Issue 13  May 27th 2016

The fastest SUV in the world squares off with the quickest SUV in the world on this episode of Head 2 Head. The 600hp Germano-British Bentley Bentayga can reach speeds of 187 mph, making it the fastest SUV of all time. But the Tesla Model X P90D with Ludicrous Mode, can rip off a 3.2-second 0-to-60. Which is faster through the quarter-mile? We drag race the two to find out. Then we pit them against a pair of Alfa Romeo 4C Spiders. Why? You’ll need to watch to find out. But trust us, it’s worth your time.

Just a week ago, Tesla (TSLA) announced a new public stock offering to raise between $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion – depending on the underwriters exercising their option to purchase additional shares – in order to finance its ambitious Model 3 production program.

In a SEC filing today, Tesla confirmed having closed the offering and that the net proceeds were “approximately $1.7 billion, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.” As disclosed in the announcement of the capital raise, Tesla will use the bulk of the proceeds to finance its new plan for the production ramp of the Model 3:

“Capital supports accelerated ramp of Model 3 Because of the overwhelming demand that it has received for Model 3, Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to accelerate the ramp of Model 3. As noted in the Company’s first quarter shareholder letter, Tesla intends to start volume production and deliveries of Model 3 in late 2017 and to accelerate its 500,000 unit build plan from 2020 to 2018. Proceeds may be used for working capital and other general corporate purposes as well.”

Tesla’s hiring of the outspoken Dahn suggests that Musk is interested in hearing a clear-eyed view of the challenges at hand, and prepared to question his own assumptions. Dahn is known for publicly calling out the shortcomings of his colleagues’s inventions, all in the name of honest science, he says, and himself is a pioneer of one of the world’s leading energy chemistries, known by the acronym NMC. Musk, meanwhile, has publicly ridiculed NMC while championing a rival chemistry called NCA.

Dahn told Quartz that at Tesla, he will be seeking the same objectives as everyone in the industry: low cost, high energy density, and long battery life. But “whatever it takes,” an operational mantra he said he picked up in conversation with Kurt Kelty, Telsa’s battery director, will be his rule. “Those are the goals, and that’s how we’re going to do it,” Dahn said. “We’re open to anything that makes sense.”

Sterling Anderson is a veteran MIT researcher and he was in charge of the Model X program at Tesla before joining the Autopilot team. He released some very interesting nuggets of information today on how Tesla handles this very sensitive semi autonomous driving system, which ultimately will become a fully autonomous system.

While Tesla owners have driven around 100 million miles on Autopilot, Anderson reveals that the fleet Autopilot hardware-equipped cars has collectively driven 780 million miles. The difference of miles driven with Autopilot on and off is crucial to Tesla’s development process. Anderson explains:

“We first install (the Autopilot system) in a logging fashion across 70,000 vehicles. We watch over 10’s of millions of miles with the new (Autopilot) features not turned on. We only turn it on when we know it is empirically safer.”

Tesla basically turned its fleet of vehicles into an incredible data gathering asset for the Autopilot program before enabling the software. Tesla is now gathering more data from autonomous miles driven in a day than Google’s program has logged since its inception in 2009.

"Of course, this isn't the first time Musk has been compared to Ford, but the parallel in the production data is striking. Tesla first surpassed 10,000 deliveries in 2013—the same milestone Ford hit in 1909. By 1916—just seven years later—the Model T hit Musk’s goal right on schedule and produced 501,462 cars. Maybe the 2020 plan isn't out reach for Tesla." Note: Musk has moved that plan forward by two years to 2018.

Tesla attributed its early difficulties in penetrating the Chinese car market in part to misconceptions about charging electric vehicles in the country. Those misconceptions are most often due to little knowledge of electric vehicles in general. The situation is changing fast as EVs are becoming increasingly common in mainland China thanks to several government incentives and the fast growing electric scooter market.

‘Tesla China’ has been organizing open door days for kindergarten students to visit its service centers and learn about electric vehicles. The events highlight the differences between the technologies powering electric vehicles and gasoline-powered cars.