Issue 11  May 13th 2016

Tesla plans to seriously ramp up production of its cars, but first the electric car maker will become a leading manufacturing company, CEO Elon Musk said during a conference call on Wednesday.

Tesla plans to ramp production of its vehicles to half a million units by 2018 and one million units by 2020. Previously, the company had aimed to reach the 500,000 mark by 2020. To meet these highly ambitious goals, though, Musk said the company must begin to expand its focus.

"Thus far, I think we have done a good job on design and tech on our products, the Model S and the Model X. We are generally regarded by critics as having technologically the best cars in the world," Musk said. "The key thing we need to achieve in the future is to also be the leader in manufacturing."

The auto industry’s disruptor-in-chief has done it again. With the public reveal of his Tesla Model 3 in April, Elon Musk did something the auto industry has failed to do in more than half a century: get people truly excited about a new car. So excited, in fact, that about 400,000 of them have reportedly plunked down a $1,000 deposit for a vehicle that’s said to be still more than a year away from the showroom.

The last time the auto industry saw anything like this, the Beatles were on top of the Billboard charts, Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and the tragedy of Vietnam had yet to sear America’s psyche. The car that did it was, of course, Ford’s original Mustang.

Earlier this week, a 18-year old took her father’s Tesla Model S for a ride with 4 of her friends in Pullach, Germany. She was reportedly driving at an excessive speed and lost control in a turn. The vehicle jumped off-road “and flew 25 meters [82 ft] through the air” then subsequently crashed in a field at full speed before rolling over at least once.

All five were all able to exit the vehicle without the help of the first responders, though their injuries were described as “serious but non-life threatening” and they were transported to the hospital by helicopter.

An engine in the front could have exercised pressure on the passenger cabin, but the lack of engine in the font of the Model S acts as a giant crumple zone to absorb the energy of the impact. Tesla CEO Elon Musk likes to use the analogy of a pool to describe the effect a crumple zone has during an impact:

“it’s just like jumping into a pool from a high diving board — you want a deep pool and one without rocks in it.”

The Stanford Solar Car Project participates in the World Solar Challenge, which consists of a solar car race across 3000 km (1864 miles) from Darwin to Adelaide through the desert in Australia.

Tesla’s CTO said: “Solar car team’s technologies are often ahead of their time in terms of looking at next best generation of batteries, best solar panels, best motors and efficient converters, things like that.”

Straubel added: “I had many friends that were part of the team throughout my time there and I recruited most of the people from the team, and we started Tesla. It was a key thing in the beginning of Tesla.”

He then explained how the project still affects the company and its recruiting effort today – 13 years after its founding: “I think it matters more than most classes you can take. I mean it’s one of the things that even today at Tesla we look at on resumes and we consider it higher than GPAs, and perhaps even higher than what classes they decided to take.”