-regulations-california-20170126-story.html

# "An electric car-buying guide, custom-made for L.A."
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-electromotivela-20170131-story.html

# "Ford F-150 Raptor, an off-road beast, is headed to China"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ford-f150-raptor-china-20170202-story.html

# "Tesla can't supply all the world's batteries. Here comes Romeo Power."
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-romeo-battery-20170125-story.html

# "Tension high as Tesla prepares to begin production of the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-production-20170209-story.html

# "Ford Motor Co. strikes unusual deal with driverless car start-up Argo AI"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ford-ai-deal-driverless-20170210-story.html

# "Elon Musk has a lot riding on Tesla's Model 3 — what will a unionization effort in California mean?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-uaw-20170214-story.html

# "Tesla earnings preview: Analysts want details on Model 3 and Gigafactory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-advance-20170216-story.html

# "Head of U.S. Honda to leave air bags behind, turn to gin and vodka"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-mendel-honda-retire-20170221-story.html

# "Tesla reports fourth-quarter and full-year results, says Model 3 on track"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-4q-2016-story.html

# "Her brand helps others brand themselves: The design maven who helped name TiVo and Kindle"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-himi-karin-hibma-20170226-story.html

# "SpaceX plans to send two private astronauts to circle the moon — on their own dime"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-announcement-20170227-story.html

# "If you like cars, not trucks, it's a good time to buy"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-new-car-incentives-20170309-story.html

# "Robot cars — with no human driver — could hit California roads next year"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-dmv-autonomous-regulations-20170310-story.html

# "Intel, betting big on driverless cars, is buying Mobileye for $15 billion"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-intel-mobileye-20170313-story.html

# "What to expect when Trump takes on fuel economy and clean air regulations Wednesday"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-epa-mileage-emissions-preview-20170314-story.html

# "Do car companies want Trump to trash emission standards? Maybe not."
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-epa-mileage-emissions-new-review-20170315-story.html

# "L.A. auto dealer group will pay $3.6 million to customers in 'yo-yo' settlement with FTC"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-sage-auto-dealer-ftc-settlement-20170316-story.html

# "Tesla to drop cheapest Model S, the 60 and 60D, from lineup"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-60-discontinued-20170320-story.html

# "Elon Musk tweets Model 3 teaser and clears up misconceptions about Tesla's latest electric car"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-video-20170324-story.html

# "The Porsche Macan proves to be a sure-footed beast in the snow"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-porsche-macan-review-20170323-story.html

# "Southern Californians urged to fix their defective air bags before they 'explode like a grenade'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-fy-airbag-recall-push-20170327-story.html

# "Faraday Future scraps plans for California auto assembly plant"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-scraps-california-plant-20170327-story.html

# "Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chips might someday fight the robot uprising"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-hy-musk-neuralink-20170328-story.html

# "Bob Lutz, the auto industry's 85-year-old bad boy, goes off on Elon Musk and President Trump"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-qa-20170330-story.html

# "Next step toward driverless cars: Tesla updates Autopilot"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-updates-autopilot-20170330-story.html

# "Tesla stock value overtakes Ford as Elon Musk disses short sellers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-1q-production-20170403-story.html

# "Tesla and Uber lag in driverless progress, study says; Ford is tops"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-driverless-rankings-20170404-story.html

# "One reason for fading sedan sales: low wage growth"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-sales-20170405-story.html

# "Uber says it didn't use secrets smuggled from Waymo"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-waymo-trial-20170407-story.html

# "Tesla stock is on a tear. Now the pressure is on for Elon Musk to deliver the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tesla-surpass-gm-20170410-story.html

# "Flying cars may be poised to take off, but survey shows Americans want a parachute"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-flying-cars-survey-20170418-story.html

# "Flying cars may be poised to take off, but survey shows Americans want a parachute"
http://www.latimes.com/mc-flying-cars-survey-20170419-story.html

# "Tesla recalls some Model S and Model X cars for parking brake problem"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-brake-recall-20170420-story.html

# "7 reasons short sellers are betting against Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-app-tesla-short-sellers-20170424-story.html

# "Tesla plans to nearly double its car-charging network"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-charging-network-20170424-story.html

# "Walt Disney World plans to deploy driverless shuttles in Florida"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-disney-shuttles-20170428-story.html

# "Walt Disney World plans to deploy driverless shuttles at Florida theme parks"
http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-walt-disney-world-driverless-shuttles-20170428-story.html

# "Walt Disney World plans to deploy driverless shuttles at theme parks"
http://www.latimes.com/os-walt-disn...s-shuttles-at-theme-parks-20170428-story.html

# "Walt Disney World planea desplegar transbordadores sin conductor "
http://www.latimes.com/hoyla-walt-d...sbordadores-sin-conductor-20170501-story.html

# "Waymo sues, alleging theft of trade secrets"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-uber-updates-waymo-1498061331-htmlstory.html

# "Judge orders: Don't let Levandowski work on this tech"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...cts-uber-actions-in-1498059827-htmlstory.html

# "Uber fires Anthony Levandowski, engineer at center of legal battle with Waymo"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...anthony-levandowski-1498059992-htmlstory.html

# "April car sales plummet. Does that signal a longer-term decline?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-april-vehicle-sales-20170502-story.html

# "GM introduces 'Maven Gig' rental program for app-based freelance drivers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-gm-maven-gig-20170503-story.html

# "Tesla's loss grows as Elon Musk claims customers are confused by Model 3 name"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fy-hy-tesla-1q-earnings-20170503-story.html

# "Toyota to use Nvidia chips for autonomous cars"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-nvidia-20170510-story.html

# "Disney World to test driverless shuttles"
http://www.latimes.com/travel/cruises/ct-walt-disney-world-driverless-shuttles-20170511-story.html

# "Waymo and Lyft team up on technology for driverless cars"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-lyft-20170514-story.html

# "Court restricts Uber actions in driverless-tech theft case"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-waymo-20170515-story.html

# "Driverless cars are the future, and the ugly battle to dominate the field is on"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-waymo-fight-20170515-story.html

# "Hint to electric car dealers: Charge up before the test drive if you want the sale"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-electric-car-dealers-20170517-story.html

# "Bolt EV helps boost electric car sales by 91% in California"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ev-sales-california-20170519-story.html

# "Ford ousts CEO as auto industry faces biggest transformation ever"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ford-ousts-ceo-20170522-story.html

# "Tesla had worse safety records than slaughterhouses and sawmills, but says it's improving"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-workplace-safety-20170524-story.html

# "Uber fires Anthony Levandowski, engineer at center of legal battle with Waymo"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-anthony-levandowski-20170530-story.html

# "Can an automobile interior evoke the spirit of California? Ask Lucid, a Tesla competitor"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-lucid-qa-20170525-htmlstory.html

# "Tesla's Elon Musk says he'll quit White House role if Trump dumps Paris accord"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-trump-20170531-story.html

# "May car sales are flat. The sedan heads toward irrelevance"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-may-vehicle-sales-20170601-story.html

# "Tesla's Elon Musk and Disney's Robert Iger quit Trump advisory councils, citing climate change"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-elon-musk-climate-change-20170601-story.html

# "Lyft partners with NuTonomy to develop and test driverless fleet in Boston"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lyft-nutonomy-20170606-story.html

# "Two things about the Tesla Model 3 that Elon Musk wants you to know"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-shareholder-meeting-20170606-story.html

# "California lawmaker pushing bill to jolt electric car market with $3 billion in subsidies"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ev-legislation-20170628-story.html

# "More factory problems as Elon Musk's Tesla starts producing the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-announcement-20170703-story.html

# "Volvo plans to electrify all of its cars. Are the days of the combustion engine numbered?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-volvo-electric-motors-20170705-story.html

# "Bad week for Elon Musk's Tesla. Good week for short sellers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-hy-tesla-stock-crash-test-20170706-story.html

# "Desperate for cash, Tesla competitor Faraday Future scales back plans yet again"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-20170710-story.html

# "At $1.34 billion, Tesla's Elon Musk was last year's best paid auto executive"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-elon-musk-tesla-pay-20170710-story.html

# "Used car 'time bomb' complicates auto industry transformation, new report says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-alixpartners-auto-industry-20170712-story.html

# "Tesla adds two 'outside' board directors from the media world"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-murdoch-20170718-story.html

# "California bill would boost electric car rebates by $3 billion, but where will the money come from?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ev-state-subsidies-20170720-story.html

# "Elon Musk takes the stage tonight to deliver the first Tesla Model 3s"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-on-sale-20170728-story.html

# "Elon Musk hands over first 30 Tesla Model 3s, but warns of 'manufacturing hell' ahead"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-handover-event-20170728-story.html

# "5 unusual features in the Tesla Model 3, including an instrument-free dash"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-notable-things-20170731-story.html

# "U.S. car sales continue to skid, drop 5.7% in July"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-july-auto-sales-20170801-story.html

# "As Tesla ramps up to produce its Model 3, losses mount"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-2q-earnings-20170802-story.html

# "Faraday Future plans to refurbish an old tire factory to take on Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-factory-20170806-story.html

# "A new all-electric delivery truck is on the way, and it's not from Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chanje-electric-truck-20170810-story.html

# "Ryder signs exclusive deal with L.A. electric-truck maker Chanje"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ryder-chanje-20170814-story.html

# "Fiat Chrysler joins BMW-Intel to develop driverless cars"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-fac-intel-bmw-driverless-20170816-story.html

# "Solar eclipse gridlock: It was so busy in Madras, Ore., they called in the National Guard"
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-s...-madras-oregon-they-1503273850-htmlstory.html

# "Funding for $3-billion electric car rebate bill is up in the air"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ev-rebate-bill-20170830-story.html

# "Hurricane destruction expected to boost auto sales"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-20170901-story.html

# "$3-billion electric vehicle rebate bill moves to California Legislature for full vote"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-ev-rebate-status-20170901-story.html

# "Plan to boost electric-vehicle rebates to $3 billion is scrapped in favor of state study"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-rebates-20170902-story.html

# "Public dumps on Trump plan to reconsider automobile fuel economy standards"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-epa-cafe-hearing-20170906-story.html

# "BMW plans 25 all-electric and hybrid vehicles by 2025; Jaguar shows off electric E-type"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-bmw-jaguar-ev-20170907-story.html

# "People are still wary of self-driving cars, but reluctance drops after they try driver-assist features, study says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-self-drive-survey-20170908-story.html

# "China is banning traditional auto engines. Its aim: electric car domination"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-china-vehicles-20170911-story.html

# "Driverless cars on public highways? Go for it, Trump administration says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-driverless-regs-chao-20170912-story.html

# "Proterra claims world record, says its electric bus traveled more than 1,100 miles on a single charge"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-proterra-range-record-20170919-story.html

# "Most doubters of self-driving cars become believers after a drive"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-auto-tips-0921-self-driving-car-converts-20170918-story.html

# "Intel wiped out in mobile. Can this guy help it catch the AI wave?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-nervana-20170922-story.html

# "Ford and Lyft team up to put driverless cars on the road"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ford-lyft-20170927-story.html

# "You can now 'tap to charge' your electric car with a phone or watch"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chargepoint-tap-20170927-story.html

# "Tesla's Model 3 has a very bad September: Production falls far short"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-problems-20171002-story.html

# "General Motors, with an eye on China, promises at least 20 all-electric vehicles by 2023"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-general-motors-electric-20171002-story.html

# " A very bad September for Tesla's Model 3 as production falls far short "
http://www.latimes.com/ct-tesla-model-3-production-20171003-story.html

# "Judge slams Uber and Waymo lawyers: 'I cannot trust what they say'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-uber-continuance-hearing-20171003-story.html

# "Elon Musk says Tesla Model 3 remains 'deep in production hell'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-production-hell-20171006-story.html

# "Totally driverless cars could be allowed on California roads by June 2018"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-dmv-driverless-california-20171011-story.html

# "Hundreds of Tesla workers were let go for subpar performance, the company says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-jobs-layoffs-20171016-story.html

# "Tesla despidió a cientos de empleados por considerar que no eran lo suficientemente buenos para trabajar allí"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...ntemente-buenos-para-trab-20171017-story.html

# "Vernon battery maker's portable charger can quick-charge a smartphone 10 times"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-romeo-power-saber-20171019-story.html

# "Tesla's Model 3 'production hell' is testing Elon Musk's fix-as-you-go carmaking model"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-model3-manufacturing-20171020-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 is stuck in 'production hell'"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-tesla-model-3-production-hell-20171020-story.html

# "Tesla appears ready to make cars in China, but the terms of the relationship are unclear"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-shanghai-20171023-story.html

# "Delphi acquires self-driving start-up NuTonomy for $450 million"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-delphi-nutonomy-20171024-story.html

# "Auto sales were strong in October as buyers grabbed fully loaded pickups, SUVs"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-october-car-sales-20171101-story.html

# " Tesla says full-speed production of Model 3 won't come for months, as it reports a big loss "
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-tesla-model-3-production-20171102-story.html

# "Tesla says full-speed production of Model 3 won't come for months, as it reports a big loss"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-3q-earnings-20171101-story.html

# "China-owned electric car start-up buys old Humvee manufacturing plant in Indiana"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-sfmotors-hummer-20171102-story.html

# "Tesla stock takes a hit as GOP unveils tax plan that eliminates electric car subsidy"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-tax-subsidy-20171102-story.html

# "If you want your electric car to do the most good for the Earth, move to Albania"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ev-countries-20171106-story.html

# "ChargePoint joins the rush for EV charging stations in Europe"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chargepoint-europe-20171108-story.html

# "Tesla's entry into truck-making presents a whole new challenge for Elon Musk"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-truck-preview-20171114-story.html

# "Tesla unveils electric truck with 500-mile range — and teases a new sports car"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-truck-revealed-20171116-story.html

# "Tesla's Semi and Roadster impress, but 'production hell' raises doubts about follow-through"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tesla-stock-20171117-story.html

# "Volvo to supply Uber with up to 24,000 self-driving SUVs for taxi fleet"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-volvo-uber-20171120-story.html

# "'Alexa. Why can't you control everything in my car?'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-voice-command-20171127-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2017: Jeep Wrangler gets its first major upgrade in a decade"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-show-jeep-wrangler-20171129-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2017: BMW introduces the i8 Roadster, a hot new plug-in hybrid"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-show-bmw-i8-roadster-20171129-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2017: Don't drive, pretend you're Batman. Intel and Warner Bros. envision entertainment platform inside cars"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-intel-warner-20171129-story.html

# "Future of cars can be found in voice command systems"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-auto-cover-1214-voice-commands-car-tech-20171201-story.html

# "LA Auto Show 2017: Our top picks for the best of the best of the show"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-show-2017-editors-picks-20171202-story.html

# "LA Auto Show: While Detroit hits the gas pedal, Europeans embrace electrification"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-show-electric-cars-20171204-story.html

# "Lidar costs $75,000 per car. If the price doesn't drop to a few hundred bucks, driverless cars won't go mass market."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-ouster-lidar-20171211-htmlstory.html

# "Your workplace may get EV charging stations — thanks to VW's cheating scandal"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ev-charging-stations-20171218-story.html

# "Can the Tesla Semi perform? UPS, PepsiCo and other truck fleet owners want to find out"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-truck-orders-20171219-story.html

# "Tesla is tops in buyer satisfaction, Consumer Reports says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-customer-satisfaction-20171221-story.html

# "Electric cars edge forward in 2017 but still have a long way to go"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-electric-cars-20171228-story.html

# "Tesla tops Consumer Reports' satisfaction survey"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-auto-tips-0104-best-car-brands-20180102-story.html

# "Pickups, SUVs and crossovers rule: Auto sales stay strong in 2017, showing only a gentle dip"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-car-sales-20180103-story.html

# "Tesla again delays Model 3 production target but says it's making 'major progress'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-3-delayed-20180103-story.html

# "Chris Nicholson traveled a meandering path from Big Sky Country to CEO of AI start-up Skymind"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-himi-chris-nicholson-20180105-htmlstory.html

# "Fisker at CES: A $130,000 electric sedan and a radical new battery technology"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-fisker-ces-20180109-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 delivery delayed again"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-auto-tips-0111-model-3-delayed-again-20180109-story.html

# "Model 3 hits Tesla showroom in Century City. No test drives, though"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-century-city-showroom-20180112-story.html

# "Rare-car collectors should buy a Tesla Model S 'while they're still available,' Bob Lutz says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-tesla-20180119-story.html

# "Tesla unveils pay plan for Elon Musk: He could get nothing for 10 years"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-pay-20180123-story.html

# "Tesla crash highlights a problem: When cars are partly self-driving, humans don't feel responsible"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-20180125-story.html

# "Average auto prices rise 4% — an early sign of inflation"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autosales-january-20180201-story.html

# "Legal 'war' promised if Trump tries to clip California's right to set air standards"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-carb-mary-nichols-war-20180202-story.html

# "China wants to enter the U.S. car market, but a rough road lies ahead"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-china-auto-export-20180205-story.html

# "Theft, trade secrets, a strange request for a private room: Waymo vs. Uber trial is underway"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-uber-trial-20180205-story.html

# "Waymo-Uber trial: Kalanick testifies about his efforts to hire Waymo engineer"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-uber-trial-tuesday-20180206-story.html

# "Un email con la frase ‘la codicia es buena' desata polémica en el juicio de Waymo-Uber"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...n-el-juicio-de-waymo-uber-20180206-story.html

# "Kalanick tells court he 'wasn't aware' of Uber report that Levandowski had Google data on disks"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-uber-trial-3-story.html

# "Trade secret files could be stored anywhere, witnesses in Waymo-Uber trial say"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-uber-trial-4-story.html

# "Uber reaches settlement with Waymo in dispute over trade secrets"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-uber-waymo-settlement-20180209-story.html

# "Some early owners of Tesla's Model 3 are reporting quality problems. Do buyers care?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-quality-20180218-story.html

# "California loosens rules for driverless cars, clearing the way for robot taxis"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ia-driverless-regulations-20180228-story.html

# "Jaguar reveals its 'Tesla fighter': I-Pace electric crossover sales to begin this year in U.S."
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-jaguar-ipace-ev-20180301-story.html

# "Robot cars won't wait: Toyota creates new company to speed development"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...iverless-research-company-20180302-story.html

# "Humans slapped and shouted at robot cars in two of six DMV crash reports this year"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-human-attacks-robot-cars-20180305-story.html

# "Humanos reaccionan con violencia contra vehículos autónomos, reporta el DMV"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...-autonomos-reporta-el-dmv-20180306-story.html

# "Jaguar I-Pace EV base price in the U.S.: $69,500 — undercutting Tesla's Model X"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-jaguar-ipace-us-price-20180306-story.html

# "El Plan de Tesla en Santa Mónica: un restaurante autoservicio con estaciones de carga para coches eléctricos"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...-de-carga-para-coches-ele-20180314-story.html

# "Tesla's plan in Santa Monica: a drive-in restaurant with electric-car charging stations"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-restaurant-20180313-story.html

# "Lyft links with Magna to sell driverless systems to any auto manufacturer"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lyft-magna-driverless-20180314-story.html

# "Elon Musk's $55-billion Tesla pay plan: How much motivation does a man need?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-pay-plan-20180316-story.html

# "Porsche rolls out plans to pump fossil fuel profits into electric car creation"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-porsche-ev-investment-20180316-story.html

# "An Uber robot car kills a pedestrian in Arizona. Will it slow driverless tests?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-self-driving-20180319-story.html

# "Self-driving cars may ultimately be safer than human drivers. But after a pedestrian's death, will the public buy it?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-robot-car-safety-pr-20180321-story.html

# "Tesla shareholders approve pay plan for Elon Musk worth up to $55 billion over 10 years"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-pay-vote-results-20180321-story.html

# "Video del accidente mortal del Uber automanejado que atropelló a una mujer"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-hoy-el-vi...que-atropello-a-un-peaton-20180322-story.html

# "El video del accidente mortal del Uber automanejado muestra el momento en el que golpea a la peatón"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...el-que-golpea-a-la-peaton-20180322-story.html

# "Experts say video of Uber's self-driving car killing a pedestrian suggests its technology may have failed"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-uber-death-video-20180321-story.html

# "Waymo is buying up to 20,000 Jaguars and plans to rev up a driverless ride-hailing service"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-jaguar-20180327-story.html

# "As Uber death is investigated, its chief faces a crossroads on driverless tech"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-driverless-future-20180328-story.html

# "Yet another California electric vehicle is coming. But this start-up has manufacturing expertise"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-sfmotors-20180329-story.html

# "Musk's Tesla faces a cash crunch as it confronts a suddenly skeptical Wall Street"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-bonds-20180331-story.html

# "California comienza a aceptar solicitudes de permisos para automóviles sin conductor"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...automoviles-sin-conductor-20180408-story.html

# "California starts accepting applications for driverless car permits"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-dmv-driverless-safety-20180402-story.html

# "A Musk failure or a respectable near-miss? Tesla releases Model 3 production numbers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-3-20180403-story.html

# "Porsche's L.A. Experience Center is a theme park for grown-ups who love to drive"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-porsche-experience-20180412-htmlstory.html

# "Musk has second thoughts on aggressive automation for Tesla Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-3-20180417-story.html

# "California opens investigation into Tesla factory's safety conditions"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-factory-safety-20180418-story.html

# "Driverless cars are growing in number, but makers don't want to reveal how they sometimes fail"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-driverless-data-20180430-story.html

# "Los automóviles sin conductor están creciendo en número, pero los fabricantes no quieren dar a conocer el tipo de fallas que han tenido"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...s-no-quieren-dar-a-conoce-20180430-story.html

# "No fooling: Time for Elon Musk to explain why bankruptcy's not in the cards for Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-preview-20180430-story.html

# "Nikola, a Tesla competitor, scores big electric truck order from Anheuser-Busch"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-nikola-tesla-trucks-20180502-story.html

# "Tesla's stock tumbles a day after Elon Musk's testy earnings call, poor financial results"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-1q-earnings-report-20180502-story.html

# "9 more quotes from Elon Musk's abnormal Tesla conference call"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-tesla-quotes-20180503-story.html

# "Tesla's head designer on the Model 3: 'It’s based on the idea of minimalism, that less is more'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-design-chief-20180502-story.html

# "Nikola, a Tesla competitor, scores big electric truck order from Anheuser-Busch"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-nikola-anheuser-busch-electric-truck-20180504-story.html

# "Musk aims figurative flamethrower at short sellers, and tweets he'll 'burn' them soon"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-china-short-burn-20180504-story.html

# "Waymo self-driving car involved in Arizona crash — but wasn't at fault, police say"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-waymo-crash-20180504-story.html

# "Musk urges 'barnacle' purge of Tesla contractors at struggling factory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-barnacle-purge-20180507-story.html

# "Dissed Tesla analyst challenges Elon Musk to a public do-over"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-analyst-challenge-20180509-story.html

# "Proterra sells electric buses to Washington, D.C., public transit system"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-proterra-dc-20180510-story.html

# "Musk's medicine for ailing Tesla: a 'thorough reorganization'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-executive-exodus-20180514-story.html

# "What happened to the 'affordable' $35,000 Tesla Model 3?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-mass-market-20180521-story.html

# "Uber chose to disable emergency braking system before fatal Arizona robot car crash, safety officials say"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-uber-arizona-ntsb-20180524-story.html

# "New wagons from Volvo and Jaguar offer agile alternatives to the lumbering SUV"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-v90-xf-volve-jaguar-review-20180525-story.html

# "VW funds from diesel scandal will pay for zero-emission buses, trucks in California"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-carb-vw-bus-subsidy-20180525-story.html

# "Consumer Reports embraces Tesla's Model 3, recommending the car after Tesla fixes brake issue"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-consumer-reports-20180529-story.html

# "Will Tesla investors oust three directors and strip chairman job from Elon Musk? They'll vote Tuesday"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-board-vote-20180602-story.html

# "Tesla turns back effort to remove Elon Musk from chairman seat; directors win new terms"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-shareholder-vote-20180605-story.html

# "Elon Musk talks about love and money, and Tesla's shares jump"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-tesla-future-20180606-story.html

# "Tesla Model X on Autopilot sped up seconds before deadly crash in Silicon Valley, report says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-death-report-20180607-story.html

# "Musk claims sabotage with list of haters who want Tesla 'to die'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-tesla-rogue-employee-20180619-story.html

# "Musk acusa de sabotaje a un empleado y advierte que existe una lista de enemigos que quieren terminar con Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...migos-que-quieren-termina-20180621-story.html

# "How Tesla uses cash from Nevada casinos to boost its bottom line"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-nevada-casino-credits-20180624-story.html

# "Elon Musk is about to reveal how many Model 3s he's making. But that won't answer all the questions facing Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-production-20180629-story.html

# "As Tesla tax credits disappear, will Model 3 deposit-holders stick around?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-tax-credit-subsidy-20180703-story.html

# "Tesla drops reservation system, opens Model 3 orders to anybody"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-tesla-model-3-reservations-20180709-story.html

# "Tesla's China factory: Will it ever be built?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-china-20180710-story.html

# "Tesla deja el sistema de reservaciones y abre los pedidos del Model 3 a todo el mundo"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...l-model-3-a-todo-el-mundo-20180711-story.html

# "Cave diver criticizes Musk's kid-sub rescue plan. Musk suggests he's a pedophile"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-pedophile-twitter-fight-20180715-story.html

# "Is electric car start-up Faraday Future already running out of cash?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-factory-late-payment-20161024-snap-story.html

# "This 84-year-old car guy blasts Elon Musk and Tesla, five ways"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-musk-tesla-jobs-20161026-story.html

# "Surprise: Tesla turns a profit for the first time in three years"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-elon-musk-20161026-story.html

# "Elon Musk wants to sell people solar roofs that look great. Here's his much anticipated design"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-elon-musk-solar-20161028-story.html

# "Elon Musk wants to sell you a better-looking solar roof"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-agenda-solar-20161031-story.html

# "Hacker quits plan to sell a $999 self-driving car kit"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-commaai-hotz-self-driving-telsa-20161031-story.html

# "SolarCity to add $1 billion in revenue to Tesla after merger, firms say"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-solarcity-20161101-story.html

# "Tesla adds hard-core German engineering to its 'Alien Dreadnought'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ann-musk-alien-dreadnough-20161108-story.html

# "Electric cars are less than 1% of the market. Yet automakers are pushing them big time. Why?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-electric-car-future-auto-show-20161114-story.html

# "Electric cars are less than 1% of the market. Yet automakers are pushing them big time. Why?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-less-than-1-of-the-1479160044-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Ford EcoSport"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...a-auto-show-ford-ecosport-20161108-story.html

# "Los coches eléctricos son menos del 1% del mercado, pero las automotrices pujan fuerte por ellos"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/hoyl...es-pujan-fuerte-por-ellos-20161115-story.html

# "The Ford EcoSport is a high-tech playroom"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...port-is-a-high-tech-1479232677-htmlstory.html

# "'Here comes that punk. Alexa, lock my Elantra!'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-punk-alexa-lock-my-1479235792-htmlstory.html

# "With the ReachNow app, you can order up a ride in a BMW or Mini"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...achnow-app-bmw-mini-1479237530-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Mini Cooper SE Countryman All4 plug-in hybrid"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...auto-show-mini-countryman-20161115-story.html

# "The Mini Countryman — not so mini anymore"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...gger-mini-is-on-its-1479233730-htmlstory.html

# "Human drivers will bully robot cars, says CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...ll-bully-robot-cars-1479247249-htmlstory.html

# "The 1,000-horsepower, ultra-luxury electric car you’ve never heard of"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-la-auto-show-lucid-1479331782-htmlstory.html

# "Hyundai Ioniq: Buy, lease … or subscribe?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...-ioniq-buy-lease-or-1479336121-htmlstory.html

# "After Faraday fails to pay bills, its contractor stops work on the car company's $1-billion factory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-factory-tesla-20161116-story.html

# "Volvo experiments with app to deliver fuel, car washes, rides to the dealer"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...with-app-to-deliver-1479402410-htmlstory.html

# "Subaru's VIZIV-7 is big, and its sales are too"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...s-big-and-its-sales-1479403075-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Subaru VIZIV-7"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...la-auto-show-subaru-viziv-20161117-story.html

# "Among subcompact crossovers, Toyota's CH-R is a cheaper, edgier-looking option"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...uto-show-toyota-chr-1479405864-htmlstory.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2016: Toyota CH-R"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...y-la-auto-show-toyota-chr-20161117-story.html

# "What cars? New pavilion at the L.A. Auto Show showcases scooters, electric bikes and hoverboards"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-personal-mobility-go-pavilion-20161119-story.html

# "Our top picks from the L.A. Auto Show"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...a-auto-show-top-car-picks-20161119-story.html

# "Under Trump, fuel economy standards for cars and trucks may be scaled back"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-trump-electric-vehicles-20161121-story.html

# "Hurry up and bar Tesla from using the Autopilot name in marketing, consumer group tells DMV"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-complaint-tesla-musk-dmv-20161128-story.html

# "California-based electric car maker Lucid will build its 1,000-horsepower car in Arizona"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ctric-car-arizona-factory-20161129-story.html

# "EPA moves fast on mpg regs as inauguration draws near"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas-mileage-standards-20161130-story.html

# "Officials fear up to 40 dead in fire during concert at Oakland warehouse"
http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-oakland-warehouse-party-fire-20161203-story.html

# "Officials fear up to 40 dead in fire during concert at Oakland warehouse"
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-oakland-fire-nine-dead-warehouse-20161203-story.html

# "Why the driverless car industry is happy (so far) with Trump's pick for Transportation secretary"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chao-trump-driverless-20161205-story.html

# "Battery makers Tesla and Sonnen tout similar products but have different strategies"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sonnen-powerwall-20161207-story.html

# "Michigan law permits cars with no steering wheels"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-michigan-driverless-car-law-20161209-story.html

# "Feeling the squeeze of Uber and Lyft, Hertz looks to start-up Shift to sell its used cars "
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-hertz-shift-used-cars-20161213-story.html

# "The Bolt EV, Chevy's affordable and long-range electric car, arrives at dealerships"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chevy-bolt-ev-20161212-story.html

# "Por el crecimiento de Uber y Lyft, Hertz se une a la nueva Shift para vender sus autos usados"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/hoyl...ft-para-vender-sus-usados-20161214-story.html

# "Lucid takes the wraps off its electric luxe-mobile"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lucid-electric-car-20161214-story.html

# "Uber's self-driving cars put tech's 'move fast, break things' credo to the test"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-self-driving-sf-20161215-story.html

# "Uber pulls its self-driving cars off the streets of San Francisco"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-uber-dmv-submit-20161221-story.html

# "The time is right to buy a used car"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-used-cars-20161221-story.html

# "Auto sales expected to match last year's record, but may be plateauing"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-new-car-sales-20161231-story.html

# "Used-car price drop makes it a good time to buy"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-used-car-prices-autotips-0105-20170103-story.html

# "Tesla begins churning out battery cells at Nevada Gigafactory"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-tesla-gigafactory-battery-20170104-story.html

# "Troubled Faraday Future unveils a 'new species' of automobile. Is it already extinct?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-unveiling-20170103-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2018: More power, sleeker good looks for new-generation Mazda3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-show-mazda-20181127-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show 2018: Subaru joins the electric-car parade with the Crosstrek Hybrid"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-show-subaru-crosstrek-hybrid-20181128-story.html

# "Could Rivian founder become Elon Musk of electric pickups? Illinois-built trucks unveiled at LA auto show."
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-rivian-electric-pickup-trucks-20181128-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show: The Elon Musk of electric pickup trucks? Meet Rivian’s R.J. Scaringe"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-rivian-profile-20181128-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show: Quirky Kia Soul enters third generation"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-kia-soul-auto-show-20181127-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show: Vehicle infotainment systems are awful. That's why Volvo is handing the job to Google"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-auto-show-volvo-qa-20181129-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show: Porsche execs on Taycan and the electric future"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-auto-show-porsche-taycan-qa-20181130-story.html

# "Tesla becomes collateral damage in the China-U.S. trade war"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-china-20181204-story.html

# "Waymo One, the first commercial robotaxi service, is now picking up passengers in Arizona"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-waymo-one-20181205-story.html

# "Tesla's Elon Musk on '60 Minutes': 'I do not respect the SEC'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-tesla-elon-musk-60-minutes-20181209-story.html

# "Judge freezes Faraday Future CEO's ownership stake as the future of the electric car startup is in question"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-20181214-story.html

# "Penske starts running Freightliner electric trucks in California – hoping someday they'll make economic sense"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-daimler-penske-electric-truck-20181220-story.html

# "He links China and U.S. on robot cars and electric vehicles"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-himi-dunne-20181223-story.html

# "Twitter restrictions on Elon Musk are set to take hold. But is anyone at Tesla willing to reel him in?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-twitter-20181227-story.html

# "New Tesla director Larry Ellison is a friend of Elon Musk. Will he stand up to the mercurial CEO?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-board-20181228-story.html

# "Tesla’s latest sales report sinks its stock price and raises questions about growth"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-deliveries-20190102-story.html

# "The self-driving car industry just acknowledged it has an image problem"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-driverless-education-group-20190108-story.html

# "The robot car industry just acknowledged it has an image problem"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-y-driverless-education-group-20190108-story.html

# "Daimler trucks chief devotes $572 million to driverless technology"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-daimler-driverless-trucks-20190108-story.html

# "La industria de autos autónomos reconoce que tiene un problema de imagen"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...ene-un-problema-de-imagen-20190109-story.html

# "Hungry for cash, Musk says company can no longer afford free Supercharging for new buyers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-ends-tesla-referral-20190117-story.html

# "Tesla layoffs loom and its stock price plunges as Musk shifts focus from growth to survival"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-cuts-20190118-story.html

# "Visionary Elon Musk is forced to focus on the mundane to keep his Tesla dream alive"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-what-is-wrong-tesla-musk-20190122-story.html

# "Regulators have OKd a ‘follow you like a pet’ feature in Tesla cars, Elon Musk says"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-follow-you-feature-tesla-elon-musk-20190124-story.html

# "Regulators have OKd a ‘follow you like a pet’ feature in Tesla cars, Elon Musk says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-advanced-summon-20190123-story.html

# "Big questions await Tesla and Musk on Wednesday’s earnings call. Will stock analysts ask them?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-advance-20190129-story.html

# "Tesla's chief financial officer quits as Musk addresses demand questions for its Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-20190130-story.html

# "U.S. sales of the Tesla Model 3 plunge 74% in January, according to outside estimate"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sales-plung-20190201-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3s hit Europe, but their Autopilot feature is disabled"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-europe-20190207-story.html

# "An agency hid Tesla crash data for nearly two years. Is that any way to build trust in driverless cars?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-nhtsa-20190214-story.html

# "Amazon bets on electric truck maker Rivian"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-rivian-amazon-20190215-story.html

# "Una agencia ocultó los datos de un accidente de Tesla durante casi dos años. ¿Es esa una forma de generar confianza en los autos autónomos?"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...-es-esa-una-forma-de-gene-20190215-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 can no longer be recommended, says Consumer Reports"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-tesla-consumer-reports-20190221-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 can no longer be recommended, says Consumer Reports"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-cr-unreliable-20190221-story.html

# "Elon Musk should be held in contempt for unauthorized tweet about Tesla, SEC says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-elon-musk-sec-twitter-20190225-story.html

# "Elon Musk keeps slamming the SEC on Twitter. He has 2 weeks to respond in court"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-elon-musk-sec-20190226-story.html

# "Volvo's Polestar takes on Tesla Model 3 with an all-electric sedan"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-volvo-polestar-tesla-electric-car-20190227-story.html

# "Musk announces a $35,000 Model 3, closure of most retail stores, and a no-profit quarter"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-35000-model-3-20190228-story.html

# "Tesla website and Elon Musk differ on Model 3 delivery dates. Two weeks? Four months?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-model3-delivery-dates-20190302-story.html

# "Musk tweets he plans to unveil long-awaited Tesla Model Y crossover this month at L.A. event"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-musk-tesla-model-y-20190303-story.html

# "Presentarán el 'Tesla Model Y' crossover en Los Ángeles este mes"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...te-mes-en-un-evento-en-lo-20190304-story.html

# "Tesla’s Elon Musk, facing contempt charges, says semi-secret meeting was a mistake"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-mistake-20190305-story.html

# "Tesla website and Elon Musk differ on Model 3 delivery dates. Two weeks? Four months?"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-tes...tes-two-weeks-four-months-20190307-story.html

# "The Elon Musk circus is about to enter a new arena: federal court"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-contempt-penalties-20190308-story.html

# "Elon Musk unveils Tesla’s Model Y — and it looks a lot like the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-model-y-unveil-20190314-story.html

# "Tesla deliveries fall sharply in the first quarter, especially for its highest-margin cars"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-unit-sales-20190401-story.html

# "The crowd-sourced, social media swarm that is betting Tesla will crash and burn"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-the...tesla-will-crash-and-burn-20190409-story.html

# "A key Tesla supplier cuts growth plans, raising red flags over demand for the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-demand-model3-models-modelx-20190411-story.html

# "A key Tesla supplier cuts growth plans, raising red flags over demand for the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-key...er-demand-for-the-model-3-20190412-story.html

# "The crowd-sourced, social media swarm that is betting Tesla will crash and burn"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-short-sellers-musk-20190408-story.html

# "In a bind, Musk hopes autonomous Tesla taxis will drive a new, positive narrative"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-drive-model3-demand-cash-20190419-story.html

# "In a bind, Musk hopes autonomous Tesla taxis will drive a new, positive narrative"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-in-...-a-new-positive-narrative-20190419-story.html

# "Elon Musk claims a million Teslas will drive themselves in a year. Safety advocates have concerns"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...musk-autonomous-uber-lyft-20190422-story.html

# "Elon Musk claims a million Teslas will drive themselves in a year. Safety advocates have concerns"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-elo...y-advocates-have-concerns-20190423-story.html

# "Tesla returns to losing money as revenue, cash and other key numbers tumble"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-elon-musk-quarter-20190424-story.html

# "Ugly turns uglier as a Tesla filing shows results were goosed by a surge in credits"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-revenue-sec-filing-20190430-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 remains the most popular electric vehicle in the U.S. — by far"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-deliveries-sales-april-20190501-story.html

# "Years go by and a self-sustaining Tesla eludes Elon Musk"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-stock-offering-elon-musk-20190502-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 remains the most popular electric vehicle in the U.S. — by far"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-tes...tric-vehicle-in-us-by-far-20190503-story.html

# "Will Trump’s China trade war mess up Polestar’s U.S. challenge to Tesla?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-tesla-volvo-china-tariff-20190514-story.html

# "Volvo’s 2019 V60 wagon handles snowstorms like a champ"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-volvo-v60-review-20190517-story.html

# "Auto review: Volvo’s 2019 V60 wagon handles snowstorms like a champ"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-rev...s-snowstorms-like-a-champ-20190518-story.html

# "‘Dark clouds over Fremont’: Tesla enters survival mode as stock price drops"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-stock-finance-20190521-story.html

# "‘Dark clouds over Fremont’: Tesla enters survival mode as stock price drops"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-dar...mode-as-stock-price-drops-20190521-story.html

# "Could Tesla merge with SpaceX? A Morgan Stanley analyst raises the possibility"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-morgan-stanley-20190522-story.html

# "Could Tesla merge with SpaceX? A Morgan Stanley analyst raises the possibility"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-cou...st-raises-the-possibility-20190524-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 sales rise in May, but demand still hasn’t fully recovered"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sales-may-model3-story.html

# "At Tesla annual meeting, Elon Musk softens claims of a robotaxi fleet next year"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...nual-meeting-shareholders-20190611-story.html

# "In a throwback, Musk’s tweets target Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...delete-cofounder-eberhard-20190617-story.html

# "The public thinks Tesla’s Autopilot is safer than it is, an insurance group says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...t-safety-survey-insurance-20190620-story.html

# "Según las aseguradoras, la gente confía demasiado en el sistema de conducción automática de Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...ccion-automatica-de-tesla-20190620-story.html

# "The public thinks Tesla’s Autopilot is safer than it is, an insurance group says"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-the...s-an-insurance-group-says-20190621-story.html

(The list is hidden by default behind a spoiler tag, because the list is long. I'm providing this list to allow comparisons to how Russ Mitchell is covering other companies. Note that there's some duplication of articles as different sections of the LA Times published the same article: there's ~420 unique headlines and ~64 duplicates.)

Here's a filtered list of all stories by Russ Mitchell, where the headline contains one of the words of 'Tesla', 'Elon', 'Musk' or 'SpaceX':

Spoiler

# "Soaring SpaceX, Isaacson on Wikipedia, Asimov on creativity, and more"
http://www.latimes.com/business/tec...ov-on-creativity-and-more-20141025-story.html

# "Model X: Under the hood of Tesla's SUV strategy"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-x-20150929-story.html

# "Tesla's bid for SolarCity would bring two Elon Musk companies together"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-solarcity-20160621-snap-story.html

# "Elon Musk calls Tesla's bid for SolarCity a 'no-brainer,' but Tesla stock dives"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-solarcity-20160622-snap-story.html

# "Elon Musk's plan for Tesla to buy SolarCity raises fears of shaky financials and unclear motives"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-solarcity-20160623-snap-story.html

# "Controversy over Tesla 'autopilot' name keeps growing"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autopilot-controversy-20160721-snap-story.html

# "Tesla's stock falls after Elon Musk reveals his 'master plan'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-master-plan-20160714-snap-story.html

# "Elon Musk's master plan for Tesla is long on vision, short on specifics"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-tesla-master-plan-20160721-snap-story.html

# "Elon Musk is racing to get Tesla's Gigafactory battery plant completed early"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-gigafactory-tesla-21060726-snap-story.html

# "Elon Musk's Tesla Gigafactory idea was crazy, Panasonic exec thought. And yet ..."
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...nic-musk-gigafactory-20160727-snap-story.html

# "Tesla's Autopilot makes for a smooth highway cruise"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-review-20160728-snap-story.html

# "Tesla-SolarCity merger embodies Elon Musk's audacious plan for clean energy"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-solar-city-deal-20160801-snap-story.html

# "Can Tesla go from sexy car company to clean energy empire?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sells-solar-20160807-snap-story.html

# "Another Tesla Autopilot crash, this time in China"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-china-crash-20160810-snap-story.html

# "Even more Ludicrous: Elon Musk says Tesla now has the world's fastest production car"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-elon-musk-fastest-car-20160823-snap-story.html

# "Tesla Autopilot upgrade is imminent, Elon Musk says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-20160831-snap-story.html

# "After SpaceX rocket crisis, Elon Musk also faces Tesla safety and cash-flow issues"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-autopilot-cash-flow-20160901-snap-story.html

# "Elon Musk's bad day: Rocket explosion, stocks drop, Autopilot announcement postponed"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...bad-day-stocks-drop-1472767342-htmlstory.html

# "Is Elon Musk trying to do too much too fast?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-tesla-musk-20160902-snap-story.html

# "After explosion, SpaceX satellite customer says it's due $50 million or a free ride"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ite-explosion-refund-20160905-snap-story.html

# "Tesla says jealousy, not Autopilot safety concerns, caused breakup with Mobileye"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-mobileye-tesla-20160915-snap-story.html

# "Tesla Watch: Merger with SolarCity is challenged; Autopilot upgrade is panned"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-watch-20160919-snap-story.html

# "Tesla to release Autopilot update under shadow of security hack"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-china-hack-20160921-snap-story.html

# "When robots and humans take turns at the wheel"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ercedes-volvo-google-20160922-snap-story.html

# "Tesla deliveries up 70%; stock price soars too"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...y-production-3q-musk-20161002-snap-story.html

# "Shareholders to vote on Tesla-SolarCity merger next month"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...tesla-solarcity-musk-20161012-snap-story.html

# "Germany tells Tesla to stop using 'Autopilot' in its sales pitch"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-tesla-germany-autopilot-20161017-snap-story.html

# "Tesla warns new customers of a 2-year wait for the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...very-date-web-update-20161018-snap-story.html

# "New Teslas will have all the hardware to be driverless cars, Elon Musk says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-new-announcement-musk-20161019-snap-story.html

# "Look, no hands: A Tesla drives through Silicon Valley and finds a parking spot on its own"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-car-parks-itself-20161020-snap-story.html

# "Elon Musk challenges regulators to catch up to Tesla's driverless car technology"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-driverless-cars-20161020-snap-story.html

# "This 84-year-old car guy blasts Elon Musk and Tesla, five ways"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-musk-tesla-jobs-20161026-story.html

# "Surprise: Tesla turns a profit for the first time in three years"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-elon-musk-20161026-story.html

# "Elon Musk wants to sell people solar roofs that look great. Here's his much anticipated design"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-elon-musk-solar-20161028-story.html

# "Elon Musk wants to sell you a better-looking solar roof"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-agenda-solar-20161031-story.html

# "SolarCity to add $1 billion in revenue to Tesla after merger, firms say"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-solarcity-20161101-story.html

# "Tesla adds hard-core German engineering to its 'Alien Dreadnought'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ann-musk-alien-dreadnough-20161108-story.html

# "After Faraday fails to pay bills, its contractor stops work on the car company's $1-billion factory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-factory-tesla-20161116-story.html

# "Hurry up and bar Tesla from using the Autopilot name in marketing, consumer group tells DMV"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-complaint-tesla-musk-dmv-20161128-story.html

# "Battery makers Tesla and Sonnen tout similar products but have different strategies"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sonnen-powerwall-20161207-story.html

# "Tesla begins churning out battery cells at Nevada Gigafactory"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-tesla-gigafactory-battery-20170104-story.html

# "U.S. ends investigation of fatal Tesla crash and finds 'no safety defects' in car's Autopilot"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-20170119-story.html

# "Tesla can't supply all the world's batteries. Here comes Romeo Power."
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-romeo-battery-20170125-story.html

# "Tension high as Tesla prepares to begin production of the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-production-20170209-story.html

# "Elon Musk has a lot riding on Tesla's Model 3 — what will a unionization effort in California mean?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-uaw-20170214-story.html

# "Tesla earnings preview: Analysts want details on Model 3 and Gigafactory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-advance-20170216-story.html

# "Tesla reports fourth-quarter and full-year results, says Model 3 on track"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-4q-2016-story.html

# "SpaceX plans to send two private astronauts to circle the moon — on their own dime"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-announcement-20170227-story.html

# "Tesla to drop cheapest Model S, the 60 and 60D, from lineup"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-60-discontinued-20170320-story.html

# "Elon Musk tweets Model 3 teaser and clears up misconceptions about Tesla's latest electric car"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-video-20170324-story.html

# "Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chips might someday fight the robot uprising"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-hy-musk-neuralink-20170328-story.html

# "Bob Lutz, the auto industry's 85-year-old bad boy, goes off on Elon Musk and President Trump"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-qa-20170330-story.html

# "Next step toward driverless cars: Tesla updates Autopilot"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-updates-autopilot-20170330-story.html

# "Tesla stock value overtakes Ford as Elon Musk disses short sellers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-1q-production-20170403-story.html

# "Tesla and Uber lag in driverless progress, study says; Ford is tops"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-driverless-rankings-20170404-story.html

# "Tesla stock is on a tear. Now the pressure is on for Elon Musk to deliver the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tesla-surpass-gm-20170410-story.html

# "Tesla recalls some Model S and Model X cars for parking brake problem"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-brake-recall-20170420-story.html

# "7 reasons short sellers are betting against Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-app-tesla-short-sellers-20170424-story.html

# "Tesla plans to nearly double its car-charging network"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-charging-network-20170424-story.html

# "Tesla's loss grows as Elon Musk claims customers are confused by Model 3 name"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fy-hy-tesla-1q-earnings-20170503-story.html

# "Tesla had worse safety records than slaughterhouses and sawmills, but says it's improving"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-workplace-safety-20170524-story.html

# "Can an automobile interior evoke the spirit of California? Ask Lucid, a Tesla competitor"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-lucid-qa-20170525-htmlstory.html

# "Tesla's Elon Musk says he'll quit White House role if Trump dumps Paris accord"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-trump-20170531-story.html

# "Tesla's Elon Musk and Disney's Robert Iger quit Trump advisory councils, citing climate change"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-elon-musk-climate-change-20170601-story.html

# "Two things about the Tesla Model 3 that Elon Musk wants you to know"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-shareholder-meeting-20170606-story.html

# "More factory problems as Elon Musk's Tesla starts producing the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-announcement-20170703-story.html

# "Bad week for Elon Musk's Tesla. Good week for short sellers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-hy-tesla-stock-crash-test-20170706-story.html

# "Desperate for cash, Tesla competitor Faraday Future scales back plans yet again"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-20170710-story.html

# "At $1.34 billion, Tesla's Elon Musk was last year's best paid auto executive"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-elon-musk-tesla-pay-20170710-story.html

# "Tesla adds two 'outside' board directors from the media world"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-murdoch-20170718-story.html

# "Elon Musk takes the stage tonight to deliver the first Tesla Model 3s"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-on-sale-20170728-story.html

# "Elon Musk hands over first 30 Tesla Model 3s, but warns of 'manufacturing hell' ahead"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-handover-event-20170728-story.html

# "5 unusual features in the Tesla Model 3, including an instrument-free dash"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-notable-things-20170731-story.html

# "As Tesla ramps up to produce its Model 3, losses mount"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-2q-earnings-20170802-story.html

# "Faraday Future plans to refurbish an old tire factory to take on Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-factory-20170806-story.html

# "A new all-electric delivery truck is on the way, and it's not from Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-chanje-electric-truck-20170810-story.html

# "Tesla's Model 3 has a very bad September: Production falls far short"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-problems-20171002-story.html

# " A very bad September for Tesla's Model 3 as production falls far short "
http://www.latimes.com/ct-tesla-model-3-production-20171003-story.html

# "Elon Musk says Tesla Model 3 remains 'deep in production hell'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-production-hell-20171006-story.html

# "Hundreds of Tesla workers were let go for subpar performance, the company says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-jobs-layoffs-20171016-story.html

# "Tesla despidió a cientos de empleados por considerar que no eran lo suficientemente buenos para trabajar allí"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...ntemente-buenos-para-trab-20171017-story.html

# "Tesla's Model 3 'production hell' is testing Elon Musk's fix-as-you-go carmaking model"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-model3-manufacturing-20171020-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 is stuck in 'production hell'"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-tesla-model-3-production-hell-20171020-story.html

# "Tesla appears ready to make cars in China, but the terms of the relationship are unclear"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-shanghai-20171023-story.html

# " Tesla says full-speed production of Model 3 won't come for months, as it reports a big loss "
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-tesla-model-3-production-20171102-story.html

# "Tesla says full-speed production of Model 3 won't come for months, as it reports a big loss"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-3q-earnings-20171101-story.html

# "Tesla stock takes a hit as GOP unveils tax plan that eliminates electric car subsidy"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-tax-subsidy-20171102-story.html

# "Tesla's entry into truck-making presents a whole new challenge for Elon Musk"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-truck-preview-20171114-story.html

# "Tesla unveils electric truck with 500-mile range — and teases a new sports car"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-truck-revealed-20171116-story.html

# "Tesla's Semi and Roadster impress, but 'production hell' raises doubts about follow-through"
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tesla-stock-20171117-story.html

# "Can the Tesla Semi perform? UPS, PepsiCo and other truck fleet owners want to find out"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-truck-orders-20171219-story.html

# "Tesla is tops in buyer satisfaction, Consumer Reports says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-customer-satisfaction-20171221-story.html

# "Tesla tops Consumer Reports' satisfaction survey"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-auto-tips-0104-best-car-brands-20180102-story.html

# "Tesla again delays Model 3 production target but says it's making 'major progress'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-3-delayed-20180103-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 delivery delayed again"
http://www.latimes.com/sc-auto-tips-0111-model-3-delayed-again-20180109-story.html

# "Model 3 hits Tesla showroom in Century City. No test drives, though"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-model3-century-city-showroom-20180112-story.html

# "Rare-car collectors should buy a Tesla Model S 'while they're still available,' Bob Lutz says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-tesla-20180119-story.html

# "Tesla unveils pay plan for Elon Musk: He could get nothing for 10 years"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-pay-20180123-story.html

# "Tesla crash highlights a problem: When cars are partly self-driving, humans don't feel responsible"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-20180125-story.html

# "Some early owners of Tesla's Model 3 are reporting quality problems. Do buyers care?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-quality-20180218-story.html

# "Jaguar reveals its 'Tesla fighter': I-Pace electric crossover sales to begin this year in U.S."
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-jaguar-ipace-ev-20180301-story.html

# "Jaguar I-Pace EV base price in the U.S.: $69,500 — undercutting Tesla's Model X"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-jaguar-ipace-us-price-20180306-story.html

# "El Plan de Tesla en Santa Mónica: un restaurante autoservicio con estaciones de carga para coches eléctricos"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...-de-carga-para-coches-ele-20180314-story.html

# "Tesla's plan in Santa Monica: a drive-in restaurant with electric-car charging stations"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-restaurant-20180313-story.html

# "Elon Musk's $55-billion Tesla pay plan: How much motivation does a man need?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-pay-plan-20180316-story.html

# "Tesla shareholders approve pay plan for Elon Musk worth up to $55 billion over 10 years"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-pay-vote-results-20180321-story.html

# "Musk's Tesla faces a cash crunch as it confronts a suddenly skeptical Wall Street"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-bonds-20180331-story.html

# "A Musk failure or a respectable near-miss? Tesla releases Model 3 production numbers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-3-20180403-story.html

# "Musk has second thoughts on aggressive automation for Tesla Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-3-20180417-story.html

# "California opens investigation into Tesla factory's safety conditions"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-factory-safety-20180418-story.html

# "No fooling: Time for Elon Musk to explain why bankruptcy's not in the cards for Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-preview-20180430-story.html

# "Nikola, a Tesla competitor, scores big electric truck order from Anheuser-Busch"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-nikola-tesla-trucks-20180502-story.html

# "Tesla's stock tumbles a day after Elon Musk's testy earnings call, poor financial results"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-1q-earnings-report-20180502-story.html

# "9 more quotes from Elon Musk's abnormal Tesla conference call"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-tesla-quotes-20180503-story.html

# "Tesla's head designer on the Model 3: 'It’s based on the idea of minimalism, that less is more'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-design-chief-20180502-story.html

# "Nikola, a Tesla competitor, scores big electric truck order from Anheuser-Busch"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-nikola-anheuser-busch-electric-truck-20180504-story.html

# "Musk aims figurative flamethrower at short sellers, and tweets he'll 'burn' them soon"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-china-short-burn-20180504-story.html

# "Musk urges 'barnacle' purge of Tesla contractors at struggling factory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-barnacle-purge-20180507-story.html

# "Dissed Tesla analyst challenges Elon Musk to a public do-over"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-analyst-challenge-20180509-story.html

# "Musk's medicine for ailing Tesla: a 'thorough reorganization'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-executive-exodus-20180514-story.html

# "What happened to the 'affordable' $35,000 Tesla Model 3?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-mass-market-20180521-story.html

# "Consumer Reports embraces Tesla's Model 3, recommending the car after Tesla fixes brake issue"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-consumer-reports-20180529-story.html

# "Will Tesla investors oust three directors and strip chairman job from Elon Musk? They'll vote Tuesday"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-board-vote-20180602-story.html

# "Tesla turns back effort to remove Elon Musk from chairman seat; directors win new terms"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-shareholder-vote-20180605-story.html

# "Elon Musk talks about love and money, and Tesla's shares jump"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-tesla-future-20180606-story.html

# "Tesla Model X on Autopilot sped up seconds before deadly crash in Silicon Valley, report says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-death-report-20180607-story.html

# "Musk claims sabotage with list of haters who want Tesla 'to die'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-tesla-rogue-employee-20180619-story.html

# "Musk acusa de sabotaje a un empleado y advierte que existe una lista de enemigos que quieren terminar con Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...migos-que-quieren-termina-20180621-story.html

# "How Tesla uses cash from Nevada casinos to boost its bottom line"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-nevada-casino-credits-20180624-story.html

# "Elon Musk is about to reveal how many Model 3s he's making. But that won't answer all the questions facing Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-production-20180629-story.html

# "As Tesla tax credits disappear, will Model 3 deposit-holders stick around?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-tax-credit-subsidy-20180703-story.html

# "Tesla drops reservation system, opens Model 3 orders to anybody"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-tesla-model-3-reservations-20180709-story.html

# "Tesla's China factory: Will it ever be built?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-china-20180710-story.html

# "Tesla deja el sistema de reservaciones y abre los pedidos del Model 3 a todo el mundo"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...l-model-3-a-todo-el-mundo-20180711-story.html

# "Cave diver criticizes Musk's kid-sub rescue plan. Musk suggests he's a pedophile"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-pedophile-twitter-fight-20180715-story.html

# "This 84-year-old car guy blasts Elon Musk and Tesla, five ways"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-musk-tesla-jobs-20161026-story.html

# "Surprise: Tesla turns a profit for the first time in three years"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-elon-musk-20161026-story.html

# "Elon Musk wants to sell people solar roofs that look great. Here's his much anticipated design"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-elon-musk-solar-20161028-story.html

# "Elon Musk wants to sell you a better-looking solar roof"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-agenda-solar-20161031-story.html

# "SolarCity to add $1 billion in revenue to Tesla after merger, firms say"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-solarcity-20161101-story.html

# "Tesla adds hard-core German engineering to its 'Alien Dreadnought'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...ann-musk-alien-dreadnough-20161108-story.html

# "After Faraday fails to pay bills, its contractor stops work on the car company's $1-billion factory"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-faraday-future-factory-tesla-20161116-story.html

# "Hurry up and bar Tesla from using the Autopilot name in marketing, consumer group tells DMV"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-complaint-tesla-musk-dmv-20161128-story.html

# "Battery makers Tesla and Sonnen tout similar products but have different strategies"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sonnen-powerwall-20161207-story.html

# "Tesla begins churning out battery cells at Nevada Gigafactory"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-tesla-gigafactory-battery-20170104-story.html

# "Could Rivian founder become Elon Musk of electric pickups? Illinois-built trucks unveiled at LA auto show."
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-rivian-electric-pickup-trucks-20181128-story.html

# "L.A. Auto Show: The Elon Musk of electric pickup trucks? Meet Rivian’s R.J. Scaringe"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-rivian-profile-20181128-story.html

# "Tesla becomes collateral damage in the China-U.S. trade war"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-china-20181204-story.html

# "Tesla's Elon Musk on '60 Minutes': 'I do not respect the SEC'"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-tesla-elon-musk-60-minutes-20181209-story.html

# "Twitter restrictions on Elon Musk are set to take hold. But is anyone at Tesla willing to reel him in?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-twitter-20181227-story.html

# "New Tesla director Larry Ellison is a friend of Elon Musk. Will he stand up to the mercurial CEO?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-board-20181228-story.html

# "Tesla’s latest sales report sinks its stock price and raises questions about growth"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-deliveries-20190102-story.html

# "Hungry for cash, Musk says company can no longer afford free Supercharging for new buyers"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-ends-tesla-referral-20190117-story.html

# "Tesla layoffs loom and its stock price plunges as Musk shifts focus from growth to survival"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-cuts-20190118-story.html

# "Visionary Elon Musk is forced to focus on the mundane to keep his Tesla dream alive"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-what-is-wrong-tesla-musk-20190122-story.html

# "Regulators have OKd a ‘follow you like a pet’ feature in Tesla cars, Elon Musk says"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-follow-you-feature-tesla-elon-musk-20190124-story.html

# "Regulators have OKd a ‘follow you like a pet’ feature in Tesla cars, Elon Musk says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-advanced-summon-20190123-story.html

# "Big questions await Tesla and Musk on Wednesday’s earnings call. Will stock analysts ask them?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-advance-20190129-story.html

# "Tesla's chief financial officer quits as Musk addresses demand questions for its Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-20190130-story.html

# "U.S. sales of the Tesla Model 3 plunge 74% in January, according to outside estimate"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sales-plung-20190201-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3s hit Europe, but their Autopilot feature is disabled"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-autopilot-europe-20190207-story.html

# "An agency hid Tesla crash data for nearly two years. Is that any way to build trust in driverless cars?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-nhtsa-20190214-story.html

# "Una agencia ocultó los datos de un accidente de Tesla durante casi dos años. ¿Es esa una forma de generar confianza en los autos autónomos?"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/eeuu...-es-esa-una-forma-de-gene-20190215-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 can no longer be recommended, says Consumer Reports"
http://www.latimes.com/ct-biz-tesla-consumer-reports-20190221-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 can no longer be recommended, says Consumer Reports"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model3-cr-unreliable-20190221-story.html

# "Elon Musk should be held in contempt for unauthorized tweet about Tesla, SEC says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-elon-musk-sec-twitter-20190225-story.html

# "Elon Musk keeps slamming the SEC on Twitter. He has 2 weeks to respond in court"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-elon-musk-sec-20190226-story.html

# "Volvo's Polestar takes on Tesla Model 3 with an all-electric sedan"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-volvo-polestar-tesla-electric-car-20190227-story.html

# "Musk announces a $35,000 Model 3, closure of most retail stores, and a no-profit quarter"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-35000-model-3-20190228-story.html

# "Tesla website and Elon Musk differ on Model 3 delivery dates. Two weeks? Four months?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-model3-delivery-dates-20190302-story.html

# "Musk tweets he plans to unveil long-awaited Tesla Model Y crossover this month at L.A. event"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-musk-tesla-model-y-20190303-story.html

# "Presentarán el 'Tesla Model Y' crossover en Los Ángeles este mes"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...te-mes-en-un-evento-en-lo-20190304-story.html

# "Tesla’s Elon Musk, facing contempt charges, says semi-secret meeting was a mistake"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-mistake-20190305-story.html

# "Tesla website and Elon Musk differ on Model 3 delivery dates. Two weeks? Four months?"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-tes...tes-two-weeks-four-months-20190307-story.html

# "The Elon Musk circus is about to enter a new arena: federal court"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-contempt-penalties-20190308-story.html

# "Elon Musk unveils Tesla’s Model Y — and it looks a lot like the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-model-y-unveil-20190314-story.html

# "Tesla deliveries fall sharply in the first quarter, especially for its highest-margin cars"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tesla-unit-sales-20190401-story.html

# "The crowd-sourced, social media swarm that is betting Tesla will crash and burn"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-the...tesla-will-crash-and-burn-20190409-story.html

# "A key Tesla supplier cuts growth plans, raising red flags over demand for the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-demand-model3-models-modelx-20190411-story.html

# "A key Tesla supplier cuts growth plans, raising red flags over demand for the Model 3"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-key...er-demand-for-the-model-3-20190412-story.html

# "The crowd-sourced, social media swarm that is betting Tesla will crash and burn"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-short-sellers-musk-20190408-story.html

# "In a bind, Musk hopes autonomous Tesla taxis will drive a new, positive narrative"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-drive-model3-demand-cash-20190419-story.html

# "In a bind, Musk hopes autonomous Tesla taxis will drive a new, positive narrative"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-in-...-a-new-positive-narrative-20190419-story.html

# "Elon Musk claims a million Teslas will drive themselves in a year. Safety advocates have concerns"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...musk-autonomous-uber-lyft-20190422-story.html

# "Elon Musk claims a million Teslas will drive themselves in a year. Safety advocates have concerns"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-elo...y-advocates-have-concerns-20190423-story.html

# "Tesla returns to losing money as revenue, cash and other key numbers tumble"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-earnings-elon-musk-quarter-20190424-story.html

# "Ugly turns uglier as a Tesla filing shows results were goosed by a surge in credits"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-revenue-sec-filing-20190430-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 remains the most popular electric vehicle in the U.S. — by far"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-deliveries-sales-april-20190501-story.html

# "Years go by and a self-sustaining Tesla eludes Elon Musk"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-tesla-stock-offering-elon-musk-20190502-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 remains the most popular electric vehicle in the U.S. — by far"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-tes...tric-vehicle-in-us-by-far-20190503-story.html

# "Will Trump’s China trade war mess up Polestar’s U.S. challenge to Tesla?"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...-tesla-volvo-china-tariff-20190514-story.html

# "‘Dark clouds over Fremont’: Tesla enters survival mode as stock price drops"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-stock-finance-20190521-story.html

# "‘Dark clouds over Fremont’: Tesla enters survival mode as stock price drops"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-dar...mode-as-stock-price-drops-20190521-story.html

# "Could Tesla merge with SpaceX? A Morgan Stanley analyst raises the possibility"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-musk-morgan-stanley-20190522-story.html

# "Could Tesla merge with SpaceX? A Morgan Stanley analyst raises the possibility"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-cou...st-raises-the-possibility-20190524-story.html

# "Tesla Model 3 sales rise in May, but demand still hasn’t fully recovered"
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sales-may-model3-story.html

# "At Tesla annual meeting, Elon Musk softens claims of a robotaxi fleet next year"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...nual-meeting-shareholders-20190611-story.html

# "In a throwback, Musk’s tweets target Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...delete-cofounder-eberhard-20190617-story.html

# "The public thinks Tesla’s Autopilot is safer than it is, an insurance group says"
http://www.latimes.com/business/aut...t-safety-survey-insurance-20190620-story.html

# "Según las aseguradoras, la gente confía demasiado en el sistema de conducción automática de Tesla"
http://www.latimes.com/espanol/vida...ccion-automatica-de-tesla-20190620-story.html

# "The public thinks Tesla’s Autopilot is safer than it is, an insurance group says"
http://www.latimes.com/sns-auto-the...s-an-insurance-group-says-20190621-story.html

(I really hope I'm not breaking TMC's comment system with so many links!)

Edit: fixed the chronological order and typos.

Observations:

• Russ Mitchell is covering Tesla obsessively, 201 out of the 384 stories are related to one of the companies of Elon Musk.
• Early coverage of Tesla was neural, fair, sometimes click-baity, but not excessively negative, and certainly well within normal journalistic boundaries, even if I disagree with some of his articles.
• End of 2016 Russ Mitchell published his first interview with Bob Lutz:
  • http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-lutz-musk-tesla-jobs-20161026-story.html
  • In this article Bob Lutz outlines the main Tesla short seller thesis, that Tesla is "structurally unprofitable", because opex appears to scale with cash from operations. (This thesis was forcefully falsified with the Q3'18 and Q4'18 results where opex was mostly constant while revenue and cash from operations soared.)
• In April of 2017 the tone of Russ Mitchell's Tesla articles changed dramatically with the publishing of the following article of a summary of the TSLAQ short thesis:
  • http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-hy-app-tesla-short-sellers-20170424-story.html
  • All the TSLAQ elements are there: competition, overvalued, uncertain future, etc.
• The next 2+ years is a barrage of almost exclusively negative articles about Tesla by Russ Mitchell: well over 90% of the headlines are negative.
• Note that shortly before he posted his short seller thesis on April 24, he wrote an article about a random Model S/X recall on April 20:
  • http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-brake-recall-20170420-story.html
  • Despite him covering automotive topics at the LA Times, out of 384 articles there's just a single report by Russ Mitchell that identifies a recall by an affected American carmaker by brand: Tesla ...

My hypothesis: after interviewing Bob Lutz in late 2016, Russ Mitchell developed his short thesis and went short Tesla. The article in April was his own summary of his short thesis, and he was basically stress testing it by writing an article about it, and he was also giving short sellers publicity. He was bashing the stock from April 2017 on when TSLA had its big run-up to the $389 all-time high. He never stopped bashing Tesla after that point. If true then he is using the LA Times as a stock bashing platform to enrich himself.

If true then this would also explain:

• Russ Mitchell's cozy relationship with TSLAQ ringleaders such as Mark B. Spiegel,
• Russ Mitchell's willingness to misinterpret Elon Musk's words on the Autonomy Investor Day, in this email exchange with TMC member @SO16.
• Russ Mitchell's gushing article about Tesla short sellers, trying to frame them as some sort of grassroots social movement ...

Also note that he never posted any disclaimers in his articles that I could find, he never declared whether he has any position in the companies he is reporting about. AFAICS the LA Times does not ban reporters from having a financial interest in the companies they are covering, and has no rules requiring disclosure to readers.

So my suggestion to anyone talking to Russ Mitchell: ask him whether he or any family member held a short position in Tesla in the past 2 years that he knows of. If he wasn't then it would be simple enough for him to deny the conflict of interest.

I have no idea whether my theory is true or not, but it might make sense for any Tesla investors who find any of Russ Mitchell's articles about Tesla deceptive and agree with this analysis to file an investor complaint with the SEC, as stock bashing while holding a short position is generally illegal and the SEC has wide investigative powers to uncover the truth. Even if the current SEC is rarely prosecuting such cases, filing an investor complaint creates a track record and documentary trail that future SEC administrations might pick up on.

Mod: Original post/thread: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/posts/3785403/ --ggr

 

[Fact Checking]

I think the pundits talk about profit is way over rated,

It is: GAAP expenses are artificially elevated in growth companies.

The best way to visualize it is through the "Amazon story":

Amazon's annual "Net Income" GAAP profits were well below 1 billion dollars in most years during the first 20 years, and then Amazon became a trillion dollar company.

The cumulative GAAP income during the first 20 years was less than 10 billion dollars - yet how did did Amazon become a 1,000 billion dollars company, 100 times the value of the GAAP profits generated?

What mattered to growth and what was key to reach 1 trillion dollars valuation was not GAAP income but cash generated by operations.

There's several reasons why GAAP expenses are artificially elevated for Tesla (and other growth companies), which means that GAAP profits are artificially lower:

• Stock-based compensation: this is mostly new TSLA shares issued to employees for stock options, ESPP plans, awards and incentives, etc. - in 2018 this was an over -$800m GAAP expense. Since growth of the company is much higher this is not a problem to shareholders.
  
• Depreciation and amortization: Tesla's mostly new equipment gets amortized and depreciated not because it's in danger of being obsolete, but because this is how capex gets recognized in the GAAP space. In 2018 alone this was a -$1.9b GAAP expense (!) - while the real "maintenance capex" that is required to maintain the lifetime of equipment indefinitely is likely around ~$450m. I.e. the GAAP D&A expense is a factor 4 higher than it would be if Tesla wasn't growing so rapidly and there was an extra -$1,450m D&A expense in 2018.
  
• Interest expense: while this is a real cash expense, Tesla's debt financed growth model is an artifact of fast expansion as well. In 2018 alone interest payments were around -$675m.
• R&D investments: this too is a real cash expense, it's not a running cost of the business, but an expense invested into future growth products: Autopilot, AI, FSD chip, Tesla Semi, etc. In 2018 alone R&D expenses were -$1,460m.
  
• Higher than optimal cost of goods and SG&A expenses: a rapidly growing company is not executing as optimally as a company that is in steady-state. It's hard to estimate how much of a factor this is, but with a YoY growth rate in the dozens of percentage point, it could easily be as high as 10-20% of CoGs+SG&A. (!) I'm not putting a specific figure to this effect though.

In 2018 GAAP income of Tesla was -$976m, and that was the year that carried most of the costs of the delayed Model 3 expansion. But even in 2018 if we sum up the factors above, there were -$4,385m of GAAP expenses due to Tesla's (self selected) hyper-growth model.

Tesla's underlying business model was wildly profitable, even in 2018, despite the delayed Model 3 ramp-up, and the reported "GAAP loss" was mostly an artifact of very rapid growth.

This is why anti-Tesla pundits try to cast doubt on the growth story, on demand, and try to exaggerate the importance of GAAP profits.

Mod: Original article here. --ggr

 

[Thekiwi]

I was looking at questions asked on say.com.
Sad to see again a few trick questions that were designed to spin negative headlines.

But one question seems to be missing:

• Have TSLA considered to dual list or even move to LTSE or somewhere similar to fight the short incentivized smear campaign?

Seems people are starting to forget such an option exists, I feel even if Tesla only say they’re looking at the options would be enough to move the needle a little bit.

Btw: There is a recode/decode podcast featuring the LTSE founder recently. I actually didn’t know this guy is the author of “lean startup”, sounds like a legit guy to me, at least he knows a thing or two about growth companies.

I don’t think it’s really worth the effort now. Tesla only has 4 or 5 more quarters to get through before the Y is in volume production, after which point quarterly unit volume and ASP will be generating consistent and large GAAP profits. After that the European GF, pickup, Semi & solar roof will ensure steady growth for another half decade (at which point Tesla has crossed the million vehicles shipped annually mark and can consider more vehicle variants).

My point being Is that within short order all but the stupidest Short traders and most gullible journalists will have realised Tesla is sitting in a very healthy financial position, and the sea of FUD will dry up fast to essentially nothing. Instead the debate will become about exactly how big the profits will be.

I’ve only been investing in stocks for about 20 years, but over that time I’ve seen the same pattern of extreme FUD and eventual dissipation hit several successful high growth companies in a similar fashion as to what Tesla is experiencing. Amazon, Apple & Facebook all essentially went through similar fazes: lots of bearish doom predictions based on similar FUD:

- “the company is structurally unprofitable”
- “the competition is coming and will eventually kill it”
- “the customers are all idiots caught up in marketing hype”
- “The CEO/founder is a fraud”

Eventually of course all the FUD is revealed as stupidity, and the companies mature into massively profitable enterprises. (the FUD for Tesla is slightly louder as social media is more prominent today, and Musk is way more famous)

Have patience, all will be resolved, and sooner rather than later. There are other, better short opportunities of highly likely ACTUAL structurally unprofitable companies that have been listed over the last year or two that will no doubt soon become the new targets of shorts. (I’m not a short seller, but if I was I imagine I would be all over a certain ride haIling company and a certain music streaming company.)

Mod: Original post here. --ggr

 

[Artful Dodger]

I haven't seen much discussion on when people are expecting Pickup to hit production, and exactly what year Elon's 2TWh battery manufacturing target will correspond to. Any thoughts?

Okay I'll give it a shot...

The normal rollout interval has been 2-3 yrs from 'Reveal' to Mass Production, so perhaps 2021-22 for Tesla Pickup in quantity? It'll certainly depend on bty cell capacity and its likely lower priority than Semi.

I still hold the opinion that the rumoured new “giant, giant, giant machine that duplicates everything, is modular, is simple on the modular level, and is... gigantic" is to build battery cells, modules, and packs. Not for die cast model Y bodies (which is foolish btw, Elon already said they will replace a 70-part rear-subframe assembly with 4 parts in the Y, then later with a single cast part when the larger casting machine becomes available. This casting machine DOES NOT replace the body stamping presses, sheesh. /rant).

So let's spec up that (Giant)^3 machine (I'll call it the 'G-Cube') for its output, first for N. America: (per Elon's statements on expected long-term steady-state demand)

• 750K/yr Model 3+Y @ 67 KWh => 50 GWh/yr (2021)
  
• 100K/yr Semi @ 1MWh => 100 GWh/yr (2023)
  
• 500K/yr Pickup @ 300 KWh => 150 GWh/yr (2024)

So that's a requirement for 300 GWh/yr within 5 years for the first N. America G-Cube (I'm going to lump storage requirements together separately since they have a different rampup curve, and their own steady-state demand).

That's roughly 10x the current cell capacity at GF1. A compounded annual growth rate that yields 10x increase over 5 years is 59% CAGR. That's actually pretty close to Tesla's historical auto production growth rate over the past 6 years, so I call it physically possible to do. Now let's build out a growth table for the next 5 years: (numbers listed are predicted production run-rates achieved by the end of the listed year; assuming* 29.5 GW/yr run rate by end of 2019, up from 28 GWh/yr by 2019.5)

Year GWh
2019 29.5*
2020 47
2021 75
2022 119
2023 189
2024 300​

Now let's get on with specing out the G-Cube:

• each G-Cube must be able to produce 25GW/yr in finished product
• Tesla must be able to build 1 G-Cube/yr in 2020-21
• Tesla must be able to build 2 G-Cubes/yr in 2022-23
• Tesla must be able to build 4 G-Cubes in 2024-25

Each G-Cube must produce cash flow which will pay for another G-Cube after 2 yrs operation. Technically that's a CAGR of only 41% but hey this is an estimate (the main point is that this is the exponential part of Elon's vision).

For the first G-cube, let's say consumer facing product is $100/KWh at the pack level (long held as the enabling goal for Tesla's production aspirations). That's $5B in product over 2 years from each G-cube. Traditionally, the cost of raw materials for cells has been ~60% of the finished product, so let's say there's $2B left over (notice how I'm skipping over the part about robotics and cost of labor?)

So as long as Tesla can spec, build, and equip its first G-Cube for $2B, it pays for itself after 2 years which allows them to build another G-Cube out of FCF (NO LOANS).

Then, as production efficiency increase (that's the reason you stay 'modular' so you can swap out old designs) the exponential increases. After a further 2 years running those 2 G-Cubes, you can afford 2 more G-Cubes, etc etc... and I haven't even modeled depreciation.

Can they do it? Sure. China has demonstrated they're all in for the tech, and especially for the financing (ie: recourse local debt in Shanghai). Then FCA will pay for the first G-cube in Europe with its $2B/2yr CO2 offsets to Tesla. These may actually INCREASE as other failed manufacturors join the FCA emissions pool after 2021. I suspect the production ramp for Europe will be approx like this:

Year GWh
2022 25
2024 50
2026 100
2028 200
2030 400​

So you see that gets Tesla to a world-wide runrate of 1 TWh/yr for vehicle packs sometime between 2025-2030 (depending on precisely when the first EU GF4 w.G-cube comes online).

In all of this, remember, storage is EXTRA (I'm calling for 2+ TWh/yr production when including Tesla grid+storage products). As a bonus, here's a rough steady of the state product demand I see for both China and the EU (emphasis on smaller** city cars; no pickups at all; numbers approximate)

• 750K/yr Model 3+Y @ 67 KWh => 50 GWh/yr
  
• 200K/yr Semi/Bus/Delivery @ 500KWh => 100 GWh/yr
  
• 1.5M/yr Model 2 @ 27 KWh => 150 GWh/yr (2024)
• Total: 300 GWh/yr

So given a requirement for 300 GWh/yr each in China+EU, and 400 GWh in N. America, that's a 1.2 TWh/yr requirement for the planned Tesla vehicles over the next 10 years.

**Recall Elon spoke about a smaller $25K Tesla during the 2018 AGM (which many commenters now refer to as the 'Model 2'), and naturally it will have much larger sales volumes in the older congested cities of Europe and large cities of Asia).

Add it all up, and that's 6.5M Tesla Vehicles per year production reached sometime between 2025-2030 (again depending on the SELF-FUNDING rampup). Best part? That's roughly $280B in annual revenue just from the Tesla Automotive division. Even if TSLA continues to trade at just 2x earnings, that puts TSLA at $3,200/share within 10 yrs.

And remember, 'Storage is extra'. So is FSD it seems, but that 10 year horizon is nearly @neroden scale time for FSD so...

That's just the numbers from currently planned/rumoured products. I personally plan to be taking Sunday rides on a Tesla bicycle that weighs 20 kg with a hubless SRPM motor and a 2 KWh fast-charging bty w. 10-yr svc-life by 2030.

Cheers!

P.S. So yeah, 15X TSLA upside yada-yada, but I will be selling all my shares at the Opening today, because Capt Sully tweeted that I should be 'concerned' about Autopilot.
/S
Mod: original post here. --ggr

 

[NakedLong]

I'm feeling pretty good about Tesla right now. I ended up buying a bit more at 230 today.

My average buy in price is about 280, but I plan on leaving it in Tesla at least 5-10 years, but probably more depending on how they are going. I thought I would just write down my high level thoughts on why I'm feeling so optimistic about Tesla now:

1) First mover advantage: on all the tech related to EVs. And not just by 3 years like I hear a lot of people saying, because this implies that competitors actually have the ability to catch up 3 years later. In 30 years from now when all cars are electric, I expect almost none of the ICE companies to have survived. It will be new players without the ICE baggage who are Tesla's competitors... or some traditional auto where someone like Steve Jobs comes in and transforms it from the edge of bankruptcy to something totally different.

2) Culture of innovation: electric motors, unicast body, wiring harness, dry electrode batteries, battery management, OTA software, FSD tech, unified cooling system, etc. Tesla has made so much progress in such a short time. And even more importantly, it's interesting to track all their mistakes and how they rapidly pivot away from them - like with HD maps or the body of the model 3. A lot of companies find it hard to admit their mistakes because of the politics. If they can keep up this pace of innovation they will continue to pull away from other companies, and I expect so long as Elon is in control they will continue to innovate.

3) Fiscally frugal: they have been trimming the fat for a few years now. I have worked in many large corporations and they are full of waste which eats them away from the inside. Contractors getting overpaid, inefficiencies which add up, employees taking the piss, middle management sending emails and organising meetings where they sit around listening to themselves talk, without having any technical knowledge.

4) Hiring talent: This is one of the most important aspects of whether a company is successful or not. Tesla is hard to get into, and everyone wants to work there, so they can choose from the best. And they are very involved with recruiting and promoting engineering, going directly to universities. Google used to be like this - not so much any more. Facebook is desperate for good people now days - contacting me every year even though I always say no. When it comes to technology/software 1 good engineer/programmer can be worth a 1000 times their salary to a company. But even more importantly bad engineers and programmers will drag a company down with them. I have seen it in so many places. I like how brutal Elon is with his expectations of employees and readiness to fire incompetence.... very Steve Jobs.

5) FSD: Obviously a game changer which is not factored into the stock price currently. Even on a timeframe of 10 years - it will align with my investment timeframe, although I expect to see lumpy incremental progress every release, often with large jumps long before 10 years. My timeframe for FSD is Elon + 3(±2) years, or about 4 years with a few years uncertainty either side. I have followed the science of FSD, and it's clear to me Tesla will win that race. It's not as important when they do it, so much that they are the first to do it. The lack on understanding most people have about the FSD race really represents a golden investment opportunity.

6) Green New Deal: There is a massive green movement underway. The climate deniers are dying off. The new generations are environmentally aware. Over the next decade, we can expect a massive push for electrification, supported by governments who have agreed to climate targets... it's already started and it is picking up momentum. Driven by climate change and the fear of what will come, Tesla is perfectly poised to benefit from a period of exponential growth in EVs, solar and storage. A lot of companies are successful because of the timing of technological advances (Microsoft/Apple come to mind). Elon has had impeccable timing on all his companies, and it feels like his timing with Tesla and the green movement is going to be great too.

7) China: China is a bigger auto market than the US. They are the number 1 economy adjusted for PPP. They have a faster electric uptake. China has a wealthy growing middle class. The Chinese government are letting Tesla ramp up at maximum speed. Chinese cars will be much cheaper to produce and will have higher margins. Given all this, I think Tesla is sandbagging on how important the Chinese market is. I expect Chinese profits to eclipse US profits within 10 years.

8) Elon: Bezos might be richer, but he had a head start, in easier industries. Jobs is a close comparison, but Elon is way more technical and impressive in my view. Other tech titans like Zuckerberg/Page/Brin mostly just rested on their laurels, with limited ambition. Elon's ambition is clearly out in front, as is his track record for bringing about very difficult tasks. While he is leading Tesla, the company is clearly going to make mostly correct choices.

9) SpaceX Effect: SpaceX will have their Starship flying to the moon and Mars within my investment timeframe of 10 years. The amount of hype from this is going to propel the Tesla stock price. Not to mention, make more people want to own a Tesla or work for Tesla.

10) Shorts/FUD: The stock price is artificially low because of the shorts/FUD/stock manipulation. As soon as Tesla starts showing profit consistently, there is a large upside of shorts leaving and the stock will not be manipulated as easily. The short interest will be on par with other large tech companies like Amazon. Buying under 250 is going to seem like a dream investment in a few years.

There are probably more reasons to be excited about Tesla, but I'll stop here. These 10 points for me show how Tesla has created a perfect set of conditions for success.

Mod: original here. --ggr

 

[ReflexFunds]

George basically says that everyone’s approach to self driving aside from Tesla’s is wrong and just will never work. My impression was that he convinced Lex of this fact as well, though obviously Lex did not come out and say it.

George also said that everyone else’s approach stems from that early code that successfully passed the DARPA challenge early last decade (which I didn’t know). It kind of explains why Tesla is taking a different approach from everyone else, and all the others may just kind of be locked in.

It just seems like there’s more and more evidence piling up that Tesla really is alone in the self-driving lead, contrary to appearances and industry consensus.

I really struggle to see how anyone with neural net experience who has spent a lot of time thinking about the nature and the difficulty of the self driving problem cannot see deep down that Tesla's Data Heavy approach is the only one that will work. The longer it takes other companies to pivot in Tesla's direction, the further ahead Tesla is going to get.

We have now seen George Hotz saying Tesla will win Level 5 and Waymo/Cruise/everyone else's approach will not work.
We've seen Anthony Levandowski admit that Elon was right about Lidar all along.
We've also seen Alex Krizhevsky (behind Alexnet which kicked off the deep learning revolution in 2012) admitting Tesla is in the lead (after working at Google and Waymo). “I think Tesla has the unique advantage of being able to collect data from a very wide variety of environments because there are Tesla owners with self-driving hardware all over the world,” “This is very important for machine learning algorithms to generalize. So I would guess that at least from the data side, if not the algorithmic side, Tesla might be ahead.”

I think the industry is finding it so hard to pivot to Tesla's approach for several reasons:

• Many of the self driving project teams are led by roboticist/Lidar experts who do not have a deep understanding of neural nets.
• Waymo etc have already invested so much time and resources into their approach it is difficult to admit they were heading in the wrong direction.
• All so called "self driving experts" consulted by corporates, investors and the media originated from the DARPA challenge and therefore have experience in the Hardware Heavy, Data Light approach, and have also invested their whole careers into it. This has convinced CEOs and investors etc to bet on the wrong strategy.
• Everyone else is so far behind Tesla in their ability to role out a mass produced self driving data filtering, processing and collection consumer fleet, now their only hope is to somehow solve self-driving without the data.
• Some people really think 10s of millions of miles of real world driving experience is enough to train the car and to verify safety. Elon is betting it will require 10s of billions of miles of real world driving.
  
• Some people really believe simulation can substitute for real data and somehow think a software developer in silicon valley has the imagination to program all possible 1 in 10 million driving scenarios, and has the ability to accurately program artificial conscious beings in the simulation.
• Some people really think it's impossible to get distance and velocity measurements from cameras alone (despite all the evidence to the contrary).

There seems to be a false narrative spun by the industry that Elon's rational for choosing the Hardware Light approach was just to save on manufacturing costs and/or an arbitrary rejection of lidar. This is completely false. There are two mutually exclusive choices for self driving strategy: 1) Hardware Light, Data Heavy or 2) Hardware Heavy, Data Light. It is impossible to choose a Hardware Heavy, Data Heavy approach because a car fleet of Tesla's size using this approach would cost the company towards $100bn capex and development costs. Elon choose his approach because he correctly understood that data is key to neural nets, solving edge cases and verifying safety. Elon knew there is a proof of concept (us) that driving can work through vision alone, but he took a gamble at how long it would take to solve distance/velocity with vision rather than lidar. Fortunately everything is suggesting Tesla (and other AI researchers) are making rapid progress on this (if not solved sufficiently already).

Mod: Original post. --ggr

 

[ReflexFunds]

I discussed parts of this briefly the other day, but I thought I’d write in a bit more detail.

One (of many) of Tesla’s key competitive advantages is its huge battery and powertrain cost advantage. (I’ll go into its other advantages another day)

Sandy Munro’s car teardown and P3’s cell teardown reports (arranged by UBS) put Tesla’s cell costs at $111/KWh, pack costs (for SR) at $35/KWh and other powertrain costs at $4.5k. For SR+ this totals $12.5k ($8k for battery pack, $4.5k for other powertrain).
For Chevy Bolt total Powertrain costs were estimated at $16.6k ($12.3k battery pack, $4.3k other powertrain).
Sandy Munro estimated mass market ICE powertrain costs at $6.5k and Luxury ICE powertrain costs at $8.5k (BMW 330i).
So this gave Tesla a $4.1k cost advantage vs Chevy Bolt on its Powertrain. However Model 3 specs are equivalent to a luxury ICE while Chevy Bolt specs are closer to a mass market car. So really Tesla’s cost advantage vs the bolt relative to their equivalent ICE Powertrain is $6.1k. Relative to the BMW 330i, Model 3’s powertrain costs are c.$4k more expensive. So Model 3 costs are significantly closer to the ICE equivalent and they are to its EV competition.

It’s worth noting that the Chevy Bolt powertrain was $4.6k cheaper than UBS’s previous estimates when UBS/Munro’s first teardown study came out in May 2017. So together this $4.6k Chevy beat plus Model 3’s $6.1k beat puts Tesla’s EV vs ICE powertrain cost premium $10.7k lower than UBS (and much of the auto industry) was estimating for EV tech as recently as 2017. Just $4k further to go for powertrain upfront cost parity, ignoring Tesla’s other cost advantages and other total costs of ownership advantages.

So just a reminder, Tesla’s SR+ Powertrain is $4k cheaper than the Bolt despite vastly superior specs on every metric. How do the specs compare?
· Range: Model 3 240 miles. Bolt 238 miles.
· 0-60 Acceleration: Model 3 5.3 seconds. Bolt 6.5 seconds.
· Max charging: Model 3 250KW. Bolt 50KW.
· Powertrain Life: Model 3 battery 500k miles, other powertrain 1,000k miles. Bolt 200k miles?
· Power: Model 3 306 HP. Bolt 200 HP.
· Torque: Model 3 415 lb-ft. Bolt 266 lb-ft.
· Battery fires: No known fires for either? Vastly better than ICE cars.

The Bolt is not a special case. As far as we know Model 3’s powertrain costs also beat the Audi E-tron and Jaguar I-pace by a similar if not greater margin.

How does Tesla have such a lead?
Five reasons: 1) Cheaper battery cells, 2) Cheaper battery packs, 3) Better battery to wheel efficiency, 4) Better weight (including battery pack capacity/kg and motor power/kg) and 5) Better drag coefficient.

Before I start a very long post on exactly how I think Tesla is winning in EV powertrain costs, just a reminder how significant Tesla’s $4-6k cost advantage is. ICE OEMs normally make around $1k EBIT per car, while luxury cars can be $2-3k. If an ICE OEM had the same cost advantage vs other ICE OEMs for ICE cars their profit per car would be 5x higher. And Tesla’s $4-6k cost advantage here is on powertrain alone – they have other significant savings including from not advertising, not using dealerships, using an online first sales model, higher vertical integration of non-powertrain auto manufacturing and higher non-powertrain manufacturing innovation.

Relative to the Chevy Bolt I estimate Tesla Model 3’s $4.1k powertrain cost advantage comes from roughly: 1) $1.6k lower cell costs, 2) $1.4k lower pack (non cell) costs 3) $1.2k better wheel to wheel efficiency (mostly this), weight & drag. On top of this Tesla’s powertrain performance, longevity and likely safety advantage all come for free.

How does Tesla beat ICE OEMs efforts in each of these categories?

Cheaper battery cells.

Tesla’s three key advantages are 1) ability to use stripped back simplified cylindrical cells, 2) ability to safely use the in principle more dangerous NCA chemistry and 3) economies of scale (including standardized cell size unlike prismatic cell sizes which vary with battery pack design).

The core of 1 & 2 is that Tesla is able to use simplified cylindrical cells (with no safety systems) and NCA chemistry because it has far superior battery management software (including fleet learning benefit) and hardware – it shifts cell costs into battery pack IP (and no ICE OEMs are even attempting to catch up on this path).

Cylindrical battery cells
Advantages:

• Cheaper to manufacture.
• Has the least components and simplest manufacturing process (8 components vs up to 30 for prismatic cells which are now mostly being adopted by the industry).
• Cylindrical is the most mature technology and has the most automated manufacturing process with highest utilization rates in manufacturing steps.
• Tesla’s NCA cylindrical cells have by far the highest volumetric energy density, I think in part due to tighter cathode winding in cylindrical structures. This should reduce pack size and hence pack (non cell) weight.
• One cell design can fit multiple different battery packs and vehicle programs. Pouch/Prismatic generally have to be designed differently for each program so get much less economies of scale. For example CATL makes 34 different shapes of cell while BYD makes 10.
• Cylindrical cells generally need less safety specific components, but Tesla’s cells are able to strip these back further - Tesla's cells lack a CID (vent ) and a positive temperature coefficient device. They can do this in part due to the pack design and software.
  
• Mechanical stability against internal swelling.
• Smaller cells can allow better thermal management.
• The winding process can be done faster than stacking for other cell types, they can also be wound tighter.

Disadvantages :

• Limitation in cell size means a huge number of cells per car which makes module assembly much more difficult and makes cell balancing much more difficult. Model 3 has c.4000 cells vs c.300 pouch cells in the Bolt.
• More cells per car also means more chance for something to go wrong.
• Cylindrical cells have lower gravimetric energy density (for equal chemistry) I think mostly because smaller cylindrical cells need more housing material. This is largely compensated because it is easier to use higher cathode energy density chemistries in cylindrical cells.
• Cell testing is more expensive because more cells need to be connected and tested.

Tesla’s NCA chemistry has the highest nickel cathode content and the highest cathode energy density of any EV. It has much less cobalt than NCM designs which reduces raw material prices and reduces supply risk. Its disadvantage is the chemistry is less stable relative to lower Nickel content/lower cathode energy density cells – this is another reason Tesla uses cylindrical cells – the smaller canned cylindrical format helps limit this instability.

I think Tesla's current NCA cathode chemistry is Nickel 93% Cobalt 5% and Aluminium 2%. This compares to most common NMC 532 at 50% Nickel, 30% Manganese and 20% Cobalt.

The rest of the industry is starting to transition to higher Nickel NMC 811 (now c.7% of China cathode production) which is closer to NCA. However this chemistry will face increased manufacturing costs and increased safety challenges, particularly given the industry does not have the battery pack expertise to use smaller cylindrical cells which limit the chemical instability.

Is anyone copying Tesla’s cell approach?
No Auto OEM is trying currently. For example in China in July just 5% of battery KWh in EVs was cylindrical cells (and this was still mostly 18650) and NCA is only around 3% of total cells. Model 3 cells are 257WH/kg. CATL’s highest energy density cell is 236WH/kg and BYD doesn’t have any >220WH/kg. They both largely make prismatic cells.
Some startups such as Rivian say they will be using cylindrical cells, but exactly what chemistry they use and whether they use the same extremely stripped back cell design as Tesla is unclear.​

Cheaper battery packs

Tesla’s battery pack strategy is very similar to its Autopilot strategy. It is all about vertical integration, software and fleet learning. Tesla’s pack costs benefit from a lean and high tech design as well as from the high volumetric energy density of its cells, but also because it has shifted cell/pack hardware complexity into better (likely neural net based) software. The Munro teardown found Model 3 pack cost at $30/kWh, half of the $60/kWh in the Chevy Bolt, despite Model 3 pack’s ability to use higher energy density cathode chemistries and much simpler and cheaper battery cell designs.

Tesla is the only automaker that can continuously collect data from its customer fleet, it is also the only automaker that has designed its own software, semiconductors and other pack components in-house (normally these are outsourced to multiple suppliers). For the battery it can collect information on driving style, charging, battery temperature, battery capacity changes, voltage, degradation etc. This statistical data is fed into Tesla’s BMS to precisely manage tiny differences in each cylindrical cell’s performances and provide equilibrium for the overall system. Tesla’s BMS software use multiple in-house designed ASIC chips called batman and robin for cell balancing. I think it is highly likely Tesla’s BMS is neural net based with data fed into a neural net to optimize management and balancing across the 4,000+ cells.

The BMS software delivers:

• High useable capacity of the battery cells.
• High and safe charge rates.
• High safety despite the less stable high energy density chemistry. (The software limits flammability risks - it ensures temperature is not allowed to rise and prevents metals deposits forming)
• High safety despite simplified cells without in-built safety features.
• Limited degradation and long life (in miles) of Tesla’s batteries relative to the competition. This benefits from Tesla’s precise cell balancing.
• Resilience to a certain failure/error rate of cells (many competitor’s designs require perfection to operate safely or at all).

Together with the better software, Tesla limits (as far as we know eliminates) the dangers of high Nickel cathodes by using pack materials with low heat conductivity and using inbuilt thermometers.

Moving so much of the cell/pack tech/management into software rather than hardware means Tesla can use the same hardware designs for multiple different products - semi/storage/performance cars/pickup/Model 3 etc, giving better economies of scale.

Tesla’s reliance on fleet learning, vertical integration and software as the core of its battery strategy gives it a huge advantage against ICE OEMs and as far as I know Tesla is now so far ahead nobody is even trying to copy their approach. ICE OEMs do not have the vertical integration to design a harmonized overall system. They do not have ability to collect data from their fleet. They do not have software or AI expertise to move to a software first approach. Unlike Tesla they do not have 10 years of data to feed into their system to enable use of cheaper cells and higher risks chemistries. Given the bad publicity surrounding EV fires, it is extremely high risk to roll out a new high risk battery chemistry/pack design without first having the fleet data to optimize the software to ensure safety – I just think it is extremely difficult for anyone to risk following Tesla at this stage. As Tesla bears UBS write: “Despite Panasonic's cost advantage we expect to see limited adoption by other OEMs. A sophisticated battery management system (Tesla produces in-house) is required for the format and we do not think this is easily replicable.”​

Better battery to wheel efficiency

All Tesla cars again significantly beat all the competition on this key metric. The cost savings from better powertrain efficiency can easily be higher than savings on cheaper battery cells. More efficiency means lower battery size for the same range which means lower battery costs – this can be worth as much as $4k relative to cars such as the I-Pace.

Tesla wins here for 2 main reasons: 1) It has the most experience and best engineers with the best hardware designs and 2) It has the most vertical integration and best software talent which allows design of a harmonious powertrain.

Some specific hardware breakthroughs Tesla has made include the use of a high efficiency silicon carbide inverter, a breakthrough permanent magnet motor design (willing to pivot from its previous expertise in induction motors), high tech cooling design, reduced cabling and combination of multiple hardware components into the same housing with a modular and compact design.

On the software side again, the vertical integration and fleet learning across the entire EV powertrain has allowed continuous improvements and efficiencies. Overall, including battery and other powertrain, software has driven around half of the 40% improvement in Tesla’s powertrain over the past 5-6 years.

​

Better weight (both battery pack capacity/kg and motor power/kg)

Tesla’s battery pack capacity/kg beats the competition I think in part due to the better volumetric energy density of its cells – which requires less pack casing. E-tron and EQC battery packs are about 2kg/kWh heavier than Model 3, which can add up to around 200kg on the car which has a negative impact on range, acceleration and handling.

Model 3 also has the best power-to-weight ratio of its electric drive unit (motor and gearbox) of any electric vehicle in the market.

Better drag coefficients.

Model 3's drag coefficient is just 0.23 which is the best of all cars in its segment. Tesla obviously has extremely smart engineers and designers working to minimise drag co-efficient while maintaining aesthetics. ICE OEMs are often handicapped here, partially because their vehicles and brand has a distinctive “look” which they are trying to maintain despite the shift to EVs. ICE OEMs are also handicapped because many have decided to build flexible platforms (to avoid properly committing to EVs) which can be used for ICEs, EVs or PHEVs, rather than being designed specifically towards EVs.​

Mod: Original here. --ggr