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Posted: 21 Jul 2016 05:53 AM PDT
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk published his “master plan part 2” on Wednesday night that disclosed a wide-ranging vision for his companies including new future Tesla vehicles, car sharing, urban planning concepts, and a combined SolarCity and Tesla that would sell solar panels and batteries. Musk, who is the largest shareholder in both Tesla and SolarCity, emphasized that the companies must be joined in order to efficiently make and sell solar panels and batteries. A month ago, Tesla announced that it was seeking to buy SolarCity for $2.86 billion. While shareholders initially reacted negatively to the deal, causing Tesla’s shares to drop dramatically, in recent weeks Tesla’s stock regained their lost value, indicating investors could now be more comfortable with the merger. Musk told the Wall Street Journal this week that he expects a two-thirds majority to approve the deal.
Musk also said that the only reason that the companies weren’t combined from the beginning was because of “an accident of history.” Musk clarified in a tweet that the companies “should have been done under the same corporate umbrella from the beginning.”
The post wasn’t just a merger pitch, but in Musk’s usual grandiose style he ticked off the goals and driving forces behind all of his business decisions. His over arching ambition, he said, is to deliver “sustainable energy” and end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. He published the first part of his “master plan” a decade ago during the very early days of Tesla and SolarCity.
In Musk’s blog post, he revealed plans for new future Tesla vehicles, including a semi truck (Tesla Semi), a future compact SUV, a new kind of pickup truck, and what he described as “high-density urban transport,” or a bus. The company has hinted about most of these cars before over the years, but this is the first time I’ve heard about a possible Tesla bus. Musk said that the semi and the urban transport system are in “early stages of development” and could be ready to unveil in 2017. The “Tesla Semi” would lower the cost of transporting cargo and would also make cargo transport safer, said Musk. Musk also described a more well-designed urban bus that would be smaller, autonomous, free of passenger aisles, and would take riders all the way to their destinations. Bus drivers would be fleet managers, wrote Musk. Musk’s transport vision also includes car sharing, which analysts have speculated that Tesla would pursue for some time. Tesla customers could add their cars to a “shared fleet” by tapping a button on a Tesla phone app, wrote Musk. That could lower the cost of ownership of a Tesla, because it could generate income for you, he said. Autonomous cars were also a major theme laid out by Musk as way for cars to travel more safely and to be managed as a group. In May, a Tesla car crashed while its autonomous car software was enabled, marking the first known fatality in an autonomous car. U.S. regulators are investigating the accident. Finally, Musk also discussed his concept of making his factories more efficient and innovative, which he calls “the machine behind the machine.” (Read more about his industrialization plans here). Next week Tesla will hold a customer party at its “gigafactory,” a massive battery factory under construction outside of Reno, Nev. SolarCity is also building a factory in upstate New York with a plan to churn out highly efficient solar panels. This article originally appeared on Fortune.com |
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Elon Musk Just Unveiled His New Vision for Tesla - Fortune
US says deals with UK only possible after completion of Brexit - Bloomberg
Brexit talks must be completed before US will agree UK trade deal, John Kerry tells Boris Johnson
Johnson, a key proponent of Brexit who was surprisingly named as foreign secretary by Theresa May was grilled by reporters on previous gaffes
There can be no trade deal between Britain and the US until the country’s exit from the European Union is complete, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry said.
“Though clearly you can begin to pencil things in, you can’t ink them in, and that’s entirely right and proper,” Johnson told reporters in London on Tuesday when asked about the possibility of a bilateral post-Brexit trade agreement.
Kerry told a joint news conference with Johnson that it would be “physically impossible” to negotiate a deal with the UK while it remains part of the EU.
The comments came after Johnson and Kerry said the “special relationship” between the two countries would continue despite last month’s Brexit vote.
After a meeting in which the two discussed foreign-policy issues including the Middle East, Kerry said he’s “absolutely confident” the countries will continue to have “special and unbreakable ties.”
The attempt to offer continuity on diplomatic policy comes as the new government under Prime Minister Theresa May seeks to end weeks of turmoil in British politics following the Brexit vote.
Kerry said he’s “gratified by the reassurances” he got at a meeting with May on Tuesday morning. She’s “clearly ready to hit the ground running,” he said.
Johnson, a key proponent of Brexit who was surprisingly named as foreign secretary by May after he pulled out from challenging her for the premiership, was grilled by reporters on previous gaffes.
The former London mayor, who said during the referendum campaign that President Barack Obama’s “part-Kenyan” ancestry made him hostile to Britain and previously compared presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital,” refused to apologise for any past undiplomatic remarks.
“There is such a rich thesaurus now of things that I’ve said that have been, one way or another, through what alchemy I do not know, somehow misconstrued that it would really take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned,” Johnson said.
© 2016 Bloomberg
Johnson, a key proponent of Brexit who was surprisingly named as foreign secretary by Theresa May was grilled by reporters on previous gaffes
There can be no trade deal between Britain and the US until the country’s exit from the European Union is complete, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry said.
“Though clearly you can begin to pencil things in, you can’t ink them in, and that’s entirely right and proper,” Johnson told reporters in London on Tuesday when asked about the possibility of a bilateral post-Brexit trade agreement.
Kerry told a joint news conference with Johnson that it would be “physically impossible” to negotiate a deal with the UK while it remains part of the EU.
The comments came after Johnson and Kerry said the “special relationship” between the two countries would continue despite last month’s Brexit vote.
After a meeting in which the two discussed foreign-policy issues including the Middle East, Kerry said he’s “absolutely confident” the countries will continue to have “special and unbreakable ties.”
The attempt to offer continuity on diplomatic policy comes as the new government under Prime Minister Theresa May seeks to end weeks of turmoil in British politics following the Brexit vote.
Kerry said he’s “gratified by the reassurances” he got at a meeting with May on Tuesday morning. She’s “clearly ready to hit the ground running,” he said.
Johnson, a key proponent of Brexit who was surprisingly named as foreign secretary by May after he pulled out from challenging her for the premiership, was grilled by reporters on previous gaffes.
The former London mayor, who said during the referendum campaign that President Barack Obama’s “part-Kenyan” ancestry made him hostile to Britain and previously compared presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital,” refused to apologise for any past undiplomatic remarks.
“There is such a rich thesaurus now of things that I’ve said that have been, one way or another, through what alchemy I do not know, somehow misconstrued that it would really take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned,” Johnson said.
© 2016 Bloomberg
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