Tesla Industry News Cars

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has a stake of almost five percent in Tesla, but a new report from Bloomberg claims that the Middle Eastern nation wants to raise its stake by being a part of any investor pool that will be created in response to Elon Musk’s plan to take the electric car maker private. It’s unclear if these plans will gain any traction because the process of taking Tesla private is going to be a difficult task.

Another day, another Tesla drama. The latest pertains to the California automaker’s new Model 3 compact, it’s most-affordable, and arguably most-important, offering to date. Apparently, the car is having some trouble holding on to its rear bumper when driving through puddles.

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There’s certainly been no shortage of drama in the world of Elon Musk lately. The billionaire CEO of Tesla had a few choice words for a diver involved in the recent Thai cave incident after he criticized Musk’s plan to use a submarine to rescue the stranded children. Musk eventually apologized, but Tesla’s stock took a plunge all the same. Now, a raft of Tesla haters have revealed a stockpile of freshly minted Model 3’s parked in California, leading to a host of unfounded accusations thrown at the EV producer.

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Ford and Tesla have engaged in some mild-mannered back-and-forth in the past few weeks, so it’s no surprise that when Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter about his company’s impressive production volume, Ford Europe CEO Steven Armstrong responded with a zing of his own. Armstrong’s tweet came as a response to Musk’s post about Tesla producing 7,000 cars in seven days. A lot of people were impressed by that number, at least except Armstrong who responded by saying that Ford builds 7,000 cars in four hours.

It took longer than most people, including Tesla, expected, but finally, it appears that the electric car maker has finally achieved its goal of building 5,000 Model 3 units in a span of seven days. It took 24-hours, 7-days-a-week schedules to do it, but the company reported earlier this week that it had concluded its three-month build period that ended Saturday by building 53,339 vehicles, including 28,578 Model 3 sedans.

By now, you know about the Model S that caught fire the other day while sitting in traffic.It was owned by the husband of West Wing Actress Mary McCormack. Well, GM decided to try and burn Tesla a little more, with GM Spokesperson Ray Wert, disclosing that GM had offered to loan Mark McCormack a Chevy Bolt EV so “she has a more dependable electric vehicle to drive.” Well, there are GM haters out there everywhere, and the tables quickly turned with Wert and GM feeling an even worse burn.

Two years after posting more than 400,000 reservations for the Model 3 electric car, Tesla is now facing a big pushback from customers, a lot of whom have begun asking for their money back because of frustrations with the extended production delays on the Model 3. According to data from analytics company Second Measure, almost a quarter of all the $1,000 deposits made on the Model 3 have been refunded.

Remember the whole brouhaha involving Consumer Reports’ review of the Tesla Model 3? The review publication had some good things to say about the electric sedan, but it also had some issues with some aspects of the car, none more glaring than the braking issues that overshot Tesla’s claims. Well, the automaker came out with an over-the-air software update to fix the issue, and that’s all it took for Consumer Reports to give the Model 3 its full recommendation.

Tesla didn’t take long to fix an issue with the braking capabilities of its models after a Consumer Reports test criticized the automaker after inconsistencies surfaced in testing for the stopping distance of the Model 3. Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted that the company found an issue with its “ABS calibration algorithm” and has rolled out an over-the-air software update to fix the problem.

The Tesla Model 3 was unveiled in 2016 and received a thunderous response, garnering 232,000 bookings within two days. One thing that surely contributed to this number was the design of the wheels. The Model 3 prototype came equipped with a set of smoking-hot wheels, which unfortunately didn’t make it to production then. However, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk tweeted that this design would be available as an upgrade later this year! Yes, we are definitely excited about it!

Tesla is again under fire after Consumer Reports said it will not recommend the Model 3 due to braking issues. Elon Musk was quick to respond and promised to fix the issues with a firmware update.

A few years ago, Tesla made headlines with the Model S scoring the best-ever Consumer Reports ratings. Nowadays, things aren’t going as good. The Model S isn’t getting the best reviews, and the Model 3 falls short of the outlet’s recommendation. You probably remember that Consumer Reports reported some issues before the compact sedan was out. And Elon Musk freaked out, claiming a conspiracy against Tesla. Well, CR just finished testing the Model 3 it bought a while back, and it reports "big flaws," including "long stopping distances in emergency braking tests" and "difficult-to-use controls."

Nikola Motor Company, a company that unveiled a hydrogen truck concept in 2016, has filed a lawsuit against Tesla in Arizona alleging that Elon Musk’s firm infringes on its patents with the all-electric Semi truck. The lawsuit claims Tesla willfully copied Nikola’s patents in creating its electric truck. The Utah-based company is seeking $2 billion in damages.