Tesla Motors Canada
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November 3, 2015
Tesla Motors was not started by Elon Musk, but it was jumpstarted by him. He is currently a cofounder of Tesla Motors, Chairman of SolarCity, CEO of Space X, and got his start by developing Zip2, a web software company, and co-founded X.com which later became PayPal and was bought by eBay (Contributors, 2015).
Before Tesla Motors, the North American, and global automotive industry seemed stuck in the old paradigm of internal combustion engines using fossil fuels. There was little innovation and hope for an exciting, fossil fuel free future was harder to envision. Tesla Motors has jumpstarted the global electric vehicle industry with all other major manufacturers following suit (Petty, 2015).
Tesla Motors is named after Nikola Tesla’s and the motors using the vehicles are direct descendents of Nikola Tesla’s original 1882 alternating current electric motor design (Contributors, Tesla Motors, 2015).
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Tesla Motors was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning and Elon joined the Board of Directors and led the first round of investment funding in 2004. Elon contributed $70 million of his own money and help secure five rounds of funding to keep the company alive until it announced its first profit in 2009 (Contributors, Tesla Motors, 2015).
In 2009 Tesla received 465 million in interest-bearing loans and in 2013 was the first car company to repay the government where Ford and Nissan etc. had not (Contributors, Tesla Motors, 2015).
On June 29, 2010 Tesla made an initial public offering at $17 per share; as of November 3, 2015, Tesla is trading at $210.70 per share.
Tesla Motors has a strong fan base and customers report a 98% satisfaction rate and they would happily buy another Tesla (Edelstein, 2015). Tesla also comes out on top in customer repair satisfaction surveys (DeMorro, 2015), and was given the highest safety rating and may be the safest vehicle ever tested to date and in fact broke the testing equipment (Lavrinc, 2015).
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Tesla is doing more than just building luxury supercars at a fraction of the price, they are building a network of superchargers, a gigafactory that will nearly double the world’s output of lithium-ion batteries and help lower the price as well as complement their residential and commercial Powerwall energy storage initiatives (Tesla Motors, 2015). With the success of Space X supplying the international space station and the overall success of Tesla Motors to date, it would be a mistake to underestimate Elon Musk and Tesla.
Other distinguishing features of Tesla Motors is the giant touchscreen that the vehicles use as an interface and the ability for Tesla Motors to push out software upgrades to its fleet all at once, overnight, while you sleep. Recently, Tesla Motors upgraded their Model S and Model X vehicles wirelessly to utilize the pre-existing hardware installed that allows the vehicles to access an advanced cruise control. This is seen as a precursor to fully autonomous vehicles which are predicted to hit the market as early as 2017 according to Elon Musk and 2020 according to Google.
While the future is always uncertain, the enthusiasm of Tesla’s owners and supporters along with the consistent top 10 ratings in customer satisfaction, safety, and performance seem to indicate a bright future (Autoblog, 2015).
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Works Cited
Autoblog. (2015, October 27). car and driver 10 best lists Tesla. Retrieved from Autoblog: http://www.autoblog.com/2014/11/21/car-and-driver-10best-list-tesla-model-s-bmw-2-series/
Contributors. (2015, October 3). Elon Musk. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
Contributors. (2015, October 3). Tesla Motors. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors
DeMorro, C. (2015, October 3). Tesla tops Consumer Reports repair satisfaction survey. Retrieved from Gas 2: http://gas2.org/2015/02/05/tesla-top-consumer-reports-repair-satisfaction-survey/
Edelstein, S. (2015, October 3). tesla-model-s-tops-consumer-reports-customer-satisfaction-index-again. Retrieved from Green Car Reports.com: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095745_tesla-model-s-tops-consumer-reports-customer-satisfaction-index-again
Lavrinc, D. (2015, October 3). Tesla model S crash test. Retrieved from wired.com: http://www.wired.com/2013/08/tesla-model-s-crash-test/
Petty, A. (2015, October 3). Tesla-Nissan-Chevy-jumpstart electric vehicle market. Retrieved from The Piedmont Highlander: http://tphnews.com/2013/04/tesla-chevrolet-nissan-jumpstart-electric-vehicle-market
Tesla Motors. (2015, November 3). About. Retrieved from Tesla motors.com: http://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/about
Tesla Motors. (2015, October 3). Supercharger. Retrieved from Tesla motors.com: http://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/supercharger