Featured Quote
"We need to appeal to the people – educate people to sort of revolt against this and to fight the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry which is unrelenting and enormous."
— Elon Musk
Photo from NASA Johnson, Quote from electrek
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Elon Musk News
Elon Musk Calls For People To Revolt Against The Propaganda Of The Fossil Fuel Industry
During his talk at the World Energy Innovation Forum (WEIF) today [Wednesday], Tesla CEO Elon Musk called for people to revolt against the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry and he even described a tactic he believes the industry used to smear his companies.
The CEO implied that the LA Times article from last year that misleadingly asserted that Musk’s companies received $4.9 billion in subsidies originated from the fossil fuel industry.
Musk suggested that the report was planted to counter the IMF study that found that the fossil fuel industry was receiving the equivalent of ~$5 trillion in subsidy a year. Both reports came out around the same time.
Photo from Electrek.co
Tesla’s Elon Musk keeps promising the impossible. I think I know why.
I don’t believe that Musk’s insane-seeming ambitions are just about motivating his employees and suppliers. They’re also about motivating Musk.
Musk is the kind of person who runs on adrenaline, works best—or perhaps only—under insane pressure, and is gripped by existential dread the moment he finds himself working on a problem that feels the slightest bit quotidian or mundane. And he expects the same of the people who work for him.
Sending a rocket to Mars is a problem that gets Musk’s blood flowing. So is building an electric supercar, building the greatest sedan ever made, and building the biggest battery factory the world has ever seen. For that matter, so is running both Tesla and SpaceX at the same time, while also helping to lead SolarCity.
But mass production? Logistics, supply chains, assembly lines? Taking orders, fulfilling orders, setting and meeting reasonable timetables? Those aren’t Muskian problems. They’re normal human problems. And that petrifies him.
Elon Musk at the ‘Future Transport Solutions’ conference in Oslo
In this 35 minute video Elon Musk talks about the Model 3, affordable EVs, fossil fuel subsidies, the future of autonomous vehicles, dying on Mars, and much more.
SpaceX
SpaceX Just Landed Its Falcon 9 Rocket On A Barge For The Second Time In A Row!
SpaceX has made another successful landing of a rocket stage at sea. The Falcon-9 booster returned to a drone ship off the Florida coast just a few minutes after it had sent a Japanese satellite on its way to orbit. It is the second at-sea touchdown for California's SpaceX company, having completed the same task last month.
This latest effort was all the more impressive however because the rocket was carrying much more speed when it made its return. SpaceX officials have said that recovering boosters used on missions that orbit geostationary satellites will always be more difficult because of the high velocity required to put those platforms in the right part of the sky.
On confirmation of the latest landing, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted the joke: "May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar."
SpaceX Hired a Superhero Suit Designer to Create Its Upcoming Spacesuit
Jose Fernandez is the founder and lead designer at Ironhead Studios, the company responsible for designing numerous superhero suits for the big screen. The studio has tackled Spiderman, Thor, and most recently, Batman. But the next big suit with Ironhead's touch sounds like it'll be for real-life spacemen. Namely, the ones that will work for our real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk.
Photo from SpaceX
Tesla
Elon Musk says Tesla’s Bioweapon Defense Mode ‘is real’ after life-saving car demo
“You can literally survive a military-grade bio attack by sitting in your car,” Tesla says.
The Tesla team says that this technology, over anything it can do to avoid car crashes, will save the most lives as pollution kills three million people in the world every year, according to the World Health Organization.
Photo from Tesla
Tesla’s Fremont factory could manufacture up to 1 million vehicles per year, says Musk
Following Tesla’s announcement that it plans to double its total production output to 500,000 vehicles in 2018 and 1 million in 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked by analysts how and where he plans to manufacture those vehicles.
While the company has been talking about plans to build more vehicle factories in Europe and China, Tesla’s Fremont factory remains its only full-fledged car manufacturing facility. Company officials have always referred to the Fremont plant’s total capacity to be around 500,000 cars per year once optimized, which is what Toyota and GM were producing when they owned the factory.
During the conference call with financial analysts, Musk said that he sees a path to Tesla producing up to 1 million cars per year in Fremont – more than twice what Toyota and GM were producing.
“Well, I think it is actually feasible, maybe not advisable, but feasible to do it with just Fremont and the Gigafactory. We actually believe that Fremont and the Gigafactory could scale to a million vehicles. Whether that’s actually wise is a separate question…”
Photo from Maurizio Pesce
Tesla will be hosting a “massive” job fair to hire “hundreds” of new production workers this weekend
As Tesla is looking to almost double its annual vehicle production every year for the next few years, it has to significantly increase its headcount, which currently stands at just over 15,000 employees. Now Tesla is reportedly set to go on a hiring spree this weekend to hire “hundreds” of “production assembly associates” at a “massive” job fair in Fremont, California.
Hyperloop
French railways invest in 700mph inter-city 'hyperloop' super-tube train
The SNCF, creator of the high-speed train concept, have decided to invest Euros 80m in one of two American companies which are developing the “hyperloop”... Promoters claim that the 350-mile LA to San Francisco hyperloop would cost only £5bn to build – compared to an estimated £43bn for HS2 which is much shorter.
Photo from Hyperloop Tech
SolarCity
Elon Musk is going to make the sun shine at night with a new SolarCity/Tesla Energy project
SolarCity will produce the electricity, Tesla Energy will store it – and the SolarCity Utilities Services will deliver it to you at night. Recently, Tesla said they would install more energy storage with Solarcity in 2016 than the USA installed in 2015. This morning SolarCity put out two press releases – one announcing the focus on Utility and Grid Services and a second regarding a 13MWAC solar power systems and at least 1.5 megawatts/6 megawatt-hour of storage with the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative.
These two press releases along with prior projects, like the massive 52 MWHr TeslaEnergy project in Hawaii, show that SolarCity is ready to move far beyond residential solar power kits. The massive size of these energy storage projects shows how serious Elon Musk is about batteries, and taking the fight to the fossil fuel companies.