Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk on Thursday night unveiled a cheaper electric crossover sports utility vehicle (SUV), the Model Y, in a bid to regain momentum after a rough start to the year.
Taking the stage at the company’s design studio in Hawthorne, California, Musk showed off a blue prototype of the mid-sized SUV, which is about 10 percent roomier than its best-selling sedan. Three higher-end versions of the new vehicle are to start delivery in fall next year, with a standard one available in spring 2021, priced at US$39,000 and equipped with a 370km battery, the company said.
Getting the new vehicle into production quickly would be key for Tesla to build on the momentum of its Model 3, a less expensive sedan that has catapulted the automaker up the sales charts and helped Musk post back-to-back quarterly profits for the first time.
The Tesla Inc Model Y crossover electric vehicle is displayed at an unveiling event in Hawthorne, California, yesterday. Photo: Bloomberg
The new Model Y might also help Tesla shift its lineup toward the tastes of US consumers, who are increasingly ditching sedans for bigger crossovers and SUVs.
Only one of the new models was driven onto the stage, where it shared the limelight with other, older vehicles. At the 2016 unveiling of the Model 3, by contrast, Musk showed off three cars and flashed the rising number of customer deposits on screen as they rolled in from people eager to be among the first in line to reserve them.
At the Model Y’s unveiling, Musk said nothing about taking orders or deposits, although Tesla’s Web site allows people to make “fully refundable” pre-order payments of US$2,500.
Photo: AFP
The Model Y is making its official debut after a rough patch for Tesla and Musk.
Late last month, the company announced it would finally offer a US$35,000 version of the Model 3, although it linked the ability to do so with a plan to close almost all of its stores and pivot to online-only ordering.
This blindsided employees and investors alike, and Tesla backtracked 10 days later, saying in a blog post that more stores would remain open, but vehicle prices would have to rise by about 3 percent on average worldwide.
Meanwhile, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reignited its battle with Musk over his use of Twitter early this year, after the billionaire tweeted about the company’s annual production outlook without clearing the post in advance with a designated in-house lawyer.
The SEC’s next filing in the ongoing saga is due with a federal judge in New York by Tuesday.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”