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Tesla to Bring Support For YouTube Along Next Update to its In-car Software

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Tesla
Image Source: autoblog.com

Tesla has always brought something different for its users. This time, the company reported that it will be bringing YouTube to the central screen of its Tesla cars, soon. The company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, during a Q&A session held at the E3 event in Los Angeles, revealed that the company has been working towards hosting video streaming on the central infotainment screen of the Tesla cars since past one year, and YouTube will be the first video streaming service coming to it.

Last August, Musk responded to a Twitter request about bringing video streaming to the Tesla cars’. In the tweet, Musk had indicated that the streaming service will come along with the ‘Version 10” of its in-car software. Currently, Tesla cars are running the ‘Version 9’ of the software on its infotainment screen. At that time, Musk did not give any names on which streaming service it would be, but during the Q&A, Musk clearly mentioned YouTube as one of the video services for the central screens of the Tesla cars.

The company has already offered games and has been hosting “Easter eggs” on the central screen of the cars, and this will be the first time that any of the automobile company will stream YouTube over its cars’ infotainment screens.

Along with YouTube, Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter will be joining Cuphead, Missile Command, Asteroids, Lunar Lander, and Centipede as one of the games to be played on the big central screen of Tesla cars.

Though people are questioning the need of videos and games on the screen of a car, the company has clarified that the owner or the passengers of the car will only be able to see the videos or play the games while the car is parked. In most of the cases, people only sit inside a car when they are charging it at the Supercharger stations. This way, now the passengers and the drivers will enjoy their time through YouTube and video games, at the charging station while waiting for their cars to get fully charged.

Tesla’s New Chip will Now Help it Bring Driverless Vehicles on the Roads by 2020

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Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is a visionary and has been working constantly, towards improving the company’s series of self-driven cars. At the Tesla’s Autonomy Investor Day in Palo Alto, California, held on Monday, the company announced a new silicon chip, specifically, built for its self-driving cars, which according to Tesla is “the best chip in the world”.

Tesla in a partnership with Samsung has developed a silicon chip to be installed into the Tesla cars to make them fully self-driven. It is a 260 square millimetre chip having 6 billion transistors, which will be a complete solution for the driver-less cars.

Tesla chip
Image Source: techcrunch.com

While representing the new chip at the event, Musk said, “All cars being produced right now have this computer. All Tesla cars being produced right now have everything necessary for full self-driving. All you have to do is improve the software.”

According to Musk, the chip is being mounted in the Tesla Model S and Model X for over a month now, and for the past ten days the Model 3 cars in manufacturing are also including this very chip in it.

Only a month ago, Musk had mentioned in an interview that Tesla will be bringing the fully-autonomous cars soon, which won’t require a human input to drive. And now, the company has announced this new silicon chip, which, according to the company, is 21 times better than the Nvidia chips that the company has been using in its cars.

The Tesla autonomous cars includes the auto-pilot feature, which still needs the supervision of humans to drive accurately. In the past years, the Tesla cars have seen a few accidents and car crashes, most of which were driving on auto-pilots. So having a new chip that won’t require any of the human inputs is sceptical for many.

This is the first time the company has developed a chip by itself, and Musk too jokingly mentioned the same, saying, “It seems improbable. How could it be that Tesla, who has never designed a chip before, would design the best chip in the world? But that is objectively what has occurred. All Teslas being produced right now have this chip.”

Musk, during the presentation, also said that the company will roll out over a million fully self-driving cars by 2020 with the help of this same new chip.

SpaceX Successfully Completes its First Falcon Heavy Commercial Mission

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SapceX falcon heavy
Image Source: orlandosentinel.com

SpaceX has finally launched its first commercial mission with the Falcon heavy carrying the Arabsat-6A, a high-capacity telecommunications satellite in its payload, on Thursday. The satellite is built by Lockheed Martin, for Saudi Arabian corporation Arabsat. The launch took place from the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT, after a delay due to the bad weather.

Falcon is the most powerful rocket in the world. The launch on April 11 was its second flight attempt following a successful test launch in February 2018. After 9 minutes of launching Falcon, the three booster rockets, too, landed back on Earth, safe. The three core rockets will be ready for reuse in a few days. These core engines are capable of generating 5.1 million pounds of thrust together. In the previous launch, two of the three boosters had landed safe, but the third one had crashed into the ocean as ran out of fuel at 300 miles per hour.

Despite the delay due to the wind, the events took place as were planned. The two boosters landed at the LZ-1 and LZ-2, and the third, the core booster, landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone-ship.

After the 34 minutes of the takeoff, the Arabsat-6A payload detached itself from Falcon and went into the orbit making the mission a success.

The satellite launched by Falcon is a communication satellite, which will provide the television, radio, Internet and mobile communications services to the people of the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe.

Last year, the SpaceX had 21 successful launches for its customers. This year the company intends to take humans to space and has partnered with Boeing Co. signing a contract with NASA for its Commercial Crew program, to board American astronauts to the International Space Station.

Tesla Launches New V3 Supercharger to Slash the Waiting Time for its Users

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Tesla hosted a customer event at its Fremont, California headquarters on Wednesday evening, where it launched its latest third generation V3 Supercharger charging stations. The new V3 Supercharger is specially designed to reduce the charging time for the electric vehicles and can charge some of the Model 3 at a rate of 250kW, making the vehicle capable of running at a speed 75 miles in 5 minutes of charging.

tesla-supercharger
Image Source: inverse.com

Due to the high demand of the Tesla cars, especially the Model 3, the requirement for the charging station has also increased. Due to the lesser number of charging stations and with lesser power chargers, the waiting time for the vehicles has been the biggest concern for the Tesla owners.

The company is also going to the update the battery system for its vehicle, such that the battery will be able to warm up before charging, such that the battery will be charged at its peak point for the maximum time, in order to slash the wait time.

The new V3 Supercharger is a completely different device from its predecessor and includes a 1 MW power cabinet and a liquid-cooled cable design. According to Tesla, after charging a vehicle for an hour, the vehicle can run to up to 1,000 miles.

The new V3 Supercharger has also been improved at the charging rates for Model S and Model vehicles, and it takes 50 per cent lesser time to charge the mentioned vehicles.

For now, the first few V3 Superchargers have been installed in Fremont available to members of Tesla’s “early access program”. These are few of the Tesla car owners who are allowed to participate in the testing of the latest software and hardware updates from the company.

For the other users, the V3 Superchargers will be available only in April, and according to Tesla, by the end of this year, the Supercharger network will be capable of serving more than twice the vehicles, it currently provides services to, per day.

Tesla Launches a New Amazon Store to Sell Self-branded Merch

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Tesla, the automotive and energy company, has launched a new Amazon store, to sell its merchandise. This is not the first time that the company is manufacturing and selling those merchandise as it has been selling them on its own ‘Tesla Shop’ website for past many years.

Image Source: pando.com

The automaker previously had also teamed up with Home Depot to sell its energy products, though, hey ended the partnership in 2018.

The company had been selling self-branded goods including almost everything, like water bottles, hats, hoodies, surfboards, iPhone cases, wireless smartphone charger, a portable battery, etc. on the online store, and the people who have been following CEO Elon Musk and are his fans, have always been there to buy them.

As Tesla also knows that Amazon is the number one online shopping site, making Tesla goodies available on an Amazon store will help Tesla to grab more buyers for its merch. The opening of Amazon’s online stores for the Tesla merch can be a company’s move to reach more people. Although the store will not have all the Tesla accessories, yes, it will have some interesting ones available on it.

The Amazon store will have on sale the iPhone X cases, having written Tesla on it, subtly emblazoned across the side. The case price will be between $35-$45. It will also be selling hoodies branding Tesla, which will cost between $70-$75 and a 1:18 scale die-cast models of the company’s cars costing around $250, etc.

Although with the launch of its Amazon store, Tesla had put only two products on the site, i.e. an iPhone 8+ case and a Tesla iPhone X folio case. There can be two reasons that the company had only put two products for sale, either the other products were all sold out, or the company was not ready for the launch. The latter reason can be more accurate as now the company has even put down the page on which it was selling all the goods.

After Second Straight Quarterly Profit, Tesla to Start the Production of Y Model By 2020

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There have been many talks about Tesla’s SUV electric vehicle, Model Y. Even the Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been talking about this SUV model since 2015. But the wait might get over soon, as according to some reports, Tesla has sent letters to its shareholders regarding starting the production of the Y model as soon as 2020 ends.

tesla
Image Source: fortune.com

The Model Y is going to be a mid-sized SUV vehicle, whose design is yet to be revealed. Allegedly, the Model Y will be based on the Model 3 sedan, and it will obtain 75 per cent of its parts from the most affordable Tesla model. Hence the production cost of the Model Y may be a bit lesser than the Model 3.

Tesla, basically, has its production line for its other models including S, X and 3, based in Fremont, but the Model Y may get its own dedicated production line at Gigafactory in Nevada, since there may not be much space for the production at Fremont for the Model Y.

The company came up with the plan of starting the production of the Model Y, as a result of a profitable fourth quarter of 2018, reported last year. Tesla said on Wednesday that it made a profit of $139.5 million in the fourth quarter, after recovering a loss of $675.4 million from a year earlier.

Tesla went public in 2010, and this is the first time that the automaker has revealed its profits, in consecutive quarters. According to Musk, the company is ready to invest in new projects and bring improvements to the older ones. The company has claimed that it will cut the cost on various Tesla models, will improve its service operations, launch at least three sedan models for its Chinese and European customers, and also will start working on its Model Y.

The Model Y is expected to be a crossover, and that may lead to an increased demand for Nidel Y over Model 3, resulting in an uptick in sales, and profit. If we consider the letter Tesla sent to its shareholders, the year is going to, certainly, be a profitable one for Tesla.