california

Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey dies aged 70

Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey dies aged 70 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Harvey died in San Francisco after suffering stroke on 4 April and the festival in Nevada desert he co-created attracts 70,000 annually

Larry Harvey, whose whimsical decision to erect a giant wooden figure and then burn it to the ground led to the popular, long-running counterculture celebration known as Burning Man, has died. He was 70.

Harvey died on Saturday morning at a hospital in San Francisco, surrounded by family, Burning Man Project chief executive Marian Goodell said. The cause was not immediately known but he suffered a stroke earlier this month. A longtime friend, Stuart Mangrum, posted on the organizations website that Harvey did not believe in any sort of existence after death.

Now that hes gone, lets take the liberty of contradicting him, and keep his memory alive in our hearts, our thoughts, and our actions, Mangrum wrote. As he would have wished it, let us always Burn the Man.

Burning Man takes place annually the week before Labor Day in northern Nevadas Black Rock Desert. The week-long festival attracts some 70,000 people who pay anywhere from $425 to $1,200 a ticket to travel to a dry lake bed 100 miles east of Reno, where temperatures routinely reach 100F (37.8C) during the summer.

There they must carry in their own food, build their own makeshift community and engage in whatever interests them. On the gatherings penultimate day, the giant effigy or Man as it is known is set ablaze during a raucous, joyful celebration.

Friends and family toasted Harvey as a visionary, a lover of words and books, a mentor and instigator who challenged others to look at the world in new ways. Burners, as theyre called, left comments on the organizations website thanking Harvey for inspiring them as artists and for creating a community.

Thanks for everything. (No, really, pretty much everything in my life right now is a result of Burning Man), read one post.

An esoteric mix of pagan fire ritual and sci-fi Dada circus where some paint their bodies, bang drums, dance naked and wear costumes that would draw stares in a Mardi Gras parade was how the Associated Press once described the gathering.

While tickets now sell out immediately, Harvey described in a 2007 interview how he had much more modest intentions when he launched Burning Man on San Franciscos Baker Beach one summer day in 1986.

I called a friend and said, Lets go to the beach and burn a man, he told the website Green Living. And he said, Can you say that again? And I did and we did it.

It wasnt until afterwards, Harvey recalled, that he had the epiphany that led to Burning Man. Within a few years the event had outgrown Baker Beach and moved to the desert.

While Harvey would speak frequently about Burning Man in the years that followed, he would reveal little about himself and it was often hard to discern truth from fiction. He believed he was conceived in the back of a Chevrolet by parents who abandoned him soon after his birth, he once told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

His brother, Stewart Harvey, said in a post on Saturday that the two were adopted by farmers Shorty and Katherine Harvey and grew up outside Portland, Oregon. The brothers, who were not related by blood, were extremely close. Harvey said he hitchhiked to San Francisco at age 17. He settled in the Haight-Ashbury district for many years.

The
The Man burns on the Black Rock Desert at Burning Man near Gerlach, Nevada in 2013. Photograph: Andy Barron/AP

After that first fire in 1986, Burning Man flourished as Harvey meticulously oversaw its every detail from the various communities that would spring up overnight to its annual arts theme to the beautifully crafted temple that accompanies Burning Man and is also burned.

Harvey eventually formed a limited liability corporation to put on Burning Man, converting it in 2013 to a nonprofit with 70 employees and a budget of $30m. He was president of its board and chief philosophic officer.

Although known for retaining its joyful celebrative atmosphere as it grew from a small gathering to one of gigantic proportions, Burning Man occasionally had problems. In 2017, a man ran into Burning Mans flames, suffered burns over almost all of his body and died. In 1996, three people were injured when a drunken driver ran over their tent. The same year a man was killed when his motorcycle collided with a van carrying people to the festival.

In 2007, a prankster set fire to Burning Man four days early and it had to be frantically rebuilt while the man was charged with arson. After the 1996 troubles Harvey had a falling out with John Law, who had co-founded Burning Man with him and who sued to have its trademark placed in the public domain. They settled out of court and Harvey retained control.

We dont use the trademark to market anything. Its our identity, said Harvey, who often spoke against the commodification of popular culture.

He is survived by his son Tristan Harvey, brother Stewart Harvey and nephew Bryan Harvey.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/apr/28/burning-man-co-founder-larry-harvey-dies-aged-70

A Timeline of the Tesla Autopilot Crash Investigation

A Timeline of the Tesla Autopilot Crash Investigation 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

This image taken from a video shows the scene of an accident involving a Tesla Model X on March 23.
KTVU

March 23: Walter Huang, a 38-year-old Apple Inc. engineer, dies after his Model X crashes into highway barrier in Mountain View, California. 

March 27: The NTSB sends two investigators to the crash scene and notes on Twitter: “Unclear if automated control system was active at time of crash.”

March 27: Tesla releases its first blog post, “What We Know About Last Week's Accident,” saying it hasn’t been able to retrieve computer logs from Huang’s vehicle and blames the damaged highway safety barrier for the severity of the crash. Tesla also claims the U.S. government found a year ago that Autopilot reduced crash rates by 40 percent, a characterization of data from a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report that some safety experts call misleading. “Out of respect for the privacy of our customer and his family, we do not plan to share any additional details until we conclude the investigation,” Tesla writes.

March 30: Tesla releases a second blog post late on Friday night that acknowledges its driver-assistance software, Autopilot, had been engaged at the time of the crash. “The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision,” Tesla writes.

April 1: An NTSB spokesman tells reporters that the agency is “unhappy with the release of investigative information by Tesla.” The agency’s protocols require companies who are a party to an agency accident investigation to not release details about the incident to the public without NTSB's approval. 

April 2: Tesla CEO Elon Musk discusses the investigation on Twitter: 

April 9: NTSB discloses agency Chairman Robert Sumwalt spoke to Musk over the preceding weekend. An agency spokesman said Sumwalt described the conversation as “very constructive.” 

April 10: Tesla puts out a statement that faults Mr. Huang and denies moral or legal liability for the crash.

“According to the family, Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect and, specifically, he told them it was not reliable in that exact location, yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location. The crash happened on a clear day with several hundred feet of visibility ahead, which means that the only way for this accident to have occurred is if Mr. Huang was not paying attention to the road, despite the car providing multiple warnings to do so.”

April 11: Tesla says it has withdrawn from its party agreement with the NTSB: “We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable.”

April 12: NTSB releases a statement saying it had removed Tesla as a party to its crash investigation. “The NTSB took this action because Tesla violated the party agreement by releasing investigative information before it was vetted and confirmed by the NTSB.” The agency also releases a letter from its chairman to Musk. 

April 12: Tesla releases another statement, again claiming to have withdrawn from its agreement with the NTSB.

“It’s been clear in our conversations with the NTSB that they’re more concerned with press headlines than actually promoting safety. Among other things, they repeatedly released partial bits of incomplete information to the media in violation of their own rules, at the same time that they were trying to prevent us from telling all the facts. We don’t believe this is right and we will be making an official complaint to Congress. We will also be issuing a Freedom Of Information Act request to understand the reasoning behind their focus on the safest cars in America while they ignore the cars that are the least safe.  Perhaps there is a sound rationale for this, but we cannot imagine what that could possibly be.” 

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/a-timeline-of-the-tesla-autopilot-crash-investigation

Tesla Driver Died Using Autopilot, With Hands Off Steering Wheel

Tesla Driver Died Using Autopilot, With Hands Off Steering Wheel 0

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • A week after crash, company says it recovered computer logs
  • Driver received several visual, one audible ‘hands-on’ warning

Tesla Inc. confirmed the Model X driver who died in a gruesome crash a week ago was using Autopilot and defended the safety record of its driver-assistance system that’s back under scrutiny following a fatality.

Computer logs recovered from the Tesla driven by Wei Huang, 38, show he didn’t have his hands on the steering wheel for six seconds before the sport utility vehicle collided with a highway barrier in California and caught fire on March 23, according to a blog post the company published late Friday.

“The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive,” Tesla said in the post. The driver had “about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view” of the concrete highway divider and an already-crushed crash cushion that his Model X collided with, according to the company. “But the vehicle logs show that no action was taken.”

The collision occurred days after an Uber Technologies Inc. self-driving test vehicle killed a pedestrian in Arizona, the most significant incident involving autonomous-driving technology since a Tesla driver’s death in May 2016 touched off months of finger-pointing and set back the company’s Autopilot program. A U.S. transportation safety regulator said Tuesday it would investigate the Model X crash, contributing to Tesla’s loss of more than $5 billion in market value this week.

‘Mushy Middle’

“This is another potential illustration of the mushy middle of automation,” Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies self-driving cars, said in an email. Partial automation systems such as Tesla’s Autopilot “work unless and until they don’t,” and there will be speculation and research about their safety, he said.

Tesla defended Autopilot in the blog post, saying a vehicle equipped with the system is 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident. U.S. statistics show one automotive fatality every 86 million miles driven by all vehicles, compared with 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot, according to the company.

Devastating Event

“None of this changes how devastating an event like this is or how much we feel for our customer’s family and friends,” Tesla wrote, pushing back against criticism that it has lacked empathy by bringing up safety statistics to counter past scrutiny of Autopilot. “We must also care about people now and in the future whose lives may be saved if they know that Autopilot improves safety.”

Tesla has introduced driver-assistance features through Autopilot that the company continuously improves via over-the-air software updates. While the company said as of October 2016 that it was building all of its cars with hardware needed for full self-driving capability, it hasn’t said when its vehicles will clear testing and regulatory hurdles necessary to drive without human involvement.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators to look into the crash. The agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also are examining a Jan. 22 collision in Los Angeles involving a Tesla Model S using Autopilot and a fire truck parked on the freeway.

NTSB Findings

The NTSB concluded in September that Autopilot’s design was a contributing factor in the 2016 fatal crash in Florida involving a Model S driver who’d been using the system and collided with a semi-trailer truck. The agency criticized Autopilot for giving “far too much leeway to the driver to divert his attention to something other than driving.”

In the wake of that crash, Tesla updated Autopilot to stop allowing drivers to ignore repeated warnings to keep their hands on the wheel.

While the NTSB also criticized partially autonomous-driving systems that only monitor steering wheel movement and don’t measure whether drivers are looking at the road, Tesla hasn’t adopted or enabled scanners that can track whether drivers’ eyes are looking ahead toward the road.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-31/tesla-says-driver-s-hands-weren-t-on-wheel-at-time-of-accident

California police worked with neo-Nazis to pursue ‘anti-racist’ activists, documents show

California police worked with neo-Nazis to pursue ‘anti-racist’ activists, documents show

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , ,

Officers expressed sympathy with white supremacists and sought their help to target counter-protesters after a violent 2016 rally, according to court documents

The far right

California police worked with neo-Nazis to pursue ‘anti-racist’ activists, documents show

Officers expressed sympathy with white supremacists and sought their help to target counter-protesters after a violent 2016 rally, according to court documents

in San Francisco

Sacramento

Sacramento mounted police officers at the June 2016 rally, which was organized by a neo-Nazi group. Photograph: Jerry H. Yamashita/AP

California police investigating a violent white nationalist event worked with white supremacists in an effort to identify counter-protesters and sought the prosecution of activists with anti-racist beliefs, court documents show.

The records, which also showed officers expressing sympathy with white supremacists and trying to protect a neo-Nazi organizers identity, were included in a court briefing from three anti-fascist activists who were charged with felonies after protesting at a Sacramento rally. The defendants were urging a judge to dismiss their case and accused California police and prosecutors of a cover-up and collusion with the fascists.

Defense lawyers said the case at the state capital offers the latest example of US law enforcement appearing to align with neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups while targeting anti-fascist activists and Donald Trump protesters after violent clashes.

It is shocking and really angering to see the level of collusion and the amount to which the police covered up for the Nazis, said Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley teacher and anti-fascist organizer charged with assault and rioting after participating in the June 2016 Sacramento rally, where she said she was stabbed and bludgeoned in the head. The people who were victimized by the Nazis were then victimized by the police and the district attorneys.

Steve Grippi, chief deputy district attorney prosecuting the case in Sacramento, vehemently denied the claims of bias in an email to the Guardian, alleging that anti-fascist stabbing victims have been uncooperative and noting that his office has filed charges against one member of the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), the neo-Nazi group that organized the rally.

Some California highway patrol (CHP) investigation records, however, raise questions about the polices investigative tactics and communication with the TWP.

Felarcas attorneys obtained numerous examples of CHP officers working directly with the TWP, often treating the white nationalist group as victims and the anti-fascists as suspects.

Members
Members of the group called Antifa Sacramento (Anti-Fascism Action) outside the state capitol building in 2016. Photograph: Sacramento/Rex/Shutterstock

The TWP is intimately allied with neo-Nazi and other hardline racist organizations and advocates for racially pure nations, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its leaders have praised Trump, and the group claimed to bring more than 100 people to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, where a counter-protester was killed.

In one phone call with Doug McCormack, identified by police as the TWP affiliate who acquired the permit for the Sacramento rally, CHP investigator Donovan Ayres warned him that police might have to release his name in response to a public records requests. The officer said he would try to protect McCormack.

Im gonna suggest that we hold that or redact your name or something until this gets resolved, Ayres told McCormack, adding that he didnt know who had requested records of the permit and noting, If I did, I would tell you.

Ayress reports noted that McCormack was armed at the rally with a knife.

The officers write-up about an African American anti-fascist activist included a photo of him at the hospital after the rally and noted that he had been stabbed in the abdomen, chest and hand.

Ayres, however, treated the protester like a suspect in the investigation. The police investigator recommended the man be charged with 11 offenses, including disturbing the peace, conspiracy, assault, unlawful assembly and wearing a mask to evade police.

As evidence, Ayres provided Facebook photos of the man holding up his fist. The officer wrote that the mans Black Power salute and his support for anti-racist activism demonstrated his intent and motivation to violate the civil rights of the neo-Nazi group. He was ultimately not charged.

Ayress report also noted Felarcas political activism in great detail, referencing her activism on behalf of students of color and womens rights protests.

This is a textbook case of a political witch-hunt and selective prosecution, Shanta Driver, one of Felarcas attorneys, said in an interview.

Officers also worked with TWP member Derik Punneo to try to identify anti-fascist activists, recordings revealed. Officers interviewed Punneo in jail after he was arrested for an unrelated domestic violence charge. Audio recordings captured investigators saying they brought photos to show him, hoping he could help them identify anti-fascist activists.

The officers said, Were pretty much going after them, and assured him: Were looking at you as a victim.

Ayress report noted that Punneo was armed with a knife at the neo-Nazi rally and that one stabbing victim told officers he believed Punneo was responsible. Using video footage, Ayres also noted that Punneo was in the vicinity of another victim at the time he was injured, but the officer said the evidence ultimately wasnt clear.

Punneo and McCormack, who could not be reached for comment, were not charged. Ayress report included images and names of three other TWP-affiliated men who he said were armed with knives, but who also have faced no charges.

Several
Several people were stabbed at the rally, where rightwing extremists clashed with leftwing counter-protesters. Photograph: Paul Kitagaki Jr./AP

The CHP declined to comment.

In a response filed on Thursday, prosecutors said every assertion in the motion to dismiss is inaccurate or fabricated and accused Felarcas lawyers of using the filing to make a political statement. The response also repeatedly blamed the stabbing victims for ignoring the district attorneys inquiries: Despite the fact that we have not gained the cooperation of these victims, the investigation to hold their attackers responsible continues forward.

Prosecutors also said the charges were based on video evidence and argued that no one is beneath the protection of the law, no matter how repugnant his or her rhetoric or misguided his or her ideals.

Allegations of police bias and collusion with neo-Nazis have emerged in similar cases across the US. Last year, US prosecutors targeting anti-Trump protesters in Washington DC relied on video evidence from a far-right group with a record of deceptive tactics.

At an Oregon alt-right event, police allowed a member of a rightwing militia-style group to help officers arrest an anti-fascist activist.

Police in Charlottesville were widely accused of standing by as Nazis attacked protesters, and a black man who was badly beaten by white supremacists was later charged with a felony.

Sam Menefee-Libey, an activist who advocated for protesters charged for Inauguration Day rallies last year, said the government has repeatedly gone to great lengths to target anti-fascists: We have patterns of acknowledged and unacknowledged overlaps between the interest of ultra-right nationalist organizations and the police and prosecutors offices.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/09/california-police-white-supremacists-counter-protest

The Strange Case of the Look-Alike Credit Cards

The Strange Case of the Look-Alike Credit Cards

by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

First National Bank of Marin was a small Las Vegas lender with an image problem. Federal investigators accused it of issuing credit cards to strapped consumers, then piling on so many fees and obligations that some new clients couldn’t buy a sandwich without hitting their credit limit. But by 2006, it had settled the claims and was ready to expand. It changed its name to Credit One Bank and adopted a new logo, placing the company’s signature swoosh above its name, arcing leftward from the letter O.

Source: Credit One Bank

If that looks familiar, there’s a good reason. In 2008, credit-card titan Capital One Financial Corp. unveiled an almost identical insignia, adding a swoosh that arced leftward from the letter O.

Source: Capital One Financial Corp.

And so began the improbable story of how one of the top U.S. card lenders—admired in the industry for its innovative marketing—gave an accidental advertising boost to a then-obscure rival. That company would soon take off, reshaping the competitive landscape for subprime lending to U.S. consumers.

To outsiders, it looked like a classic branding trick: an underdog trying to mimic the look of an established company, hoping new customers wouldn’t notice. Except Credit One had adopted the logo first. “We had already invested heavily in the rebranding, and then their thing popped up,” says Sam Dommer, Credit One’s longtime chief marketing officer. “It would have been easier for them to change, but I think they were far down the road with their investment.” A Capital One spokesman declined to comment.

As the twin logos first emerged, lawyers on both sides bristled, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The companies let it be. In the years that followed, Capital One poured more than $13 billion into marketing, flooding televisions with its quirky “What’s in Your Wallet?” commercials, sponsoring music festivals and athletics, and stuffing mailboxes with enticements. Its business soared. And so did Credit One’s.

Nowadays, if you tarnish your FICO score and need an all-purpose credit card, chances are good that you’ll sign up with one of those two companies. By the end of last year, Capital One had issued more than 32 million cards to consumers with FICO scores below 660, according to data from the Nilson Report, an industry publication, and Capital One filings. Credit One, which largely caters to subprime borrowers, has issued 9.7 million, according to Nilson.

Subprime is such a big part of American lending that even among all types of issuers of Visa- and Mastercard-branded cards, Credit One now ranks ninth—up from 25th place in 2005. This year, J.D. Power and Associates decided the company is big enough to include in an annual customer-satisfaction ranking for the industry. It came in last. 

Credit One attributes its growth to a data-driven approach to identifying and luring new customers. It also helped that many banks pulled back from subprime lending after the 2008 financial crisis, opening the way for a more aggressive pitch to win market share. So how important was a mere logo? Marketing consultants say the Vegas company hit the jackpot.

“Capital One has spent years building up a very powerful brand image behind that identity,” says Allen Adamson, founder of Brand Simple Consulting. “I suspect a majority of their customers are unclear that they’re not one and the same company.” The similar looks sometimes befuddle consumers, who vent online about mix-ups. “I called Capital One and they told me I didn’t have an account with them and to look at the card,” one person wrote on consumeraffairs.com, a consumer complaint website where dozens of Credit One users have said they thought they were signing up with the bigger lender. 

Credit One is taking some steps to differentiate itself. Last year, it unveiled the Credit One Nascar credit card—its first nationwide co-branding deal. In November, it became the main sponsor for driver Kyle Larson, one of the sport’s rising young stars. The company is also moving out of its longtime home, a low-profile building tucked between Las Vegas’s main airport and Interstate 215. This month, it’s opening a new 152,000-square-foot headquarters eight miles to the west, with sweeping views of the Red Rock Canyon mountains. The new offices take cues from Silicon Valley, with conference tables resembling ping pong tables.

The building also will house the company’s data center, one of the largest in the Southwest. Credit One says it pores over information on its cardholders and their transactions to identify new groups of people likely to respond to its ads and pay their bills. Several times a week, it applies those models to Experian Plc’s database of 220 million U.S. consumers, scoring potential customers. Then the mailers go out. “When we engage in a direct-mail campaign or any kind of marketing initiative, we’re not crossing our fingers, hoping it works,” Dommer says. “All these are based on statistical certainties.”

Last year, Credit One’s outstanding credit-card loans jumped 29 percent to $4.8 billion, making it the fastest-growing card provider among the nation’s 15 largest, according to the Nilson Report. Because the company is privately owned, it isn’t required to report how much it earns, and regulatory documents provide only a partial picture. A filing to the Federal Reserve, for example, shows it generated $427 million in income from fees including servicing and credit-protection charges during this year’s first nine months. It is hard to compare this with what the company earns on interest: The form lists only $1.2 million in interest income because the firm holds many loans outside its banking unit. A spokeswoman did not elaborate.

Credit One is owned by Sherman Financial Group, which also runs one of the largest consumer-debt buyers in the country. When Credit One borrowers don’t pay their balances, the company sells those obligations at discounted prices to Sherman and other debt collectors.

The company has a history of getting into trouble over fees. Once owned by car dealer Kjell Qvale, Bank of Marin moved from California to Vegas in the late 1990s. In 2001, to settle an investigation by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the company promised to set aside $4 million to repay customers who cancelled their cards after realizing fees and a security deposit would leave them with little or no credit to make purchases. In 2004, it agreed to set aside $10 million for allegedly encouraging people to charge security deposits to new cards, leaving some with less than $3 in available credit. In both cases, the bank didn't admit wrongdoing.

Consumers still hate the lender’s fees, often citing them in forums. Others grumble about waiting on hold, only to reach customer-service agents who aren’t prepared to help resolve issues. While fees can vary among cards, one of the company’s Platinum Visa cards comes with an annual membership fee of $75 for the first year, billed upfront, even on cards that come with credit limits of a couple hundred dollars. On some cards, the company offers no grace period, meaning that as soon as a purchase posts to a cardholder’s account, it begins accruing interest.

Jim Miller, senior director of the banking practice at J.D. Power, says Credit One’s poor showing in this year’s survey wasn’t a surprise, given that it works with people at the bottom of the credit spectrum. He says lenders in that market charge heftier fees and rates to offset potential losses. “Customers are less satisfied when they pay interest and don’t accrue much in rewards,” no matter who the issuer is, Miller says. “So if you have more of those customers in your portfolio, you would tend to have lower satisfaction.” And the fees and rates that Credit One charges aren’t “really unusual in the subprime category for an unsecured card,” says Beverly Harzog, a consumer advocate who’s written a book on paying off credit-card balances. “This is pretty much what you need to expect.”

Dommer says Credit One’s own surveys show it has above-average net-promoter scores—a measure of how willing clients are to recommend its products to other people. The company  also points to reviews of its mobile app, which outrank those of American Express Co., the leader of this year’s J.D. Power rankings. Credit One is dedicated to improving, Dommer says. Whenever clients point out a problem, managers take note, meet, and figure out how to prevent it from happening again. “Your card-member relationship is everything,” he says. “And if we screw that up, then we’re in big trouble.”

    BOTTOM LINE – Credit One has come out of nowhere to become a big player in subprime credit card lending. A lucky coincidence in logos may have helped.

    Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/the-strange-case-of-the-look-alike-credit-cards

    Teslas Newest Promises Break the Laws of Batteries

    Teslas Newest Promises Break the Laws of Batteries

    by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Elon Musk knows how to make promises. Even by his own standards, the promises made last week while introducing two new Tesla vehicles—the heavy-duty Semi Truck and the speedy Roadster—are monuments of envelope pushing. To deliver, according to close observers of battery technology, Tesla would have to far exceed what is currently thought possible.

    Take the Tesla Semi: Musk vowed it would haul an unprecedented 80,000 pounds for 500 miles on a single charge, then recharge 400 miles of range in 30 minutes. That would require, based on Bloomberg estimates, a charging system that's 10 times more powerful than one of the fastest battery-charging networks on the road today—Tesla’s own Superchargers. 

    The diminutive Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in an electric car. 

    These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado. In some cases, experts suspect Tesla might be banking on technological improvements between now and the time when new vehicles are actually ready for delivery.

    “I don't think they're lying,” Jaffe said. “I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work.”

    Here are four of Tesla's most provocative battery claims—and an attempt to puzzle out how they might be achieved.

    Truck Range: Haul 80,000 Pounds for 500 Miles 

    Photographer: Tom Randall/Bloomberg

    When Musk took the stage in an airport hangar in Hawthorne, California, his first proclamation was the Tesla Semi's range: A fully-loaded truck would be able to travel at highway speeds for 500 miles.  The previous record-holder, unveiled by Daimler in October, is a truck that maxes out at 220 miles. 

    A heavy-duty, long-range truck is the toughest vehicle to electrify while still turning a profit, said Menahem Anderman, president of Total Battery Consulting Inc., in Oregon House, California. Tesla may be doing it to prove a point. “If you can make a semi truck with batteries,” Anderman said, “then you can make everything else with batteries.”

    Tesla is making its trucks more efficient by reducing wind drag to levels that are comparable to those of sports cars. But even if Tesla achieves record-breaking efficiency for the truck, it would still require a battery capacity somewhere from 600 kilowatt hours to 1,000 kilowatt hours to deliver on Musk’s claims, according to estimates from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Split the difference, at 800 kWh, and it would mean a battery that weighs more than 10,000 pounds and costs more than $100,000—even before you build the truck around it. Tesla has priced the truck with 500-mile range at $180,000, less than the estimated prices of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, and says fuel savings will result in a two-year payback when compared to diesel. 

    One thing Tesla has going for it is the falling price of batteries. Musk may be banking on battery improvements between now to the early 2020s in order for its truck to make financial sense. The first Tesla Semis won't hit the road until late 2019; even then, production would probably start slowly. Most fleet operators will want to test the trucks before considering going all-in. By the time Tesla gets large orders, batteries should cost considerably less.

    Tesla Megachargers: 400 Miles in 30 Minutes  

    Musk’s claim that the truck will be able to accumulate 400 miles of charge in 30 minutes would allow the Semi to achieve the first true long-haul ranges in the industry. A driver might start the day with 500 miles of range, top off the battery at lunch, and be able to complete driving the U.S. legal limit of 11 hours in a day with range to spare. But doing so would require a charger unlike anything seen before. 

    “I don’t understand how that works,” said Salim Morsy, electric vehicle analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “I really don't.” Tesla is claiming charging speeds that are faster than anything available now, and its customers will pay well below average market rates to access the network.

    Tesla’s current generation of high-speed Superchargers have a power output of 120 kilowatts and can add about 180 miles to the battery in a Model S sedan in 30 minutes. But that’s for a passenger car, not a loaded truck. To meet Tesla’s claim of 400 miles in 30 minutes for a semi carrying 80,000 pounds would require its new Megachargers to achieve output of more than 1200 kW—or more than 10 times better than Tesla’s fastest chargers available today. 

    Joe Fath, fund manager for T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Tesla's seventh-largest shareholder, said that prior to the unveiling he thought Tesla's heavy-duty truck might be able to address about a quarter of the hauling tasks performed by the largest heavy-duty freight trucks, known as Class 8 semis. In North America alone, these big trucks account for about $30 billion in sales each year, according to industry data tracked by Bloomberg.

    The promises in Musk's presentation persuaded Fath that Tesla will be able to compete in nearly two-thirds of the Class 8 market. “If they execute,” he said, “they have a very big opportunity.”

    Guaranteed Charging Rates of 7 Cents per kWh 

    A new, 40-stall Supercharger station and customer lounge in Kettleman, California.

    The sticker price of any electric truck, regardless of size, is going to be higher than its diesel equivalent because of the batteries, which alone can cost as much as some standard diesel trucks. The $180,000 Tesla Semi will compete with diesels that cost as little as $100,000. The trick is to offset those higher upfront costs through lower maintenance and fuel savings.

    Perhaps Tesla's most head-scratching revelation is that it will guarantee truckers electricity rates of 7 cents per kilowatt hour. That could result in fuels savings of more than $30,000 a year for some truckers, according to Bloomberg estimates. Partly, Musk said, this will be done by adding solar power and massive battery packs at the charging stations.

    While the economics of such a plan vary by region, under any scenario that BNEF's Morsy expects, Tesla will be heavily subsidizing those electricity rates for customers. He estimated that Tesla will pay a minimum of 40 cents per kilowatt hour, on average, for every 7 cents paid by a trucking company. 

    “There's no way you can reconcile 7 cents a kilowatt hour with anything on the grid that puts a megawatt hour of energy into a battery,” Morsy said. “That simply does not exist.”

    That may sound like a disastrous financial plan, but it's no different from what Tesla does for its current Supercharger network. Tesla offers free electricity to most of its Model S and Model X customers while paying almost $1 per kilowatt hour to produce it, Morsy said. That amounts to a subsidy of as much as $1,000 per car in 2017.

    Many electric utilities base their commercial rates on the peak amount of electricity that a customer draws at one time, even if that peak occurs only for a brief period. Tesla’s Megacharger stations would incur extremely high charges by drawing so much power so quickly. The best chance for mitigating those charges are to build Megachargers at existing truck terminals that already draw a lot of power, Morsy said, and by adding massive battery packs that can spread demand over time. 

    From another perspective, these subsidies to support Megachargers could be a boon to Tesla’s balance sheet as it wades into an entirely new industry. It allows the company to maximize its upfront revenue by charging a lot for the trucks while spreading out the cost of building and operating the charging network over time. 

    A Tiny Roadster With a 620-Mile Range 

    Tesla's new Roadster

    Tesla claims that its new $200,000 Roadster is the quickest production car ever made, clocking zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds. Even crazier is the car’s unprecedented battery range: some 620 miles on a single charge. That's a longer range than any battery-powered vehicle on the road—almost twice as long as Tesla's class-leading Model S and Model X.  

    To achieve such power and range, Musk said the tiny Roadster will need to pack a massive 200-kilowatt-hour battery. That’s twice the size of any battery Tesla currently has on the road. Musk has previously said he won't be making the packs bigger on the Model S and Model X because of space constraints. So how can he double the pack size in the smaller Roadster?

    BNEF’s Morsy has a twofold answer. First, he expects Tesla will probably double-stack battery packs, one on top of the other, beneath the Roadster's floor. That creates some engineering problems for the battery-management system, but those should not be insurmountable. Still, Morsy said, the batteries required would be too large to fit in such a small frame.

    “I really don’t think the car you saw last week had the full 200 kilowatt hours in it,” Morsy said. “I don’t think it’s physically possible to do that right now.” 

    Again, Musk may be banking on the future. While Tesla began taking deposits on the Roadster immediately—$50,000 for the base model—the first vehicles won't be delivered until 2020. Meanwhile, battery density has been improving at a rate of 7.5 percent a year, meaning that by the time production starts, packs will be smaller and more powerful, even without a major breakthrough in battery chemistry.

    “The trend in battery density is, I think, central to any claim Tesla made about both the Roadster and the Semi,” Morsy said. “That’s totally fair. The assumptions on a pack in 2020 shouldn’t be the same ones you use today.”

    The Semi and Roadster unveilings raised many questions about Tesla’s battery capabilities and plans for expanding the markets in which electric vehicles are competitive. Even Musk may need a few more years to figure out all the answers. 

      Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-24/tesla-s-newest-promises-break-the-laws-of-batteries

      Elon Musk Channels Knight Rider With His Roadster-Semi Reveal

      Elon Musk Channels Knight Rider With His Roadster-Semi Reveal

      by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

      Tesla just unveiled the world’s fastest long-haul semi truck, which can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in only 5 seconds while pulling a trailer. The much-anticipated reveal was the subject of speculation for weeks, with observers wondering whether it would be a freight industry curiosity—or a transformation. The initial take is that it might be the latter.

      And that wasn’t even the biggest surprise of the night. 

      What followed was a scene straight out of the 1980s sci-fi TV show Knight Rider. With the trucks dominating a stage inside an airport hangar and a raucous crowd gathered around, the trailer of one of Tesla’s Semis tilted up, a cloud of smoke swirled, and out came an all new Tesla Roadster, a reprise of the vehicle that first defined the company as a maker of ultra-fast electric cars. Before the Model 3, Model X, and Model S, there was the Roadster. But this was something very different from the original. 

      The new Roadster is the quickest production car ever made, by a good margin, clocking 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds in the $200,000 base model version. Even crazier is the car’s unprecedented battery range: 620 miles on a single charge. At the invitation of Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, the crowd of Tesla owners and enthusiasts at the Hawthorne, California, airport jumped the barriers and swarmed the vehicles. 

      There’s a Tesla Roadster beneath this mob.
      Photographer: Tom Randall/Bloomberg

      “Wow, that was cool!” Toni Sacconaghi, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst, wrote in a report to clients after the event. “Tesla’s addressable market for Semi Trucks may be considerably larger than we had estimated.”

      Musk, 46, is known for being a showman, and Tesla is in the midst of a slower-than-promised rollout of the Model 3, the critical mass-production electric car that will make or break the automaker. The two new vehicles unveiled Thursday night could be seen as distractions at the very time when the company needs to be focused.

      As central as the Model 3 is to Tesla’s survival, though, the Semi and Roadster are formidable in their potential to generate revenue. Of the two, the most important for Tesla’s future, the future of transport electrification, and the environment in general is the Semi. 

      A matte black Semi and an even bigger trailer beside it. 
      Photographer: Tom Randall/Bloomberg

      The truck is a massive Class 8 Day Cab, capable of hauling a maximum vehicle weight of 80,000 pounds—pretty much the biggest long-haulers get—for a whopping 500 miles on a single charge, according to Musk. After the airport event, he sent potential fleet customers out in the Semis on endless breakneck loops along the runway. The trucks get to 60 mph just as quick as a Model 3.

      Beyond speed, the Semi’s range and charging time are significantly better than the expectations of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg before the event. This means the market Tesla is chasing is wide open. In North America alone, the diesel freight trucks in the Tesla Semi’s class account for about $30 billion in sales annually, or more than 250,000 new trucks, according to industry data tracked by Bloomberg.

      A view from the cockpit.
      Source: Tesla

      The Semi’s specs mean that a driver could put in almost 900 miles a day, only stopping to charge during a 30-minute lunch break, and picking up 400 miles of battery range while eating his sandwich. That’s faster than any charger capability today—possibly by an order of magnitude. Moreover, that 900 mile-a-day capacity is actually more driving than U.S. laws allow.  The two prototype Semis on display Thursday were day cabs, but Tesla plans to build a version with a sleeper cabin, too. 

      Given the Semi’s potential for long-distance hauling, the one remaining hurdle for luring truckers to electric is cost.

      Unfortunately, that’s something Musk didn’t address—at least not completely. While he claimed the truck would offer customers more than $200,000 in fuel savings with an impressive 2-year payback compared with diesel, he didn’t disclose many of the assumptions behind those calculations, including the most basic: the upfront cost of the truck. A payback period of of 2 years is exactly what’s needed for Tesla to garner a big interest from the freight industry, according to the average of six analysts surveyed before the event. 

      Musk said Tesla will guarantee low electricity prices of 7 cents a kilowatt hour, significantly below average U.S. prices, which the company will ensure by deploying solar panels and massive batteries. The truck has a drag coefficient of 0.36, which is sleeker than a Bugatti Chiron supercar. The Semi’s wheels, trailer gaps, and undercarriage are sealed up to reduce  drag. 

      The Roadster.

      Tesla has begun taking reservations for the Semi, at $5,000 a piece for delivery in 2019. Bloomberg was first to confirm initial Semi orders, from a Michigan grocery store chain and then from Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Meijer Inc., and J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. People familiar with Tesla’s Semi program said more companies would be disclosing orders soon. Roadster deposits, meanwhile, start at $50,000 for the $200,000 base model for delivery in 2020.

      Both of the vehicles set new records for range and speed, and will become the targets to beat for companies going electric. 

      For more on Tesla, check out the   podcast:

       

        Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-17/elon-musk-channels-knight-rider-with-his-roadster-semi-reveal

        Teslas Model 3 Moment of Truth Is Here

        Teslas Model 3 Moment of Truth Is Here

        by • Cars • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

        When Tesla Inc. reports third quarter earnings Wednesday after the bell, the overwhelming focus will be on the production ramp of the Model 3—the more affordable electric car that is critical to Tesla’s mainstream success and profitability.

        Almost half a million people have placed $1,000 reservations for the car, but so far, only employees and close friends of the company have gotten them. Last month, Tesla reported that it made just 260 Model 3s in the third quarter, well below the 1,500 it forecast in its August letter to shareholders. Tesla hinted at “production bottlenecks” at both its auto plant in Fremont, California, and the “Gigafactory” for battery production in Sparks, Nevada, without detailing what they are or when they will be resolved. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has said that Tesla will achieve a production tempo of 5,000 Model 3s per week by the end of the year: will he reaffirm that figure or walk it back? Wall Street, and consumers, will be watching.

        “Tesla may not update its prior guide of achieving a run-rate of 5K Model 3 units per week by the end of 2017, other than to point out that the exponential S-Curve may be shifted out a few weeks,” said analyst Brian Johnson of Barclay’s in a research note to clients Tuesday. “We will press to understand how many vehicles were produced quarter-to-date—a number management should know.” 

        What with SpaceX launches, Boring Co. tunnels, and dark warnings about the threat of artificial intelligence, Musk already has several irons in the fire. But Tesla is the center of the Muskian universe, and the second half of 2017 was to be the test of whether he could make enough Model 3s, and make them fast enough, to justify the billions of dollars already spent.

        These are some of the questions that analysts will probably be asking:

        1. What exactly are the “production bottlenecks” and are they primarily at Tesla’s gigafactory?

        Inside Tesla’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada.
        Photographer: Troy Harvey/Bloomberg

        While much of the speculation has centered on the company’s Fremont plant, its gargantuan battery facility in Nevada is also a critical part of the production story. In an August letter to shareholders, Tesla stressed that the Model 3 drive units, as well as battery packs made with new cells, are being built on new manufacturing lines at the Gigafactory.

        More telling is that Musk, 46, appears to be spending more time there, tweeting Thursday that he’s been camping on the roof “because it was less time than driving to a hotel room in Reno.” And when he said camping, he wasn’t kidding. Meanwhile, Tesla shares have returned 50 percent so far this year, but has been down more than 6 percent this week below the Bloomberg consensus one-year target price.

        2. How much cash has Tesla spent?
         

        A Tesla Model 3 
        Photographer: Troy Harvey/Bloomberg

        Tesla had roughly $3 billion in cash on hand at the end of the second quarter and tapped the debt markets in August, raising $1.8 billion in its debut bond sale. The company has always expected to spend heavily in the second half of the year on the Model 3 as kinks in the lines are worked out and production accelerates. 

        “We hope for a more detailed plan for the company’s expected cash burn,” wrote analyst Jeffrey Osborne of Cowen & Co. LLC in an Oct. 19 research note. The company “still has not provided a realistic plan for [capital expenditures] that reflects both the company’s ambitions as well as cash generating ability.”

        3. How close is Tesla to completing plans for an assembly plant in China?

        A Tesla  showroom in Shanghai, China.
        Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

        In June, Tesla said it’s “working with the Shanghai Municipal Government to explore the possibility of establishing a manufacturing facility in the region to serve the Chinese market” and expected to more “clearly define our plans for production in China by the end of the year.” If Tesla could set up a plant in China, it could compete better with local rivals because it would eliminate a 25 percent import tariff that makes Tesla’s cars more costly for Chinese consumers.

        4. Is labor strife affecting production at the Fremont factory?

        Tesla’s Fremont, Calif. factory.
        Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

        Tesla has roughly 33,000 employees globally, a figure that ballooned after the carmaker acquired SolarCity in November 2016. And the company still has more than 2,300 job openings listed.

        The United Auto Workers is trying to organize some of the more than 10,000 employees at Tesla’s Fremont facility. Last month, the company reportedly fired hundreds of workers, citing annual performance reviews. The UAW filed an unfair labor practices claim with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging the company harassed, intimidated and eventually terminated some workers who had supported unionizing. Tesla has denied any wrongdoing.

        5. What’s up with Autopilot?

        An employee drives a Tesla Model S equipped with Autopilot in Amsterdam.
        Photographer: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg

        Musk has promised that Tesla’s driver assistance platform, known as Autopilot, has the hardware necessary to enable full self-driving. But this year has seen repeated turnover on its Autopilot team, and there’s no sign of the promised “Enhanced Autopilot” features, let alone the “Full Self Driving” goal he unveiled a year ago. Musk also promised an autonomous cross-country drive from California to New York by the end of 2017 but appeared to push that timeline back a bit on his last earnings call.

        Elon Musk Has Spent a Year Being Wrong About Self-Driving Teslas

        Tesla used to be seen as a leader in autonomous driving. But with the Autopilot timeline slipping and many other automakers promising 2018 vehicles with similar features, expect a lot of questions about Tesla’s road map to full self-driving.

        For more on Tesla, check out the   podcast:

         

          Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-01/tesla-s-model-3-moment-of-truth-is-here