Connect with us

News

Tesla updates ‘My Tesla’ page for Model 3 reservation holders; Suppliers question timeline

Tesla has sent its first update to Model 3 reservation holders. The updates tell customers they will be contacted by the company when it is time to configure their car. The update shows the Model 3 in blue for the first time.

Published

on

Model 3 reservation holders may feel a tad closer to realizing their dreams of ownership knowing that Tesla has just updated their My Tesla page with an image along with minor details of the company’s much anticipated mass market electric vehicle. The update provides depositors that plunked down $1000 for their place in line to configure the Model 3 confirmation that the company will begin deliveries towards late next year. The page reads as follows:

“What’s Next?

Your Model 3 was reserved on <insert your date of reservation>. Deliveries will begin in late 2017. You’ll be invited to configure based on the date of your reservation. If you have any questions, please refer to our FAQ. We invite you to submit suggestions or feedback within our forums. Engage with other future owners to share your excitement or ideas. To withdraw your reservation, you may request a cancellation.”

Tesla Model 3 update

Photo courtesy of Matt Simmons

The My Tesla page update shows the Model 3 in blue for the first time, but also provides a link to allow reservation holders to cancel their spot in line if they wish to do so.

In other Model 3 news, the press is reporting grumblings from various suppliers and industry observers about the accelerated production schedule for the Model 3 that Elon Musk announced two weeks ago.

Jeff Schuster of industry forecaster LMC Automotive said the goals were “implausible,” in part because Tesla’s battery factory in Reno, Nevada, was unfinished. Aluminum, lithium and other materials – already in short supply – “could be another limiting factor,” said Sam Fiorani of AutoForecast Solutions.

Other industry observers tell NBC News that getting a production line ready often takes 2 to 3 years. Chrysler is converting its Sterling Heights assembly plant to build more Ram 1500 pickup trucks. It wants to boost production to 300,000 vehicles a year — a 50% increase.

“FCA already has the talent and the money, and the underlying machinery is already installed in the plant,” said one longtime supply sales executive. “They’re aiming to be up and running in 2018, so they have two years – and suppliers are wondering if they’ll make that deadline.”

Ramping up to produce ten times as many cars as today in just 18 months seems a near impossibility to many experienced auto industry analysts. The company still is soliciting bids for parts and machinery, according to several industry sources. Automaking consultant Ron Harbour of Oliver Wyman said increasing production at the Fremont plant to 500,000 vehicles in 2018 would require more stamping, welding and assembly machinery that “could take up to 18 months to order and install.”

Advertisement
-

The fact that Tesla is doing this at a time when many other manufacturers are retooling factories to increase production places additional constraints on the company’s proposed timeline, a Detroit based supplier sales executive tells NBC. “I’d be really surprised if he can launch production by next July,” said Frank Faga, a Detroit-based auto manufacturing consultant. “But this is a guy who says he’s going to Mars. Who am I to say he can’t do this?”

Hat tip to Matt Simmons @Teslapittburgh; Source: NBC News

"I write about technology and the coming zero emissions revolution."

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end

Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.

Published

on

By

the boring company's vegas loop entrance

The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.

The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.

Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.

Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.

Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.

Advertisement
-

Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence

Published

on

Credit: Tesla Asia | X

Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.

Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”

The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.

Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.

Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.

Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.

Advertisement
-

Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.

Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done

Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook

Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.

Published

on

By

X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.

X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.

The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.

Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity

The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.

Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.

Advertisement
-

The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.

xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.

OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading