electric vehicles

Tesla Inc – Manufacturing Electric Vehicles And Green Energy.

Founded in 2003, Tesla Inc is currently one of the well-known companies especially when it comes to manufacturing electric vehicles and green energy. The company also designs battery energy storage, solar panels, solar roof tiles, and other related products that help in minimizing the usage of non-renewable resources. When talking about Tesla Inc, we find pictures of Elon Musk crawling in the media with big headlines. But, the original founders of the company are Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. The founders named the company Tesla to pay a tribute to the famous scientist and inventor, Nikola Tesla. Tesla’s main markets are Europe, North America, Oceania, and East and West Asia. Elon Musk is the current CEO of the company and he is serving in this position since 2008.

Early Days

The two founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning officially incorporated Tesla on July 1, 2003. They served as the CEO and CFO of the company respectively. When Tesla Inc was founded, Eberhard expressed his interest that he wanted to build a car manufacturer that is a technology company as well. As the number of employees started increasing, Ian Wright joined as the third member of the company. In early 2004, the company’s Series A funding round took place in which it raised $7.5 million and the major contribution of $6.5 million was from Elon Musk. Thus, Musk became the largest shareholder of the company and he was also made the Chairman of the Board of Directors. In May 2004, J. B. Straubel joined the company as its CTO. In 2009, after a lawsuit was settled, Musk, Wright, and Straubel became the co-founders of the company along with the original founders.

After Musk became one of the c-founders of the company, he participated very actively. The main target of the company was to start with a premium sports car and then eventually shift to mainstream and more affordable vehicles. Tesla’s Series B funding round took place in February 2006 in which it raised $13 million followed by a Series C funding round after a few months in which it raised $40 million. Google’s co-founders and Jeff Skoll, former eBay President also invested in the company. A year later, Tesla raised $45 million in a Series D funding round. In 2008, the original co-founders left the company and Musk succeeded as the new CEO. He started the production of Roadster in the same year.

Tesla Going Public

To expand the production of various models, Tesla bought what today is known as Tesla Factory from Toyota in 2010. The deal was closed for $42 million. In the same year, the company offered an IPO and became the first American car company after Ford to go public. After a couple of years, Tesla discontinued the production of the Roadster and launched the Model S luxury sedan. This model became Motor Trend Car of the Year in 2013. The company also rolled out Tesla Autopilot, a driver-assistant system in 2014 and eventually started shipping all its cars with the same technology.

In 2015, Tesla entered the energy storage market and within a year acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion. As Tesla started expanding its business to the energy sector, the company changed its name from Tesla Motors to Tesla in 2017. In the same year, the company started selling the Model 3 sedan which became the world’s best-selling plug-in electric car in 2018. In 2019, the company opened its first “Gigafactory” outside the US in China and it was built within six months. Next year, the company started delivering its fifth vehicle model, the Model Y crossover. The future products of the company are Roadster (second generation), Tesla Semi, and Cybertruck.

Elon Musk – Co-founder and CEO

Elon Musk is one of the most prominent businessmen and investors in the world. Apart from being the CEO of Tesla, he is also the founder, CEO, and chief engineer at SpaceX. He also founded The Boring Company and co-founded Neuralink and OpenAI. According to both Forbes and Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is currently the wealthiest man in the world. His entrepreneurial journey started when he co-founded a web software company called Zip2 along with his brother. He is also the President of the Musk Foundation, an organization that donates to scientific research and education.

Annasha

Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more

FORD-VW autonomous and electric vehicles

Ford-Volkswagen Alliance will Now Focus on Development of Autonomous and Electric Vehicles

January this year, the two major automobile companies, Ford and VolksWagan, joined their forces to manufacture pickup trucks and vans, and now almost seven months later, the two wants to expand their partnership by adding a few more services in their list that they will be developing together. The two companies have confirmed that they will now be working together to build autonomous and electric vehicles.

In the past few years, many of the major automobile companies have shifted their focus to autonomous and driver-less cars. Those companies have realised the scope of such vehicles and are investing a lot of money in the field.

In fact, Ford is already working towards developing autonomous taxis and has partnered with Argo AI, a self-driving-car developer. Noticeably, Ford announced in 2017 that it will be investing over a billion dollar in the startup (Argo AI) in the coming five years, in order to bring its own autonomous and electric vehicles on the roads.

According to the reports, under the deal between Ford and VW, the latter will also be putting a huge sum of $2.6 billion in Argo AI, as the startup will be playing a significant part in the development work. VW will be paying a $1 billion in cash and the rest of the sum will be paid in the form of assets. The VolksWagso’s Munich-based Autonomous Intelligent Driving team will be joining Argo AI for the development work as one of the assets.

Argo AI is an independent company that has been developing autonomous and electric vehicles for the cities with well-marked roads and which are properly geo-fenced. The company has successfully tested its driver-less vehicles in five U.S. cities, including Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, Detroit, Miami and Washington, D.C.

“Ford and VW will remain ‘independent and fiercely competitive’ in the marketplace. Unlocking the synergies across a range of areas allows us to showcase the power of our global alliance in this era of smart vehicles for a smart world.” the CEO Ford Motor Company, Jim Hackett, said in a statement.

The reports say that with the deal, Ford will get the access to VW’s electric-vehicle MEB platform. The company plans to launch over 60000 self-driving cars, based on the MEB architecture, in a span of six years in the various cities in Europe and will start the mass production from 2023.

Though the companies will be building their own self-driving and autonomous cars on their own, the two will be using the same software and architecture for the development work. The collaboration between the two will help both in speeding up the development and will push the governments to add their support in such projects.

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

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