16 luglio 2017

Elon Musk News - Issue 92

Elon Musk News - Issue 92
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Note From The Curator
The top three stories in this issue of Elon Musk News are:
  1. First photo of Tesla Model 3 production car, Musk gifted rights to serial #1
  2. Hyperloop One had its first full-system test of ultrafast transportation system
  3. SpaceX lobbies NASA to foster competitive deep space exploration
In addition to the top three stories this issue features Tesla's plan to triple their service capacity, an interview with Hyperloop co-founders about their 'Kitty Hawk' moment, Musk's launch of X.com, and much more!

Thank-you very much for being part of the community, and enjoy issue 92!

Sincerely,
Zachary
Featured Quote
"Physics is true, everything else is debatable, and even physics is questionable."
— Elon Musk

From ScienceNet
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SpaceX
Tim Hughes, the senior VP of SpaceX's global business and government affairs, testified Thursday morning before the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Technology and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Technology. He put forth a strong argument that it would be in the best interests of both NASA and the United States to encourage commercial competition in pursuit of the exploration of deep space, and that this could be done with concrete goals like improved interplanetary communications, vertically landing spacecraft on the Moon, and sending substantial amounts of cargo to Mars.

Hughes demonstrated that by awarding SpaceX with funds from Commercial Orbital Transport Services, NASA ultimately found themselves with a highly-capable orbital launch vehicle after a relatively miniscule investment of $396 million into the venture. A study later conducted by NASA estimated that developing the same vehicle with a traditional NASA or commercial approach would have cost approximately $4 billion or $1.7 billion respectively, implying that the COTS approach was as much as ten times more efficient than NASA's own traditional strategies of launch vehicle procurement.
Following an intriguing SpaceX testimony before Senate committees in Washington D.C., Musk took to Twitter to share "Worth noting that Boeing/Lockheed... get a billion dollar annual subsidy even if they launch nothing. SpaceX does not." Tory Bruno, President and Chief Executive of ULA, responded with gloves off just a few hours later, deeming the implied existence of such a subsidy nothing more than a "[persistent] myth".

While there can be no doubt that the actual gritty details of the ELC contracts deal explicitly with such possible outcomes, the lack of transparency (be that as a result of publicly inaccessible contract details or highly obtuse and lingo-heavy contract language) ultimately frames ELC contracts and the vehemence with which ULA defends them as a wasteful, overly complex, and unnecessary alternative to simply offering a fixed product with services inherently included, as SpaceX does.
SpaceX's incredibly busy 2017 is only going to get busier. Elon Musk posted a short recap of the company's year so far on Instagram: 10 launches down, 12 more to go. We're currently a little more than halfway through the year and more than halfway through the Summer of SpaceX, and although the rest of July looks pretty sparse, the company has an ambitious schedule lined up for the rest of the year.
Tesla
Tesla has completed the first production build of the Model 3, according to a tweet by CEO Elon Musk. Musk also revealed in Saturday's tweet that venture capitalist and Tesla board member Ira Ehrenpreis holds rights to own the first Model 3 off the production line. However, Musk noted that Ehrenpreis gifted his rights to own the exclusive serial number 1 car to Musk for his 46th birthday.

Musk owns the first production Tesla Roadster, Model X, and will soon own the first Model 3 once "final checkout" is completed. Tesla board member and serial investor Steve Jurvetson owns the first Tesla Model S production car. Tesla will deliver the first thirty Tesla Model 3 vehicles to customers in a "handover party" on Friday, July 28. With likely 400,000 Model 3 reservations in the books, Tesla will likely do a slow rollout of the Model 3 Design Studio, starting on July 28 and over the subsequent weeks by reservation sequence.
Seen in the video is Model 3's optional all glass roof and a first look of the production door handles in action. Contrary to the reverse-pivoting action of the door handles found on the Model 3 Alpha car from last year's March 31st unveiling event, the door handles on the production car pivots with the rearmost portion of the handle articulating outwards.

However, the biggest feature that viewers may not have noticed on the Model 3 is what appears to be a self-opening front door. Throughout the video, the driver in the Model 3 can be seen opening and closing the door on several occasions. Each time the door is seen opening with the same style of motion and at similar speed as Model X's self-presenting front door. The sound of the motorized door hinge can be heard at roughly the 8-second mark of the video when the front door swings open to its maximum opening position – the same sound heard in Model X's self-presenting front door.
Tesla announced today that it is expanding its service capacity by a factor of 3. First, they will be adding 100 new service locations to their more than 150 existing service centers. The company says that they are opening those based on the concentration of Model 3 reservations in certain markets.

Tesla also says that those shops will be bigger and more efficient with as many as 40 service lanes. The company claims that Tesla's service will be 4 times faster than conventional shop while operating in a space 3 times smaller. Tesla is also expanding its fleet of mobile service vans by adding over 350 by the end of the year. Tesla says that 90% of the issues on its vehicles can be diagnosed remotely and then fixed by a technician coming to the owner's home or work without interfering with their schedule.
Earlier this year, Tesla updated its goal for Supercharger deployment to reach 10,000 Superchargers by the end of the year – virtually doubling the number of Supercharger stalls in 2017. Tesla has now 6,000 Superchargers around the world, which means that the company will have to add 4,000 more Superchargers within the next 6 months. For context, that's more Supercharger deployment over 6 months than Tesla did over the first 3 years of the Supercharger network.

Tesla is now working on a new kind of Supercharger station with higher up to 40 stalls. Tesla would technically only have to open 100 of those stations within the next 6 months in order to achieve its goal. That would only be a marginal increase in the number of stations since Tesla just reached 900 Supercharger stations, but the company's goal was related to the number of chargers, not stations.
Tesla welcomed its first showroom in Dubai on Sheikh Zayed Road Wednesday night. The new state-of-the-art 17,000 square foot facility located near the Burj Khalifa and opposite to The Dubai Mall Metro Station also serves as a Tesla Service Center. The facility will service Tesla owners from across the UAE through the company's recently announced improved service model.

Speaking to attendees at the event, Tesla director of new markets Peter Bardenfleth-Hansen said "We are here because you are making a huge difference. The UAE has been a beacon. We want to accelerate the world towards a more sustainable future."
This one in Kettleman City will feature 40 Supercharger stalls, which is double the number of chargers in Tesla's current biggest stations and consequently, it should become the largest fast-charging station in the world. Like the current Supercharger stations, the new ones also feature stalls A/B per Supercharger – meaning that the power will likely again be split between two stalls.

In the expansion announcement, Tesla also announced what it called "customer centers" at those new Supercharger stations. In the site plans obtained by Electrek, the building is instead called a "Supercharger lounge". It appears to feature a restroom, chairs, tables, and sofas. The plans for the new Kettleman City Supercharger also include solar arrays.
With more and more vehicles on the road, Tesla's global fleet is quickly accumulating electric mileage and replacing gas-powered miles. Tesla has now confirmed that its fleet reached over 8 billion km (roughly 5 billion miles) – equivalent to 17 roundtrips between Earth and Mars.

Back in October 2016, we reported on Tesla reaching the 3 billion electric mile milestone and the company's global fleet has managed to add 500 million in less than 3 months – bringing the total to 3.5 billion in December and another half a billion more by March 2017. But now, Tesla's more than 200,000 vehicles on the road have added another billion miles over the last quarter.
After two legislators, now a lobbyist for the car dealers association is fighting Tesla's subpoena to make him disclose communications he had relating to the bill that resulted in the direct sales ban that is currently blocking Tesla from selling its vehicles in the state. Last year, Tesla filed a lawsuit against the state after claiming that the ban on direct sales violates commerce laws and that it was pushed by car dealers and GM in an attempt to block the electric automaker.

As part of the discovery process last month, Tesla filed to have two lawmakers turn over any communication with car dealers and automaker lobbyists about the ban. The judge ruled in favor of Tesla. Now a third person is subject to Tesla's request to disclose their communications relating to the ban on direct sales, Kurt Berryman, the man in charge of government relations for the Michigan Auto Dealers Association and the Detroit Auto Dealers Association. Berryman said that he was becoming a social pariah within his car dealer circle since receiving the subpoena.
The Tesla Model 3 is the only U.S. vehicle in contention to win the 2018 North American Car of the Year Award. For the first time in the award's history, Detroit automakers won't have a car in the running. Last year, the Chevy Bolt won the award. The winner is announced each January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, and 55 "jurors," who are journalists that cover the auto industry, go through a voting process to determine the short list and the eventual winner.
Tesla Energy
A new rumor suggests that Tesla might be considering a partnership with Meyer Burger, a Swiss photovoltaics firm whose proprietary solar cell technology could cut manufacturing costs for photovoltaic cells by nearly 50 percent. In other words, Tesla could be on the brink of a major breakthrough in the bottom line for its solar services.

The rumor has been floating around financial channels for a few days, following an alleged meeting between Elon Musk and Meyer Burger CEO Hans Brändle, but on Thursday, Axiom Capital Research's Gordon Johnson gave some weight to the rumor in a note to investors after probing his contacts in Meyer Burger's management. Meyer Burger "neither confirmed or denied" the meeting between CEOs, but noted that its solar cells are "significantly cheaper" than the ones made by Panasonic, Tesla's current producer for photovoltaic cells, the building block of solar panels.
Hyperloop
Hyperloop One completed the first full-scale test of its hyperloop technology in a vacuum environment on May 12th, the company announced today. In the test, the company's hyperloop vehicle — which uses magnetic levitation, or mag-lev, technology — pulled 2 Gs while reaching 70 miles per hour down the length of the company's test track in Nevada.

"Hyperloop One has accomplished what no one has done before by successfully testing the first full scale Hyperloop system," Pishevar [Hyperloop One co-founder] said in a statement. "By achieving full vacuum, we essentially invented our own sky in a tube, as if you're flying at 200,000 feet in the air."
Zach says: This interview with co-foudners Pishevar and Giegel is well worth a read if you're a fan on Hyperloop One!
Misc.
Zach says: Musk tweeted today that the site has launched, and that there will be an update to it tomorrow :)

Elon Musk has regained the rights to X.com, according to a Tweet sent on Monday. Musk founded X in 1999 and later renamed it PayPal in 2001. Musk previously owned the domain name in 1999 when it was an online banking services company that he founded. The domain was later acquired by PayPal, and has remained as such until last week, July 5, when ownership of X.com transferred.

Musk has not revealed what he has planned for his latest acquisition, but a Tweet indicates that it could be used as a one-stop destination for all of his companies. Holding Tesla, Tesla Energy, SpaceX, The Boring Company, OpenAI and Neuralink in one spot would be a good way for the companies to be managed under a centralized resource, and makes more sense than dropping at least seven figures for the sake of nostalgia.

Elon Musk News Anson Ave Coquitlam, British Columbia V3B 2H6 Canada


Pubblicato da mariorossi.net il 07:00
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