Latest news with #TESLA
The Sun
11-07-2025
- Automotive
- The Sun
Musk's Tesla marks formal India entry with Mumbai launch event
TESLA will open its first India showroom in Mumbai next week, having imported $1 million worth of cars and merchandise, marking its entry into the world's third-largest car market despite CEO Elon Musk's complaints about high import tariffs. In an invitation to media late Thursday, the carmaker said the July 15 event was the 'launch of Tesla in India through the opening of the Tesla experience centre at Bandra Kurla Complex,' located in the city's leading commercial business district. Grappling with excess manufacturing capacity at its other factories and falling sales, Tesla has pivoted to selling imported cars in India on which it will need to pay about 70% import duty and other levies. Commercially available custom records from January to June showed Tesla imported vehicles, chargers and accessories into India worth close to $1 million, mainly from China and the United States. The vehicles included six of Tesla's best-selling Model Y at a shipment value of $32,500 each for five cars, and $46,000 for the long-range version, as well as several Superchargers. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has for years wooed Tesla, including forming a new policy to attract the carmaker to build its EVs locally. Last year, Musk had planned to visit India where he was expected to announce an investment of $2 billion-$3 billion, including in local EV manufacturing. But he cancelled the trip at the last moment. Tesla has conveyed it is not interested in manufacturing in India at the moment. U.S. President Donald Trump has said that if Tesla were to build a factory in India to circumvent that country's tariffs, it would be 'unfair' to the U.S.' Tesla has hired for several of the three dozen positions it advertised in India earlier this year, bringing on board store managers, sales and service executives. It is looking for supply chain engineers and vehicle operators for its autopilot ambitions. - REUTERS
The Sun
11-07-2025
- Automotive
- The Sun
Tesla Enters India with Mumbai Launch, Imports Model Y
TESLA will open its first India showroom in Mumbai next week, having imported $1 million worth of cars and merchandise, marking its entry into the world's third-largest car market despite CEO Elon Musk's complaints about high import tariffs. In an invitation to media late Thursday, the carmaker said the July 15 event was the 'launch of Tesla in India through the opening of the Tesla experience centre at Bandra Kurla Complex,' located in the city's leading commercial business district. Grappling with excess manufacturing capacity at its other factories and falling sales, Tesla has pivoted to selling imported cars in India on which it will need to pay about 70% import duty and other levies. Commercially available custom records from January to June showed Tesla imported vehicles, chargers and accessories into India worth close to $1 million, mainly from China and the United States. The vehicles included six of Tesla's best-selling Model Y at a shipment value of $32,500 each for five cars, and $46,000 for the long-range version, as well as several Superchargers. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has for years wooed Tesla, including forming a new policy to attract the carmaker to build its EVs locally. Last year, Musk had planned to visit India where he was expected to announce an investment of $2 billion-$3 billion, including in local EV manufacturing. But he cancelled the trip at the last moment. Tesla has conveyed it is not interested in manufacturing in India at the moment. U.S. President Donald Trump has said that if Tesla were to build a factory in India to circumvent that country's tariffs, it would be 'unfair' to the U.S.' Tesla has hired for several of the three dozen positions it advertised in India earlier this year, bringing on board store managers, sales and service executives. It is looking for supply chain engineers and vehicle operators for its autopilot ambitions. - REUTERS
The Star
07-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
Tesla slides as Musk's 'America Party' sparks investor worries
The TESLA logo is seen outside a dealership in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., April 26, 2021. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo (Reuters) -Tesla shares fell nearly 7% in premarket trading on Monday after CEO Elon Musk's plans to launch a new U.S. political party raised investor doubts about his focus on the electric automaker's future. The former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) unveiled the 'America Party' on Saturday, voicing his displeasure over President Donald Trump's 'One Big, Beautiful Bill'. This further escalates Musk's feud with Trump even as Tesla posted a second straight drop in quarterly deliveries. Their discord over the tax bill erupted into an all-out social media brawl in early June, with Trump threatening to cut Musk's government contracts and subsidies. "Investors are worried about two things – one is more Trump ire affecting subsidies and the other, more importantly, is a distracted Musk," said Neil Wilson, UK investor strategist at Saxo Markets. Investors had in May cheered Musk's decision to scale back political spending and remain Tesla CEO for another five years. He had spent nearly $300 million around Trump's re-election campaign last year. "But now (they) are worried he's going to (get) sucked back in and take his eye off Tesla," Wilson said. The first signs of investor unease surfaced soon after Musk's announcement, with investment firm Azoria Partners delaying the listing of a Tesla exchange-traded fund. Trump on Sunday called Musk's plans to form the "America Party" "ridiculous", saying the Musk ally he once named to lead NASA would have presented a conflict of interest given Musk's business interests in space. TESLA BOARD MOVES Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, a Tesla bull, said many investors are feeling a "sense of exhaustion" over Musk's insistence on immersing himself in politics. Azoria Partners CEO James Fishback posted several critical comments on X about Musk's new party, and called for the Tesla board to clarify Musk's political ambitions and evaluate if his political involvement is compatible with his obligations to Tesla as CEO. The new party undermines the confidence shareholders had that Musk would be focusing more on the company, Fishback said. Musk's latest political move raises questions around Tesla board's course of action. Its Chair Robyn Denholm in May denied a Wall Street Journal report that said board members were looking to replace the CEO. Tesla's board, which has been criticized for failing to provide oversight of its combative, headline-making CEO, faces a dilemma managing him as he oversees five other companies and his personal political ambitions. "This is exactly the kind of thing a board of directors would curtail - removing the CEO if he refused to curtail these kinds of activities," said Ann Lipton, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School and an expert in business law. "The Tesla board has been fairly supine; they have not, at least not in any demonstrable way, taken any action to force Musk to limit his outside ventures, and it's difficult to imagine they would begin now." Tensions with Trump, struggling sales and an aging vehicle line-up have hurt Tesla's stock, even as the company bets on growth from autonomous vehicles. The stock, which soared to over $488 in December after Trump's November re-election, has lost 35% since then and closed last week at $315.35. Tesla is the worst performing stock among "the Magnificent Seven" group of high-growth U.S. companies this year. (Reporting by Joel Jose and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Amanda Cooper in London; additional reporting by Medha Singh; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Arun Koyyur)
New Straits Times
29-06-2025
- Automotive
- New Straits Times
Why Tesla's robotaxi launch was the easy part
TESLA finally has a robotaxi. Now comes the hard part. The electric-vehicle maker deployed its first-ever driverless cabs in Austin, Texas, on Sunday in a small-scale test of carefully monitored Model Y vehicles. Next, the company faces the steep challenge of executing on CEO Elon Musk's ambition to refine the software and upload it to millions of Teslas within a year or so. Such a rapid expansion will prove extremely difficult, about a dozen industry analysts and autonomous-vehicle technology experts told Reuters. These observers expressed a range of views about Tesla's prospects but all cautioned against assuming a light-speed robotaxi rollout. Some pointed to advantages Tesla might exploit to overtake rivals including Alphabet's Waymo and a host of Chinese auto and tech companies. Tesla has mass-manufacturing capacity, and it pioneered remote software updates it can use for self-driving upgrades. The automaker also does not use sensors such as radar and lidar like Waymo and most rivals; instead, it depends solely on cameras and artificial intelligence. "A rollout could be really quick. If the software works, Tesla robotaxi could drive any road in the world," said Seth Goldstein, a Morningstar senior equity analyst, while cautioning that Tesla is still "testing the product." In Austin, Tesla launched a choreographed experiment involving maybe a dozen cars, operating in limited geography, with safety monitors in the front passenger seat; remote "teleoperators"; plans to avoid bad weather; and hand-picked pro-Tesla influencers as passengers. For years, Musk has said Tesla would soon operate its own autonomous ride-hailing service and also turn any Tesla, new or used, into a cash-generating robotaxi for its customers. That will be "orders of magnitude" more difficult than testing in Austin, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor focused on autonomous-driving regulation. "It's like announcing that, 'I'm going to Mars' and then, you know, going to Cleveland," Smith said. Musk has said Tesla will reach Mars, in that metaphor, quite quickly: "I predict that there will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year," he said in April. Tesla shares ended 8.2 per cent higher at US$348.68 on Monday on investor enthusiasm over the robotaxi launch. Given Tesla's AI-dependent approach, its challenge will be machine-training robotaxis to handle complex traffic "edge cases," said Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-engineering professor and autonomous-technology expert. That could take many years. "Look, how long has it taken Waymo?" Koopman asked. "There's no reason to believe Tesla will be any faster." Waymo's self-driving efforts date back to 2009, when Google started its self-driving car project. An egg-shaped prototype took its first ride on public streets in 2015 – also in Austin. Waymo has taken since then to build a 1,500-robotaxi fleet in select cities. A Waymo spokesperson said it plans to add 2,000 more vehicles by the end of 2026. Some analysts believe Tesla can expand faster, in part because Waymo has helped pave the way by overcoming regulatory and technical challenges. Being a mass-manufacturer also helps Tesla, analyst at market-research firm Forrester. Paul Miller, said. Tesla's go-fast strategy could actually slow its progress and that of the autonomous-vehicle industry if it undermines public trust, some analysts said. Tesla has historically faced legal and regulatory trouble involving its Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver-assistance system, which is not fully autonomous. In one recent federal safety probe into Tesla, investigators are examining FSD's role in crashes – some fatal – involving rain or other inclement weather that interferes with the system's cameras. Before the Austin test, Musk posted on his social-media platform, X, that the robotaxis' technology would differ little from any Tesla, aside from a software update: "These are unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory, meaning that every Tesla," he wrote, "is capable of unsupervised self-driving!" The automaker invited Tesla-friendly influencers to take its first robotaxi rides, and they generally cheered the experience. One social-media video posted by a robotaxi passenger, however, showed the vehicle proceeding through a four-lane intersection with a traffic light – and into the wrong lane, for about six seconds. No oncoming traffic was in the lane at the time.
Business Times
24-06-2025
- Automotive
- Business Times
Tesla sued over Model S crash that killed three in New Jersey
TESLA was sued on Monday by the estates of three people killed last September when their 2024 Model S equipped with Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features crashed on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway. The wrongful death lawsuit filed in the federal court in Camden, New Jersey, attributed the deaths of David Dryerman, 54; his wife Michele, 54; and their daughter Brooke, 17, to the car's 'defective and unreasonably dangerous design.' Brooke's older brother, Max Dryerman, was not in the car, and is also a plaintiff. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Tesla, led by billionaire Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to requests for comment after market hours. The plaintiffs' lawyers did not immediately respond to similar requests. Musk's company, based in Austin, Texas, has long faced questions about the safety of its self-driving technology. Tesla has said its features are meant for 'fully attentive' drivers with their hands on the steering wheel, and that the features do not now make its vehicles autonomous. Under pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Tesla agreed in December 2023 to recall more than 2 million vehicles in the United States to add safeguards to its Autopilot advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up According to published reports, the Dryermans were returning from a music festival on Sept 14, 2024, when their Model S ran off the road in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, hitting a sign, guardrail and concrete bridge support. The complaint said the car's defective design caused it to stray from its lane of travel and fail to apply emergency braking, resulting in the crash. It also said Tesla failed to warn David Dryerman, who was driving, that his Model S was unsafe, citing Musk's statement in 2016 that Autopilot was 'probably better' than human drivers. The Dryermans were wearing seat belts, according to the complaint. 'Thousands of Tesla drivers have relied on Tesla's ADAS technology as though it were capable of safe, fully autonomous self-driving with minor software updates when in fact it is incapable of safely handling a variety of routine roadway scenarios without driver input,' the complaint said. REUTERS
