Tesla Model S

Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
by Edward Niedermeyer
Published 14 Sep 2019

New York: Ecco (HarperCollins), 2015. 73Musk drove a sleek, fastback silver-gray sedan: dougdirac. “Tesla Model S unveiling party – Part1.” YouTube video, March 29, 2009. https://youtu.be/OFugGJZcFoE 74During a test ride in the prototype that evening: dougdirac. “Ride in the Tesla Model S sedan.” YouTube video, March 27, 2009. https://youtu.be/6-GSWzsTtts 74Musk emphasized the car’s affordability: Tesla Motors. “Tesla unveils world’s first mass-produced, highway-capable EV.” Tesla Motors Blog, April 20, 2010. https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-unveils-world%E2%80%99s-first-mass-produced-highway-capable-ev 75leading to tentative headlines like: John Voelcker. “The Tesla Model S Won’t Be Real Unless Elon Musk Has a Few Hundred Million to Spare.”

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“The Tesla Model S Won’t Be Real Unless Elon Musk Has a Few Hundred Million to Spare.” Green Car Reports, March 26, 2009. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1019686_the-tesla-model-s-wont-be-real-unless-elon-musk-has-a-fewhundred-million-to-spare 75by using borrowed control stalks: Bozi Tatarevic. “The Parts the Tesla Model S Shares With Other Cars.” Road & Track, February 6, 2018. https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a16570798/tesla-model-s-parts-other-cars-have/ 76the mayor of Downey told the media: Michael Graham Richard. “Mayor of Downey, CA: Deal with Tesla for Model S Factory ‘99.9% done.’” Treehugger, November 25, 2009. https://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/mayor-of-downey-ca-deal-with-tesla-for-model-s-factory-999-done.html 76was deeply worried that “big company disease” was eroding the automaker’s competitive edge: Alex Taylor III.

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Saxton.org, January 22, 2009. https://saxton.org/tom_saxton/2009/01/price-increase-explanation.html 70or pony up $6,700 to $9,350 more: Tom Saxton. “The New Tesla Prices.” Saxton.org, January 17, 2009. https://saxton.org/tom_saxton/2009/01/new-tesla-prices.html 71In a February 11, 2009, email to customers: Matt Hardigree. “Tesla Model S Coming March 26, But Where’s the DOE Funding?” Jalopnik, February 11, 2009. https://jalopnik.com/tesla-model-s-coming-march-26-but-wheres-the-doe-fundi-5151712 71the DOE did announce that Tesla was among the companies: “Obama Administration Awards First Three Auto Loans for Advanced Technologies to Ford Motor Company, Nissan Motors and Tesla Motors.”

Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
by Tim Higgins
Published 2 Aug 2021

301817-1/​future-human-space-flight. CHAPTER 15 If Tesla delivered: Author interview with Tesla workers at the time. “I know I’ve asked”: Author interviews with Tesla workers at the meeting. “The mere fact the Tesla Model S”: Angus MacKenzie, “2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S,” Motor Trend (Dec. 10, 2012), https://www.motortrend.com/​news/​2013-motor-trend-car-of-the-year-tesla-model-s/. “We’re not doing this”: Description of events taken from Tesla video recording of the event posted by the company on YouTube on Nov. 17, 2012, https://youtu.be/​qfxXmIFfV7I. The company was facing: Author interviews with Tesla workers at the time.

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While the firm: Susan Pulliam, Rob Barry, and Scott Patterson, “Insider-Trading Probe Trains Lens on Boards,” Wall Street Journal (April 30, 2013), https://www.wsj.com/​articles/​SB10001424127887323798104578453260765642292. The review was uncharacteristically rapturous: “Tesla Model S review,” Consumer Reports (July 2013), https://www.consumerreports.org/​cro/​magazine/​2013/​07/​tesla-model-s-review/​index.htm. Musk’s relationship with Blankenship: Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 216. “For Tesla to succeed”: Author interview with Blankenship.

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Compared to competitors: Research first released on July 7, 2014, by Pied Piper Management Company LLC. Evaluations were conducted between July 2013 and June 2014, firm founder Fran O’Hagan told author in a December 2019 email. “When I first sat”: Ronald Montoya, “Is the Third Drive Unit the Charm?,” Edmunds.com (Feb. 20, 2014), https://www.edmunds.com/​tesla/​model-s/​2013/​long-term-road-test/​2013-tesla-model-s-is-the-third-drive-unit-the-charm.html. “If you can’t get this”: Author interview with person familiar with the matter. CHAPTER 17 “If there is a party”: Tatiana Siegel, “Elon Musk Requested to Meet Amber Heard via Email Years Ago,” Hollywood Reporter (Aug. 24, 2016), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/​rambling-reporter/​elon-musk-requested-meet-amber-922240.

The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future
by Levi Tillemann
Published 20 Jan 2015

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1993. Strategic Capitalism: Private Business and Public Purpose in Japanese Industrial Finance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Caldwell, Jessica. 2013. “Drive by Numbers—Tesla Model S is the vehicle of choice in many of America’s wealthiest zip codes.” Edmunds.com, October 10, 2013, http://www.edmunds.com/industry-center/analysis/drive-by-numbers-tesla-model-s-is-the-vehicle-of-choice-in-many-of-americas-wealthiest-zip-codes.html. California Air Resources Board. 2009. “California Exhaust Emission Standards and Test Procedures for 2009 and Subsequent Model Zero-Emission Vehicles and Hybrid Electric Vehicles, in the Passenger Car, Light-Duty Truck and Medium-Duty Vehicle Classes.”

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Pulling into the Saturn parking lot with just four miles left in his battery pack, the sweaty TV host pronounced his final verdict: “probably the most stressful ride of my life . . . The batteries suck, the range is appalling and if you had to buy one it would cost you a whopping 35,000 pounds.” Wilson’s brush with death was playacting—Top Gear would pull a similar stunt with the Tesla Model S some years later. But he wanted to send a message: the EV1 had a long way to go before it would be ready for a broader audience. But to a clutch of Californians, the EV1 was much more than the sum of its parts. Certainly the EV1 was quiet. Its range was respectable. And its handling and acceleration—zero to 60 in about 8 seconds—were both up to par for the day.

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To boot, the car seated up to seven passengers—five adults in the main cabin and two children in the rear-facing child jump seats. It was quite a package: acceleration and handling of a supercar, safety of a Volvo, seating of a minivan, wicked curves, and a powertrain that was a blissful playground for performance enthusiasts and technologists alike. Consumer Reports, which had trashed the Fisker Karma, called the Tesla Model S the best car it had ever driven. Period. The Wall Street Journal called it “the most impressive feat of American industrial engineering since . . . Mr. Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched and recovered a spacecraft that rendezvoused with the international space station.”6 Although SpaceX had achieved that goal only a few months earlier, it was a sincere compliment.

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil
by Hamish McKenzie
Published 30 Sep 2017

Software engineers were earning millions to digitize aggregated attention and make it amenable to the distribution of newsfeed flyers. Other ideas failed to inspire. Facebook, but for small groups of people? Limos on demand, but for middle-class San Franciscans? Marissa Mayer, but for Yahoo!? Then, in June 2012, the Tesla Model S came along. While it enjoyed a splendid launch party, the public didn’t know much about it at first. The luxury electric sedan came with a $70,000 price tag, and that was just for the cheapest version. At the launch event, Tesla handed over the keys to only ten cars, with plans to scale up production later.

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It’s a story about how one determined Silicon Valley start-up changed the entire auto industry, along the way inspiring a slew of well-funded imitators from California to China. It’s a system-level view of a technological and economic transformation that will affect the lives of everyone on the planet. It is the story of a revolution that Tesla started. When I first drove the Tesla Model S, I thought of it as a computer on wheels. Its digital controls, Internet connection, software updates, and iPad-like touch screen do tend to create that impression. But that description undersells its promise. The Model S—like all of Tesla’s cars—can be better thought of as a battery on wheels.

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She was the daughter of a banking executive from whom Musk had sought business advice. He hadn’t met her before his birthday. When Nicholson arrived at the party, Musk greeted her and led her to the couch. He didn’t waste time with small talk. “I think a lot about electric cars,” he said. “Do you think about electric cars?” * * * From its first day on the road, the Tesla Model S was a great electric car. But for Musk, who had made it his mission to replace every gasoline-burning vehicle on the road with an electric alternative, best in class simply wasn’t good enough. To achieve Tesla’s initial mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable transport, Musk’s cars would have to be better than internal combustion engine vehicles in almost every regard.

Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World
by Anna Crowley Redding
Published 1 Jul 2019

With a factory backdrop worthy of Tony Stark, the Model S was on proud display. It was the first luxury all-electric sedan. The car was not anywhere close to complete, but again, Elon succeeded in wowing the media and reengaging the public in a now familiar plot line: Elon was molding the impossible into reality. As with the Roadster, orders of the Model S poured in. Tesla Model S. (Photo by Tesla Motors, Inc.) And other car makers noticed Tesla’s technology. Daimler, maker of Mercedes, ordered four thousand Tesla battery packs that it took back to Germany to install in its cars. Then Tesla provided batteries for Daimler’s Smart car. “Coils of aluminum and plastic pellets come in and cars come out,”119 Elon explained to journalist Sarah Lacy, who covers the start-up world.

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Adding to that, the Model S’s batteries reignited twice, once on the tow truck and again after the wrecked car was placed in a storage yard. As of this writing, that issue is still under investigation. Part of what they are looking into is how first responders worked to extinguish the flames. Could first responders be in danger at the scene of a crash involving a Tesla Model S? Meanwhile, since speed was a factor in the crash, Tesla added a speed limiter feature to its software in honor of the teen who was killed. TESLA WORKPLACE SAFETY. Is Tesla a safe place to work? In 2017, investigative reporters at the Guardian published a report looking into worker injuries.

The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data
by Kevin Mitnick , Mikko Hypponen and Robert Vamosi
Published 14 Feb 2017

If that unnerves you, you can contact Tesla and opt out of its telematics program. However, if you do, you will miss out on automatic software updates, which include security fixes and new features. Of course the security community is interested in the Tesla, and independent security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani has identified some problems. While he agrees with me that the Tesla Model S is a great car and a fantastic product of innovation, Dhanjani found that Tesla uses a rather weak one-factor authentication system to access the car’s systems remotely.19 The Tesla website and app lack the ability to limit the number of log-in attempts on a user account, which means an attacker could potentially use brute force to crack a user’s password.

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The most recent update, a feature called Summon, allows you to tell the car to pull itself out of the garage or park itself in a tight spot. In the future, Summon will allow the car to pick you up from any location across the country. Kinda like the old TV show Knight Rider. In refuting a negative review in the New York Times, Tesla admitted to the power of data they have on their side. Times reporter John Broder said that his Tesla Model S had broken down and left him stranded. In a blog, Tesla countered, identifying several data points they said called into question Broder’s version of the story. For example, Tesla noted that Broder drove at speeds ranging from sixty-five miles per hour to eighty-one miles per hour, with an average cabin temperature setting of seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.20 According to Forbes, “data recorders in the Model S knew the temperature settings in the car, the battery level throughout the trip, the car’s speed from minute to minute, and the exact route taken—down to the fact that the car reviewer drove circles in a parking lot when the car’s battery was almost dead.”21 Telematics capability is a logical extension of the black boxes mandatory in all cars produced for sale in the United States after 2015.

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Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the Kenner Police Department, in Louisiana; the Hialeah Police Department, in Florida; and the University of Southern California Department of Public Safety. 17. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertvamosi/2015/05/04/dont-sell-that-connected-car-or-home-just-yet/. 18. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/06/24/tesla-says-its-drivers-have-traveled-a-billion-miles-and-tesla-knows-how-many-miles-youve-driven/. 19. http://www.dhanjani.com/blog/2014/03/curosry-evaluation-of-the-tesla-model-s-we-cant-protect-our-cars-like-we-protect-our-workstations.html. 20. http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive. 21. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/02/19/the-big-privacy-takeaway-from-tesla-vs-the-new-york-times/. 22. http://www.wired.com/2015/07/gadget-hacks-gm-cars-locate-unlock-start/. 23. http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/researchers-prove-connected-cars-can-be-tracked. 24. http://www.wired.com/2015/10/cars-that-talk-to-each-other-are-much-easier-to-spy-on/. 25. https://grahamcluley.com/2013/07/volkswagen-security-flaws/. 26. https://grahamcluley.com/2015/07/land-rover-cars-bug/. 27. http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/. 28. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertvamosi/2015/03/24/securing-connected-cars-one-chip-at-a-time/. 29. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/business/tesla-faults-teslas-brakes-but-not-autopilot-in-fatal-crash.html.

The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age
by David S. Abraham
Published 27 Oct 2015

McKinsey, “Battery Technology Charges Ahead,” July 2012, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/energy_resources_materials/battery_technology_charges_ahead; International Energy Agency, Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013; Electrification Coalition, “State of the Plug-in Electric Vehicle Market,” 2013, electrificationcoalition.org/sites/default/files/EC_State_of_PEV_Market_Final_1.pdf; Angus MacKenzie, “2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Tesla Model S,” Motor Trend Magazine, January 2013, www.motortrend.com/oftheyear/car/1301_2013_motor_trend_car_of_the_year_tesla_model_s/; Jack Kaskey and Simon Casey, “Tesla to Use North American Material Amid Pollution Worry,” Bloomberg, March 28, 2014, www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-28/tesla-to-use-north-american-material-amid-pollution-worry.html. 31. Jon Sonneborn, telephone interview by David Abraham, April 4, 2014. 32.

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Chris Ciaccia, “Tesla Unveils Gigafactory: What Wall Street’s Saying,” Thestreet, February 27, 2014, http://www.thestreet.com/story/12459694/1/tesla-unveils-gigafactory-what-wall-streets-saying.html; Sebastian Anthony, “Tesla’s Model S Now Has a Titanium Underbody Shield to Reduce Risk of Battery Fires to ‘Virtually Zero,’ ” Extremetech, March 28, 2014, http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/179422-teslas-model-s-now-has-a-titanium-underbody-shield-to-reduce-risk-of-battery-fires-to-virtually-zero. 33. McKinsey, “Battery Technology Charges Ahead”; International Energy Agency, Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2013; Kaskey and Casey, “Tesla to Use North American Material”; ARPA-E, “The All-Electron Battery: A Quantum Leap Forward in Energy Storage,” 2010, arpa-e.energy.gov/?

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century
by Ronald Bailey
Published 20 Jul 2015

Perhaps a good way to think about future demand for lithium is to consider that 9 kilograms (about 20 pounds) of it goes into the Tesla Model S 990-pound battery pack. The Tesla can go about 250 miles on a single electric charge. A ton of lithium is enough to produce 111 Tesla batteries, and in 2013 the world produced 35,000 metric tons of lithium. Current lithium production could therefore notionally supply batteries to power just under 3.9 million Tesla Model S cars. In 2013, US-based automakers produced just over 11 million vehicles. Assuming that all used the same batteries as the Tesla Model S implies a consumption of about 100,000 metric tons of lithium annually.

Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the Opportunities
by Thomas H. Davenport
Published 4 Feb 2014

The “common” (though they are obviously still emerging) approaches to adding big data to products involve services—capturing and analyzing data on how the products are being used, when they are likely to break, and how they can be serviced most effectively and efficiently. It’s also possible to use big data to inform customers about their behavior relative to a product—how to drive a car in a more energy-efficient manner, for example. Data can also be embedded in the product itself, as it is for the Tesla Model S. Vehicle data logs for the car can be used to monitor performance remotely, signal the need for maintenance, and let drivers know how their mileage and performance compare with other drivers’ experience. Taking advantage of this lesson can be difficult if your primary business doesn’t involve big data or related technologies.

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See also Google StreetView mapping project supply chain, 5, 8t, 52, 53, 68, 78, 144, 162, 188 system development methodology, 20, 161, 199 Tableau, 183 Talent Analytics, 100 targets for big data, 144–145, 151 TARGUSinfo, 79 team approach, and data scientists, 99–101, 165–167, 181, 201, 209 technology, 113–134 action plan for managers in, 134 alternative platforms used together in, 131–133 belief in, and culture of big data, 147–148 big data analysis and, 117–118 big data and warehouse coexistence in, 130–131, 131f cost reduction with, 60–61, 62 examples of companies using, 128–133 hybrid models in, 200–201 integration of, 126–128, 127f, 199–200 overview of, 113–114, 114t stack in, 119–126, 119t storage approaches needed with, 116–117 time reduction using, 63–64 value to organization of, 115–116 See also architecture and specific ­processes and products technology architecture. See architecture telecommunications industry, 5, 21, 47–48, 78–79, 86–87, 168, 196, 197 telematic, 52, 178, 193 telemedicine, 45 03/12/13 2:04 PM Index  227 Teradata, 117, 131, 132, 160 Teradata Aster, 133, 140 Tesco, 44 Tesla Model S car, 155 text data analysis of, 88, 113, 114t, 118, 122–123, 177, 184, 191, 208 health-care industry use of, 43, 45, 67, 181 increased volume of, 11 management of, 78 voice conversion to, 67 Tibco Spotfire, 169. See also Spotfire time frame for adoption of big data, 79–84 time reduction strategy, 63–65 Tomak, Kerem, 63–64, 184 training programs for data scientists, 14, 104, 184, 209 for managers, 112 transportation industry, 5, 8, 8t, 13, 35, 82 travel industry big data applications in, 3, 5, 8t, 24, 42, 75–76, 82, 164, 179 future scenario of big data’s impact on, 33–35 trusted adviser traits of data scientists, 88, 92–93 turbine, monitoring of, 13, 25, 47, 74, 177, 185 Twitter, 12, 13, 22, 24, 94, 104, 169 underachievers in big data usage, 42t, 43–44 UN Global Pulse innovation lab, 17, 20, 107 United Healthcare, 67, 180, 181 UnitedHealth Group, 155–156 universities big data courses in, 14, 101–102, 112 data scientists drawn from, 101–103 University of Alabama, 102 University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, 102 University of Cincinnati, 102 University of Illinois Neustar Labs, 79 University of Indiana Kelley School of Business, 103 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 143, 202 University of San Francisco, 102 Index.indd 227 University of Tennessee, 102 University of Virginia, 102 unstructured data analysis of, 4t, 81, 88, 94, 98, 113, 115, 142, 177, 186, 194t, 206, 208 conversion to structure format of, 93, 110, 117–118, 121, 137 customer information in, 51, 67, 68, 69, 180, 186 processing and storage of, 79, 96, 119, 126, 132, 204 sources with, 1, 8t, 10t, 23, 62, 91, 113, 127, 195, 197, 204 See also images; text data; video data US Air Force, 19 UPS, 10, 52, 73, 177, 178, 182, 194, 202 USAA, 120, 137, 138, 182, 202 Valdes-Perez, Raul, 172 value proposition, in large companies, 187 Varian, Hal, 87, 147, 164 Vayama, 24 Verizon Communications, 196 Verizon Wireless, 48, 196, 197 Vertica, 183 vertical data scientists, 97–99 video data, 8t analysis of, 9, 88, 96, 113, 118, 127f, 131f, 184, 208 customer information from, 46, 177, 180 increased volume of, 1 military use of, 19 retail industry and, 37–39, 42 sports and, 56 visual analytics, 29, 64, 88, 94–96, 95f, 109, 114t, 124, 169, 184, 195–196, 200 visualization of data, 124–125, 125f Vivisimo, 172 Vodaphone Group, 196 voice data analysis of, 88, 113, 118, 177, 208 customer information from, 67, 68, 181 increased volume of, 11 Voldemort, 160 Volkswagen, 83 WakeMate, 12 Walmart, 44, 46 WalMartLabs.

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition
by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek
Published 17 Aug 2015

The first Google style AV to pass the unmapped or incorrectly mapped area will update the map as it passes, but it will of course need the capability of traveling with unmapped, incompletely mapped, or incorrectly mapped instances. And if it can do that autonomously, does it really need the map to proceed? It it cannot do that autonomously, there remain issues with autonomous to human control interfaces. 160 Hull, Dana (2015-10-15) Tesla Model S With Autopilot Isn't Quite `Look Ma, No Hands' Yet. Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-15/tesla-model-s-with-autopilot-isn-t-quite-look-ma-no-hands-yet 161 There is a great deal of uncertainty about what to call autonomous vehicles. Some prefer "self-driving" vehicles. Some maintain these are different things. But just as we had horseless carriages, automobiles, and cars, eventually these will be called autos and cars as well.

The Rare Metals War
by Guillaume Pitron
Published 15 Feb 2020

Gaines, ‘A Review of Battery Life-cycle Analysis: state of knowledge and critical needs’, Argonne National Laboratory, 1 October 2010. Read ‘Extraordinary Raw Materials in a Tesla Model S’, Visual Capitalist, 7 March 2016. ‘The 100 kWh battery also increases range substantially to an estimated 315 miles [507 kilometres] on the EPA cycle and 613 km on the NEDC cycle, making it the first to go beyond 300 miles [482 kilometres] and the longest range production electric vehicle by far’; ‘New Tesla Model S Now the Quickest Production Car in the World’, Tesla, 23 August 2016. ‘Musk: Millions of Teslas, 500-mile range coming’, CNBC, 6 November 2015.

Autonomous Driving: How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World
by Andreas Herrmann , Walter Brenner and Rupert Stadler
Published 25 Mar 2018

As already discussed, the first fatality in a self-driving car occurred in May 2016 in an electric Tesla Model S with the so-called autopilot activated. The car collided with a tractor-trailer on a highway in Florida. Apparently, the Model S sensors and camera could not distinguish the white side-wall of the truck from the particularly bright sky behind it. However, Tesla had explicitly warned drivers never to take their hands off the wheel and to maintain control of the car at all times, since the Tesla Model S had not yet been brought to Level 3 automated driving. Less well known are the success stories; only two months later, a driver from Missouri reported that his Tesla had saved his life.

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See Emergency call (eCall) Eco-driving functions, 297 Eco-routing applications, 299 Economic(s), 65, 328 approach, 250 251 exchange, 344 potential savings from selfdriving cars and trucks, 66 savings effects from autonomous cars, 67 68 from autonomous trucks, 68 69 value shifts in automotive industry, 329 Ecosystem degree of autonomy, 262 263 ecosystem of vehicles, 263 264 intelligent connected vehicle, 261 262 tractor to ecosystem, 262 of vehicles, 263 264 e-drive mode. See Egotistical mode (e-drive mode) e-Golf, 180 Egotistical mode (e-drive mode), 252 Eight Race car Drivers, statements by, 62 Electric cars, 26, 27 Electric motors, 26 Electric Tesla Model S, 203 Electrification, 26 27 Electronic stability control (ESC), 303 Index Electronic stability program (ESP), 333 Elevator technology, 32 Emergency call (eCall), 136 137 Emerging societies automotive industry, 379 process of industrialization, 378 Emissions, 187 192 End-2-end deep neural networks, 115 Endorsers, 225 Engine management, 122 Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB).

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance
Published 18 May 2015

It was only after I’d spent lots of time with Musk that I realized the question was more for him than me. Nothing I said would have mattered. Musk was stopping one last time and wondering aloud if I could be trusted and then looking into my eyes to make his judgment. A split second later, we shook hands and Musk drove off in a red Tesla Model S sedan. ANY STUDY OF ELON MUSK must begin at the headquarters of SpaceX, in Hawthorne, California—a suburb of Los Angeles located a few miles from Los Angeles International Airport. It’s there that visitors will find two giant posters of Mars hanging side by side on the wall leading up to Musk’s cubicle.

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The island experience was a difficult but ultimately fruitful adventure for the engineers. Photograph courtesy of SpaceX SpaceX built a mobile mission-control trailer, and Musk and Mueller used it to monitor the later launches from Kwaj. Photograph courtesy of SpaceX Musk hired Franz von Holzhausen in 2008 to design the Tesla Model S. The two men speak almost every day, as can be seen in this meeting in Musk’s SpaceX cubicle. ©Steve Jurvetson SpaceX’s ambitions grew over the years to include the construction of the Dragon capsule, which could take people to the International Space Station and beyond. ©Steve Jurvetson Musk has long had a thing for robots and is always evaluating new machines for both the SpaceX and Tesla factories.

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(or NUMMI) car factory in Fremont, California, which is where workers produce the Model S sedan. Photograph courtesy of Tesla Motors Tesla began shipping the Model S sedan in 2012. The car ended up winning most of the automotive industry’s major awards. Photograph courtesy of Tesla Motors The Tesla Model S sedan with its electric motor (near the rear) and battery pack (bottom) exposed. Photograph courtesy of Tesla Motors Tesla’s next car will be the Model X SUV with its signature “falcon-wing doors.” Photograph courtesy of Tesla Motors In 2013, Musk visited Cuba with Sean Penn (driving) and the investor Shervin Pishevar (back seat next to Musk).

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World
by Scott Galloway
Published 2 Oct 2017

June 3, 2016. http://www.businessinsider.com/r-amid-sec-probe-jack-ma-says-hard-for-us-to-understand-alibaba-media-2016-6. 15. DeMorro, Christopher. “How Many Awards Has Tesla Won? This Infographic Tells Us.” Clean Technica. February 18, 2015. https://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/18/many-awards-tesla-won-infographic-tells-us/. 16. Cobb, Jeff. “Tesla Model S Is World’s Best-Selling Plug-in Car for Second Year in a Row.” GM-Volt. January 20, 2017. http://gm-volt.com/2017/01/27/tesla-model-s-is-worlds-best-selling-plug-in-car-for-second-year-in-a-row/. 17. Hull, Dana. “Tesla Says It Received More Than 325,000 Model 3 Reservations.” Bloomberg. April 7, 2016. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/tesla-says-model-3-pre-orders-surge-to-325-000-in-first-week. 18.

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War
by Paul Scharre
Published 23 Apr 2018

The human’s ability to actually regain control of the system in real time depends heavily on the speed of operations, the amount of information available to the human, and any time delays between the human’s actions and the system’s response. Giving a driver the ability to grab the wheel of an autonomous vehicle traveling at highway speeds in dense traffic, for example, is merely the illusion of control, particularly if the operator is not paying attention. This appears to have been the case in a 2016 fatality involving a Tesla Model S that crashed while driving on autopilot. For fully autonomous systems, the human is out of the loop and cannot intervene at all, at least for some period of time. This means that if the system fails or the context changes, the result could be a runaway autonomous process beyond human control with no ability to halt or correct it.

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v=i-vMW_Ce51w. 146 Watson hadn’t been programmed: Casey Johnston, “Jeopardy: IBM’s Watson Almost Sneaks Wrong Answer by Trebek,” Ars Technica, February 15, 2011, https://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/ibms-watson-tied-for-1st-in-jeopardy-almost-sneaks-wrong-answer-by-trebek.ars. 146 “We just didn’t think it would ever happen”: Ibid. 147 2016 fatality involving a Tesla Model S: Neither the autopilot nor driver applied the brake when a tractor-trailer turned in front of the vehicle. Anjali Singhvi and Karl Russell, “Inside the Self-Driving Tesla Fatal Accident,” New York Times, July 1, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/01/business/inside-tesla-accident.html.

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F., 39 Skynet (fictitious weapon system), 26–28, 52–53, 134, 233–34, 360–61 SMArt 155 artillery shell, 343 “smart” weapons, 38–40; see also precision-guided munitions Somme, Battle of the, 38 sonar, 85 Sorcerer’s Apprentice (animated short), 148–49 South China Sea, 209 South Korea, 5, 102, 104–5, 260, 303–4, 356 sovereignty, drones and, 208 Soviet Union, 1–2, 76, 313–14; see also Cold War S&P 500, 199, 204 space shuttle, 154, 382n SpaceX, 154 Spark hobby drone, 115 Sparrow, Rob, 259 spear phishing attacks, 224 speed, 199–210 autonomous weapons and, 207–10 and crisis stability, 304–5 in cyberwarfare, 229–30 and limits of centaur warfighting, 325–26 online price wars, 205 in stock trading, 200–204, 206–7 spoofing attacks, 182–83, 183f, 186, 206 Sputnik, 76, 80 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), 37–38 stability, 297–318 autonomous weapons and, 302–3 autonomous weapons’ potential to inflame crises, 317–18 benefits of autonomous weapons in crises, 311–14 and debate over autonomous weapons bans, 351–52 and nuclear weapons, 298–302 psychology of crisis decision-making, 306–11 and removal of human fail-safe, 305–6 speed and, 304–5 stability-instability paradox and mad robot theory, 314–16 strategic, 297–302 Stark, USS, 169 Star Wars, 134 “Star Wars” missile defense shield, 309–10 stationary armed sentry robots, 104–5 stealth drones, 56, 61–62, 209, 354 stigmergy, 21 stock market algorithmic trading, 200–201, 203–4, 206–7, 210, 229, 244, 387n E-mini price manipulation incident, 206 “Flash Crash,” 199–201, 203–4 Knight Capital Group incident, 201–2 Strategic Air Command (SAC), 307 strategic corporal problem, 309 Strategic Defense Initiative, 1, 309–10 strategic stability, 297–302 Strategic Stability (Colby), 299 Strategy of Conflict (Schelling), 341 Stuxnet worm, 213–16, 223, 224 Submarine Safety (SUBSAFE) program, 161–62 submarine warfare, 101 suffering, unnecessary, 257–58 Sullivan, Paul, 162 Sun Tzu, 229 Superintelligence (Bostrom), 237 supervised autonomous weapon systems, 29, 45–46, 45f, 193, 329f CODE, 72–76, 117, 253, 327–28 human intervention in, 147 surface action group (SAG), 64 surrender, false, 259–60 surveillance drones for, 13–14 FLA and, 68–71 swarming by autonomous weapons, 11–13 CODE program, 72–76 command-and-control models, 20f and evolution of autonomy, 17–23 FLA and, 71 of U.S. ships by Iran, 22, 107 synthetic aperture radar (SAR), 86 Syria, 7, 331 system failure, Three Mile Island as, 151 T-14 Armata tank, 116 Tacit Rainbow, 49 Tactical Technology Office (TTO), 79–83 Tactical Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM-E), 55, 368n tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP), 41 Taliban, 3, 253 tanks, robotic, 115–16 Taranis drone, 108–11 targeting ATR, 76, 84–88 autonomous, 116, 123–24, 187 DIY drones and, 123–24 by human-assisted automated weapons, 98 by sentry robots, 112–13 of weapons instead of people, 261 target location error, 98 Target Recognition and Adaption in Contested Environments (TRACE), 84–88, 128 targets, cooperative/non-cooperative, 84–85 task, as dimension of autonomy, 28 TASM, See Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile TensorFlow, 128–29 Terminator (film series) and autonomous weapon debates, 264 fate in, 360–61 good Terminators in, 295 self-aware robots in, 27 Skynet, 26–28, 52–53, 134, 233–34, 360–61 “Terminator Conundrum,” 8 terrorism, 93, 134 Tesla Model S crash, 147 Tetris, 239 thermostats, programmable, 30–31, 33–34 Third Offset Strategy, 59, 82, 93 Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ), 130–33 Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov), 26–27, 134 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, 151–53, 156 Thresher, USS, 161 tightly coupled systems, 152 TJ (Thomas Jefferson High School), 130–33 Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM), 49, 49f, 53–54, 368n Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile (TLAM-E), 55, 368n Tornado GR4A fighter jet incident, 138–40, 176 torpedoes, 39–40 torture, 280 total war, 274, 296, 341 Tousley, Bradford, 80–84, 149, 210, 223–24 TRACE (Target Recognition and Adaption in Contested Environments), 84–88, 128 training, limitations of, 177 transparency and crisis management, 328–29 in description of weapons research, 111 in treaty verification regimes, 344–45, 352–53 treaties, arms control, see arms control Trebek, Alex, 146 Trident II (D5) ballistic missile, 173 Trophy system, 92 trust in Aegis combat system, 168 in automation, see automation bias and cybersecurity, 246 and dangers of autonomous weapons, 192, 194 and deployment of autonomous systems, 83 and need to understand system’s capabilities and limitations, 149–50 Tseng, Brandon, 122, 123, 133 Tseng, Ryan, 122 TTO (Tactical Technology Office), 79–83 TTP (tactics, techniques, and procedures), 41 Turing, Alan, 236 Turing test, 236 Tutsis, 288 Twain, Mark, 35–36 Twitter, 185, 224 U-2 surveillance plane, 307, 310–11 UAV (uninhabited aerial vehicle), 104 UCAV (uninhabited combat aerial vehicle), 62 unguided weapons, 38–39 UNIDIR (UN Institute for Disarmament Research), 150–51 uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV), 104 uninhabited combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), 62 United Kingdom (UK) autonomous weapons policy, 118 Brimstone missile, 105–8, 117, 326, 353 stance on fully autonomous weapons, 110–11 Taranis drone, 108–11 transparency in description of weapons research, 111 WWII aerial bombardments, 341–42 UK Joint Doctrine Note 2/11 (The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems), 109 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), see Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), 150–51 UN Security Council, 344 United Nations Special Rapporteur, 287 U.S.

Driverless Cars: On a Road to Nowhere
by Christian Wolmar
Published 18 Jan 2018

She added that ‘they should make such data publicly available for expert validation’.40 In fact, quite the opposite is happening. Manufacturers are not sharing information or divulging it, through fear of passing information to their competitors, and they are not providing it to regulators. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the accident that killed Joshua Brown revealed that the Tesla Model S uses the company’s own proprietary system to record a vehicle’s speed and other data. This means that external agencies cannot access this information using the usual tools available commercially for gathering data from most other cars. For that reason, the NTSB said it ‘had to rely on Tesla to provide the data in engineering units using proprietary manufacturer software’.41 That could mean that potential faults in the system might not be revealed, and no independent verification of the safety of the system is possible.

The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership
by Richard Branson
Published 8 Sep 2014

The luxury/sports sedan market is much smaller in unit sales opportunities but hugely effective in switching the mindset of influential car owners to finally wanting to own an electric car for looks, performance and cool, first adopter cachet, as opposed to just fuel efficiency. And let’s be honest, if you can afford to fork out the price of a luxury vehicle, the cost of fuel is usually the last thing on your mind! The $70,000 Tesla Model S not only looks like a very cool sports car but behaves like one: it reportedly accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in an incredible 3.7 seconds and for those like me who have a conscience about such things, it is almost twice as energy efficient as the homely sector-leading Toyota Prius. And as if all that were not enough, the influential ‘Consumer Reports’ magazine ranked the Tesla as ‘the best we have ever tested’ with a ninety-nine per cent overall rating.

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Horatio 294–5 Nest 365, 368–70 Netflix 56–8, 216–18, 358 New York Times 146, 172, 304 Newcastle United FC 258 NeXT 262 Nike 311, 371 Nikon 125 9/11 210, 305 Nokia 311–12 Nolan, Anthony 321 Nominet Trust 363 Northern Rock 185, 186–8, 257–8 note-taking 5, 30–1, 33–7 NTL:Telewest 161 Obama, Barack 79–80 OceanElders 237 Oelwang, Jean 285 Old Man and the Sea, The (Hemingway) 104 Oldfield, Mike 134 O’Leary, Michael 21 Olympic Games, Winter, Sochi 311 Oneworld 312 oratory 31–3, 83–94 common human fear 84 and Q&A format 88–9 and teleprompters 84–5 and well-timed pauses 87 words best avoided during 90–4 words recommended for use during 94–5 Page, Larry 82–3, 130–1, 137, 191, 198, 288, 362–3 and April Fool stunts 268–9 palindromes 111 Pan Am 156, 300 Pascal, Blaise 82 passion: as essence of brand 242 innateness of 242–3 RB’s 242 recognised in others 247 Path 370 PayPal 247 Penni (RB’s assistant) 66 Pepsico 285 ‘Per Ardua ad Astra’ 103 Pioneers TV 280 Pixar 324 Plato 334 Player, Gary 134 Polman, Paul 357 Powell, Colin 79 Pret a Manger, and ex-prisoners 24 Private Sector Employment Indicator 283 procrastination: orchestrated 330, 334 serial 328–9 Project Oxygen 214 public speaking, see oratory Qantas 72, 73, 138, 236 Qwikster 57–8 Raleigh, Walter 293 Reach for the Sky 102–3 Reagan, Ronald 299, 325 Rebel Billionaire, The 192, 195 Reed, Claire 274–5 Reed, Frank 207–8 Reel Gardening 274–5 Remington Products 64 résumé, see CV RetailSales 148 Richard III 197 Ridgway, Steve 76–7 Robinson, Mary 38, 118 Rolling Stones 97 Rose, Greg 339 Rossi, Chris 206 Royal Bank of Scotland 186, 188 Rutherford, Mike 323 Ryanair 21 Safaricom 354 Sainsbury’s, and ex-prisoners 24 Sandberg, Sheryl 285 Sarah Blakely Foundation 195 see also Blakely, Sara SB.TV 281 Schmidt, Eric 268, 288 Scott, Robert Falcon 293 Scully, John 368 Securities and Exchange Commission 331 Seneca 141 Shakespeare, William 197 Sheeran, Ed 281 ShIFT project 355 Singapore Airlines 77, 138–9, 312 Skyteam 312 Skytrain 298, 299, 306 see also Laker Airways social enterprises 360–4 Social Tech, Social Change 363 Souter, Brian 337–8 Southwest Airlines 228–31, 233–4, 239 Soweto 286 SpaceX 247 Spanx 192–5 Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The (le Carré) 30 Spy Who Shagged Me, The 75 Star Alliance 312 Starbucks 169–70 Start-Up Loans Company 283 Steel, Joe 160–1 Stereophonics 97–8 Stevens Aviation 231 Stop and Search UK 362 Student: beginnings of 30, 279, 347 as David vs Goliath 156 Howard interview RB about 90–1 le Carré interviewed for 5, 30 Lennon interviewed for 5 RB as ‘cub reporter’ on 5 Student Loans Company 282 subprime mortgages 331 Sun Microsystems 268 T-Mobile 31 Tait, David 86, 129, 200, 250–1 and RB’s passport 256 Talisman Management 237–8 Tata Group 357 Tata, Ratan 357 team dynamics 322 see also collaboration teleprompters 84–5 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 295 Tesla Model S 246–7 Tewson, Jane 23 Thatcher, Margaret 80, 299 Tiffany 148 Toll Group 24 TOMS 357, 359 Towers Watson 215–16 Trafalgar, Battle of 294 Trump, Donald 21, 197 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 38 Tubular Bells 134–5, 166 Tutu, Desmond 37–8 TWA 156, 300 Twain, Mark 40, 86–7, 88, 155, 180 Twitter 82, 106, 131 UN Foundation 359 Unilever 359 unions 243–4 Vega, Cecilia 285 Virgin Active 62, 108–10, 206, 207–8 quote on leadership and listening from 46 in Soweto 286 Virgin America 74, 77, 151–3, 209–10, 257, 286 cabin innovations at 371 Virgin Atlantic 70, 71–2, 74–5, 76–7, 129, 130, 144, 171–3, 200–1, 245, 333 BA’s ad battle with 172–3 and British Airways 301 cabin innovations at 371 Clubhouse Lounges of 63, 181, 183 and collaboration 312–13 complimentary limos offered by 158 and Continental Airlines 150–1 and Coutts Bank 118 as David vs Goliath 156–9 and delegation 200 and gut feeling 329 and headsets 145–6 and Heathrow emergency landing 98 inaugural flight of 255–7 and King’s ‘pirate’ gibe 301 Laker’s advice to 300 left out of flotation 165 new HQ for 121 new routes made available to 140 ‘nothing “typical” about’ 146 perceived as ‘rock-and-roll airline’ 74 RB cold-calls customers of 66–7 and RB’s ballooning 304 RB’s hands-on approach to 128 and RB’s logo stunt against BA 301–2 shiatsu massages offered by 171 single-aeroplane route flown by 156 Upper Class offered by 158, 182–3 and Virgin Mobile, parallels with 159–60 Virgin Australia (formerly Virgin Blue) 72–4, 75–6, 138–40, 236, 243, 245–6, 257 and gut feeling 329 Virgin Blue, see Virgin Australia Virgin Bride 329 Virgin Cola 58–9, 304–7, 329 Virgin Cruises 333 Virgin Digital 127 Virgin Express 243–4 Virgin Galactic 40, 103, 247, 270, 333, 371–2 Virgin Group: airlines owned by 22, 62, 257; see also individual airlines corporate culture adopted by, beginnings of 235 definition-of-leadership research among 43–7, 191 disparate range offered by 236, 243 and ex-prisoners 24 floatation of 165–6 floatation reversal by 167 head offices of 49 major lawsuits concerning 31 new corporate HQ of 258–9 note-taking among personnel of 34; see also note-taking parties thrown by, see Virgin parties and get-togethers passion as brand essence of 242 RB’s and employees’ top leadership attributions of 44–5 see also individual Virgin brands Virgin Holidays 69 Virgin Hotels 62–4, 69 Virgin Limited Edition 62, 191, 209 quote on leadership and listening from 47 Virgin Management: definition-of-leadership research by 43–7, 191 and ex-prisoners 24 Virgin Media 161–2 ads of 171 day-off-for-giving idea of 320–1 quote on leadership and listening from 46 Virgin Media Pioneers (VMP) 280–2 Virgin Mega 111–13 Virgin Megastores 126, 127–8, 181–2, 262 New York City 182 Paris 181 Virgin Mobile 159–61, 171, 285 music festival of 173–4 Virgin Mobile Australia, quote on leadership and listening from 45 Virgin Mobile FreeFest 174 Virgin Money 164, 181, 185–90, 285 ‘Everybody Better Off’ (EBO) philosophy of 188, 190 and Goldman Sachs 330–1 Lounge concept of 188–90 as Newcastle United kit sponsor 258 Northern Rock acquired by 185, 187, 257–8 and Virgin StartUp 283 Young Enterprise’s collaboration with 277–8 Virgin One 186 Virgin parties and get-togethers 253–5 at Manor, Oxfordshire 254–5 and new corporate HQ 258–9 and Northern Rock acquisition 257–8 Virgin Atlantic inaugural flight 255–7 weekend-long 255 Virgin Produced 365 Virgin Pulse 127, 359 Virgin Records 97, 245, 333 as David vs Goliath 156 first album release of 134–5 first shop of 181 and people-first culture 228 ‘Slipped Disc’ name suggestion for 170 staff member’s thefts from 22–3 ‘Virgin Shaglantic’ 75 Virgin StartUp 283 Virgin Trains 144, 247–50, 317 and Department for Transport 41 and ex-prisoners 24 and FirstGroup 335–40 and north-east derailment 343–4 quote on leadership and listening from 46 and West Coast franchise 41, 335–40 Virgin Unite 274, 280, 285, 291, 355 Virgin Way: evolution of 5 parties an essential part of 259; see also Virgin parties and get-togethers project named after 43 and testing own products 65 ‘Virgle’ 269 Vodafone 354 VOSS 355 V2 Records 97–8 Wal-Mart 349–53 Warwickshire Police 106 water saving 352–3, 354 Wayne, John 29–30 Wayne, Ronald 137 Wells, Adam 371 West Coast rail franchise 41, 335–40 Whitehorn, Will 343–4 Whiteside, George 40 wildlife crime 362–3 Winfrey, Oprah 194 women: on battlefield 295 as entrepreneurs 284–5 Working Chance 24 working from home, see home working Wozniak, Steve 137 Yahoo!

The Road to Conscious Machines
by Michael Wooldridge
Published 2 Nov 2018

At the time of writing, the state of the art system for commercially available driverless car technology is probably Tesla’s Autopilot, initially available on the Tesla Model S car. Released in 2012, the Model S was the flagship vehicle in Tesla’s line-up of high-specification electric cars, and at the time of its release, it was probably the world’s most technologically advanced commercially available electric car. From September 2014 onwards, all Tesla Model S vehicles were equipped with cameras, radar and acoustic range sensors. The purpose of all this high-tech kit was made plain in October 2015, when Tesla released software for the car that enabled its ‘Autopilot’ feature – a limited automatic driving capability.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Published 28 Jan 2020

Nor do they account for ChargePoint, a company that has raised over $500 million to build 2.5 million charging ports by 2025, half in Europe, half in the US. If successful, ChargePoint could put charge port availability on par with gas pump availability. Which brings us to another of the World Economic Forum’s top five dangers: extreme weather. In 2017, the average American home ran on 29.5 kilowatt-hours a day, while the average Tesla Model-S has an 85 kilowatt-hour battery pack. In a pinch, this means a fully charged Model-S could power three American homes for almost twenty-four hours. So if a hurricane takes out South Florida, a fleet of Teslas can be the emergency backup system. With an AI-driven smart grid, electric vehicles become nodes in a national network, a mobile fleet of backup generators to prepare for the extreme weather to come.

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See also their commitment to build 2.5 million charging ports by 2025, here: https://www.chargepoint.com/about/news/chargepoint-makes-landmark-commitment-future-mobility-pledge-25-million-places-charge/. 29.5 kilowatt-hours a day: According to the US Energy Information Administration, the average US house consumes 867 kilowatt-hours per month, or about 29 kilowatt-hours per day. See: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3. Tesla Model-S: See: https://www.tesla.com/models. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services coral reefs are already in jeopardy: Laura Parker, “Coral Reefs Could Be Gone in 30 Years,” National Geographic, June 23, 2017. See: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/06/coral-reef-bleaching-global-warming-unesco-sites/. 25 percent of the world’s biodiversity: According to the World Wildlife Fund: https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/oceans/coasts/coral_reefs/. 500 million people: Melissa Gaskill, “The Current State of Coral Reefs,” PBS, July 15, 2019.

Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson
Published 11 Sep 2023

So a new part of the assembly facility was added to build domes. After a few years, SpaceX was making in-house 70 percent of the components of its rockets. When SpaceX began producing its first Merlin engines, Musk asked Mueller how much they weighed. About a thousand pounds, Mueller responded. The Tesla Model S engine, Musk said, weighed about four thousand pounds and cost about $30,000 to make. “So if the Tesla engine is four times as heavy as your engine, why does yours cost so fucking much?” One reason was that rocket components were subject to hundreds of specifications and requirements mandated by the military and NASA.

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It read, “Please prepare yourself for a level of intensity that is greater than anything most of you have experienced before. Revolutionizing industries is not for the faint of heart.” The validation came at the end of 2012, when Motor Trend Magazine picked its car of the year. The headline: “Tesla Model S, Shocking Winner: Proof Positive That America Can Still Make (Great) Things.” The review itself was so breathtaking that it surprised even Musk. “It drives like a sports car, eager and agile and instantly responsive. But it’s also as smoothly effortless as a Rolls-Royce, can carry almost as much stuff as a Chevy Equinox, and is more efficient than a Toyota Prius.

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Neuralink uploaded a video of it to YouTube, and within a year it was viewed six million times. 66 Vision Only Tesla, January 2021 A slide showing the progress being made on autonomous cars Delete radar The question of whether to use radar in its Autopilot system for self-driving cars—rather than relying solely on visual data from cameras—remained a contentious one at Tesla. It also became a case study of Musk’s style of decision-making: oscillating between bold, stubborn, reckless, visionary, guided by the first principles of physics, but at times surprisingly flexible. He had initially been somewhat open-minded on the issue. When the Tesla Model S was upgraded in 2016, he reluctantly allowed the Autopilot team to use a forward-facing radar in addition to the car’s eight cameras. And he authorized his engineers to have a program to build its own radar system, known as Phoenix. But by the beginning of 2021, the use of radar was causing problems.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Published 15 Sep 2014

Tesla’s technology is so good that other car companies rely on it: Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs; Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain; Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves. But Tesla’s greatest technological achievement isn’t any single part or component, but rather its ability to integrate many components into one superior product. The Tesla Model S sedan, elegantly designed from end to end, is more than the sum of its parts: Consumer Reports rated it higher than any other car ever reviewed, and both Motor Trend and Automobile magazines named it their 2013 Car of the Year. TIMING. In 2009, it was easy to think that the government would continue to support cleantech: “green jobs” were a political priority, federal funds were already earmarked, and Congress even seemed likely to pass cap-and-trade legislation.

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play
by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant
Published 7 Nov 2019

All the nuances of designing new products can be reduced to one of two basic strategies: either finding what causes us pain and trying to eliminate it, or reinforcing what we already do with a new object that makes it so easy it becomes second nature. The truest material for making new things isn’t aluminum or carbon fiber. It’s behavior.30 Tesla Model S steering wheel (2012) 4 Trust It was January of the year 2016, which would prove to be a breakthrough year in mainstream media coverage of driverless cars. We were rolling eastward across the San Mateo Bridge in an Audi A7, picking our way through traffic. One of the car’s engineers was driving, while I was riding in the passenger seat.

…

By doing so, Tesla planted an idea in the heads of its users about what a car driving itself should do. They invited drivers to supply their own ideas about “autopilot,” then sent them on their way. And when there was a gap between what Autopilot did and how people imagined it, tragedy struck. On May 7, Joshua Brown was behind the wheel of his beloved Tesla Model S while the car took care of the driving. He was a veteran of the Navy, where he’d worked with SEAL Team 6 disarming IEDs. He was a daredevil and a tech geek, Tesla’s ideal customer. When he bought the car, he bought the idea that Tesla was pushing the limits of what we were ready for. Brown didn’t seem to notice when a truck in the oncoming lane took a left turn in front of him.

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
by Varun Sivaram
Published 2 Mar 2018

Already, SpaceX—which Musk also helms—had lent hundreds of millions of dollars to SolarCity, which was run by Musk’s cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive. Now, analysts fumed, SolarCity’s sale to Tesla would constitute a bailout within the family. On top of this, Tesla was facing production delays for its new Model 3 mass-market car, and an autonomously piloted Tesla Model S had just crashed, killing its driver. How could this be the right time to merge with an embattled firm from another industry? Musk actually agreed with his critics that the timing wasn’t ideal. But wryly, he quipped that the merger “may even be a little late.”2 As obviously disgraceful as the proposed sale was to the pundits, combining the two companies had been just as obviously a no-brainer for Musk for over a decade.

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See also Russia Space-based solar power, 147, 163 Space program, 34 SpaceX, 221, 222, 265 Spain, 43, 69, 73, 73f Sponsors, YieldCo, 94, 96–97 Sputnik satellites, 34 Stand-alone solar PV systems, 117 Stanford University, 27, 53, 190 Start-ups demand-side innovations by, 213–214 Silicon Valley solar, 27–29, 37–40, 146, 179, 257 State governments, 264–265, 268–269 State Grid Corporation, 195, 196 Stirling Dish Engine, 186 Stranks, Sam, 145 Strauss, Lewis, 21 Streamers, 183 Sub-Saharan Africa, 85, 117, 120, 121 Subsidies for deploying solar power, 17, 43, 57, 70, 266–268 for electricity used in agriculture, 247 for kerosene, 135 for new solar projects, 64 for silicon PV panel manufacturing, 43 Substation, 287g Substrates, for solar cells, 152, 161–162 Sun Catalytix, 179 SunEdison, 87–89, 89f, 91, 94–98, 106 Sunlight carbon-based fuels from (see Solar fuels) conversion of, into mechanical work, 30 electricity from, in silicon cells, 148–151, 150f as energy source, 11, 59 Sunlight Financial, 103 SunPower, 35, 42, 45, 94 SunShot program, 160, 160f, 260 Suntech, 42, 45 Supercapacitors, 228, 230–231 Supercharger stations, 243 Superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES), 228 Superconducting transmission lines, 204 Supercritical carbon dioxide, 188 Supergrids, 195–200 global, 196–198, 197f, 206–207, 219 in Global Energy Interconnection, 195 and hybrid grid, 219 optical, 215 pan-Asian, 195–196 regional, 206, 207 solar power in, 215 systemic innovation for, 199–200 transmission lines for, 205–207 Supermajor(s) and corporate investment in solar, 105–110 in solar energy, 89, 91–92 SunEdison as, 87, 106 Superstorm Sandy, 199, 207 Supply of electricity, 69–70, 200, 201 Surges, power grid, 77–78 Swanson, Dick, 42, 45 Swanson’s Law, 45 Swarm electrification, 134 Sweden, 201, 204 Sylmar converter station (Los Angeles, California), 204 Synfuels program, 259 Synthetic perovskite, 151 Systemic innovation, 221–247 and battery storage of solar energy, 221–226 defined, 58b, 193, 289g for expansion of solar energy, 24 and future of solar energy, xvi–xvii, 2 and global energy storage technologies, 226–232 for hybrid grid, 217, 219 and interconnections of energy, water, and food systems, 245–247 linking heating/transportation sectors with power sector, 243–245 overcoming solar deployment challenges with, 57, 58b, 59 in power markets, 239–243 and power sources for deep decarbonization, 232–239 preserving economic appeal of solar with, 80f, 81–83 public policies to encourage, 194 for supergrids or decentralized grids, 199–200 technological vs., 200 Tanaka, Yoshikazu, 169, 170 Tandem solar cells, 153, 154f, 156, 161, 283g Tandem structures, in photoelectrochemical cells, 178–179 Tanzania, 115–117, 124, 136 Tarangire National Park, 115 Tariffs feed-in, 36, 50, 57, 240, 281g and off-grid solar, 135–136 protecting domestic solar manufacturers with, 24–25, 273–274 Tax credits for clean energy, 266–271 for deployment of solar power, 50, 166 investment, 281g for new solar projects, 65 and technological innovation, 253 and U.S. solar industry, 35–36 Technological innovation and carbon tax, 271 and current silicon PV technology, 141 defined, 58b, 289g–290g for expansion of solar energy, 24 and financial innovation, 165 and future of solar energy, xvi, 2 government support for, 259 overcoming deployment challenges with, 57, 58b preserving economic appeal of solar with, 80–81, 80f, 83 in solar power, 190–191 systemic vs., 200 U.S. funding for, 252–253 Technology companies, as solar supermajors, 109–110 Technology costs, 138 Technology demonstrations, 264–265 Technology lock-in, 164–167, 231, 289g Telecom firms, as anchor clients, 130 Temperature, in CSP systems, 185–187, 190 TenneT, 55 Tesla, Inc., 100, 162, 169, 215, 223, 226, 229, 243, 258 Tesla, Nikola, 131, 202, 217 Tesla Model 3, 170, 221, 222, 229 Tesla Model S, 169, 221 Tesla Motors, 221–223 Texas, 71, 72f, 241, 269 Thermalization losses, 151 Thermal storage, for CSP systems, 185 Thin film technologies, 38–40, 163, 283g Three Gorges Corporation, 108 Tidal energy, 60 Tin-based perovskites, 156 Titanium dioxide, 177 Tokyo University, 144 Top-down grids, 209 Total (company), 35 Total solar eclipse, 55–56 Toyota Mirai, 170, 172, 173, 180, 191 Toyota Motor Corporation, 169–170, 172, 191 Toyota Prius, 169, 170 Track Two, REV program, 208–209 Trade barriers, 24–25, 135–136, 273–274 Transmission, 287g Transmission lines AC, 202, 203, 203f for cross-national grids, 201–202 DC (see DC transmission lines) superconducting, 204 for supergrids, 205–207 virtual, 215–216 Transportation sector electric vehicles in, 224 fossil fuels in, 60, 171 and future of solar power, 5 linking power sector with, 82, 226, 243–244 Trembath, Alex, 119 Trump, Donald J., and administration, 24, 65, 194, 250, 254, 255, 269, 270, 272, 273–274 Tuvalu, 6 Twin Creek Technologies, 39 Two-way communications networks, 214 Uganda, 124 Ultra-high-voltage-direct current (UHVDC) transmission lines, 196, 204–205 Underground thermal storage, 233 United Kingdom, 97, 211, 240 United Nations, 6, 33–34 United States.

The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future
by Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever
Published 2 Apr 2017

The noted science-fiction writer William Gibson, a favorite of hackers and techies, said in a 1999 radio interview (though apparently not for the first time): “The future is already here; it’s just not very evenly distributed.”1 Nearly two decades later—though the potential now exists for most of us, including the very poor, to participate in informed decision making as to its distribution and even as to bans on use of certain technologies—Gibson’s observation remains valid. I make my living thinking about the future and discussing it with others, and am privileged to live in what to most is the future. I drive an amazing Tesla Model S electric vehicle. My house, in Menlo Park, close to Stanford University, is a Passive House, extracting virtually no electricity from the grid and expending minimal energy on heating or cooling. My iPhone is cradled with electronic sensors that I can place against my chest to generate a detailed electrocardiogram to send to my doctors, from anywhere on Earth.* Many of the entrepreneurs and researchers I talk with about breakthrough technologies, such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, are building a better future at a breakneck pace.

Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea Into a Global Business
by Mikkel Svane and Carlye Adler
Published 13 Nov 2014

Most of this book focuses on our experiences in the early startup days, and how we got out of the garage—or loft. Building a global company and all that that entailed is for another book. For now, I wanted to focus on us and what happened now after we chased—and caught—the American Dream. I traded in my Volvo; I was customer No. 319 for the Tesla Model S and so incredibly proud about not only buying a car made in California, but also buying a car that was the first model in a new generation of cars, built by a startup. Morten, too, finally bought a nice car; he had said this was the first thing he was going to do in the United States, where, unlike Denmark, there was not an enormous tax on cars (to discourage car-dependency and incent people to ride bicycles).

Robot, Take the Wheel: The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Lost Art of Driving
by Jason Torchinsky
Published 6 May 2019

In this particular wreck, the Model X, on a clear day with excellent visibility, veered into a concrete median on a highway near Mountain View, California. There wasn’t anything in particular about the driving route or environment to suggest that the Autopilot system may have had trouble, but it did, and quite dramatically. The same goes for an earlier fatal Autopilot wreck in May 2017, when a Tesla Model S on Autopilot somehow didn’t see a tractor trailer, and the driver didn’t seem to be paying attention, either. Autopilot, like any Level 2 system, has limitations, often pretty significant ones. I don’t think Tesla’s Autopilot system is technically unsafe at all; I’m sure if used properly, it has the potential to help make driving much safer, overall.

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy
by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Published 4 Sep 2013

The story was impressive back then, but, upon reflection, it only demonstrated that the charismatic Lutz could make a good case on what was the most advanced communication tool available in 2005. Consider how the newer tools of sensors, data, location and mobility have changed the game, just for auto executives, not to mention the entire automotive industry. In February 2013, John M. Broder, a respected New York Times reporter often assigned to the White House, took a Tesla Model S, an elegant electric sedan, for a test drive from Washington, D.C., to New England. He had planned to complete his ride in Boston but, instead, it was ingloriously aborted in Connecticut where the Tesla ran out of power and was towed away on the back of a truck. He photographed the power-sapped Tesla and reported having had a very bad experience in his Times review.

Damsel in Distressed: My Life in the Golden Age of Hedge Funds
by Dominique Mielle
Published 6 Sep 2021

I wish James the absolute best and I hope he is well—after all, I note with a certain concern that he has not released a movie since he last met me. Speaking of tall and rich men, I introduced Elon Musk at one of our research retreats at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he spoke twice. It was probably 2011, because he was about to launch the Tesla Model S and the second version of the Falcon 9 rocket, and he was a lot thinner. Whether it is the job or the weed, I would not know since I am neither working nor smoking pot. His speech, in his inimitably casual style, described a professional path focused on solving such issues as nonphysical transactions, solar energy, space travel.

The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees
by Ben Mezrich
Published 6 Sep 2021

Not only did they underestimate Elon’s tenacity and his technology; they didn’t understand that he wasn’t just selling a product, he was attempting to engineer a dream. But shorts didn’t profit in dreams; they made their money from nightmares. At the height of their battle, in Tesla’s opinion, the shorts went dirty; a viral video of a Tesla battery catching fire led to multiple articles about the dangers of electric cars, and particularly the Tesla Model S. The fact that Teslas were statistically ten times less likely to catch fire than gasoline-powered cars didn’t matter, or make headlines. Adding to the fray, one business magazine ran a story in which an allegedly disgruntled employee claimed there were faulty batteries in the Model 3 as well.

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms
by Hannah Fry
Published 17 Sep 2018

Julia Pyper, ‘Self-driving cars could cut greenhouse gas pollution’, Scientific American, 15 Sept. 2014, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/self-driving-cars-could-cut-greenhouse-gas-pollution/. 63. Raphael E. Stern et al., ‘Dissipation of stop-and-go waves via control of autonomous vehicles: field experiments’, arXiv: 1705.01693v1, 4 May 2017, https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01693. 64. SomeJoe7777, ‘Tesla Model S forward collision warning saves the day’, YouTube, 19 Oct. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnRp56XjV_M. 65. https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-driving-hardware. 66. Jordan Golson and Dieter Bohn, ‘All new Tesla cars now have hardware for “full self-driving capabilities”: but some safety features will be disabled initially’, The Verge, 19 Oct. 2016, https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13340938/tesla-autopilot-update-model-3-elon-musk-update. 67.

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
Published 14 Apr 2018

First of all, contrary to the popular narrative, not all of Steve’s products were perfect from the start. The original Mac didn’t come with a hard drive. The original iPhone didn’t come with an App Store. It is true that we can point to a number of entrepreneurs who did launch a great product at the very beginning. For example, when Elon Musk launched the Tesla Model S, it immediately became the highest-rated car on the road, being named Motor Trend Car of the Year in its debut year, and achieving a higher Consumer Reports rating than any other car that organization had ever tested. But to do this, you have to believe that you can nail the product/market fit of a new market before you launch, and invest substantial amounts of capital based solely on that confidence.

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
by Dan Lyons
Published 22 Oct 2018

The problem was that San Francisco had only nineteen hundred shelter beds, but four thousand people were living on the streets. Nevertheless, the proposition passed. In 2017, the cops started sweeping people off the streets. Ayn Rand and the PayPal Mafia One day in May 2018, the police in Laguna Beach, California, published a set of photographs from a car accident: a Tesla Model S sedan, operating in autopilot mode, had crossed the center line and smashed into a parked police SUV. The photos of the Laguna Beach crash seemed like a perfect metaphor for what the new Masters of the Universe are doing to society: turning loose a bunch of half-baked ideas to careen around and smash into things, all in the name of progress.

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World
by Meredith Broussard
Published 19 Apr 2018

Across the street was a wrought-iron outline of a woman. Someone had yarn-bombed it, covering the metal. A peach-colored crochet bikini hung limply on the frame. We walked in and saw a red Model S sedan. Next to it on the floor was a miniature version, in the identical deep crimson. It was a Radio Flyer version of a Tesla Model S. It was miniature like a Barbie Jeep or a mini John Deere tractor or a Power Wheels car—but it was a Tesla. I was enchanted. We went out on a test drive in the Model X with a salesperson named Ryan. The X doors open like falcon wings: they furl and unfurl. My son walked up to the car. Ryan beeped the remote, which was shaped like a small Tesla, to open the rear passenger side door.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
by Kelly Weill
Published 22 Feb 2022

He and a handful of others from this secret police force had turned rogue after discovering the wonders that lay at the earth’s edge, and now he was leading expeditions to the end of the world to share the truth of what lay beyond. For his trouble, of course, he needed funding. Specifically $1 million in hard-to-track Bitcoin payments. “You might think that’s a lot of money, but it’s just the cost of ten Tesla Model S cars,” he told viewers in a YouTube clip. “People spend, collectively, way more than this on personal luxuries.” He planned to earn his million by selling ten seats on his expedition for $100,000 each. He never showed his face in his videos, and the avatar he used on Facebook and Twitter had been stolen from a stock-image website.

A Fine Mess
by T. R. Reid
Published 13 Mar 2017

In the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, Congress created a lucrative tax break—it’s Section 30(D) of the Internal Revenue Code—for people who can afford to buy electric or plug-in hybrid cars. It’s formally known as the “new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicle credit.” It says anybody buying a qualified plug-in electric car—the list of approved vehicles includes sleek, sporty cars like the $105,000 Tesla Model S P85D and the $138,000 BMW i8—can subtract up to $7,500 from the income tax he or she owes Uncle Sam. There are some less exotic cars that qualify—and get a smaller tax credit—but even those models, for the most part, are priced well beyond the reach of an American family making the median income.

Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead
by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman
Published 22 Sep 2016

Hotz rigged up a 2016 Acura ILX with the usual equipment: lidar, a camera, and a glove compartment packed with a computer, a networking switch, and GPS sensors. According to Hotz, his driverless car worked well. The tension started to build when Hotz boasted that with just a few more months of improvements and practice, the software guiding his do-it-yourself (DIY) Acura could drive better than the autodrive module of a Tesla Model S. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, was not amused by Hotz’s public challenge. In a response posted on Tesla’s website, Musk deflated Hotz’s claims, pointing out that the true problem of autonomy: getting a machine learning system to be 99% correct is relatively easy, but getting it to be 99.9999% correct, which is where it ultimately needs to be, is vastly more difficult.

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs
by Tim Draper
Published 18 Dec 2017

I was so glad I volunteered my car to give people test drives. I had no idea at the revolution in automotive that I was witnessing. So much innovation. So many hardworking, proud employees. I hope this book helps you start something that brings to life a business that serves to design a product as awesome and important as the Tesla Model S car. Entrepreneurship is often thankless, and when an entrepreneur fails it can be tragic. But maybe I can help you think about your journey in a new way. To better help you think about what a Startup Hero does and the impact he or she creates, whether in a success or a failure. I provide you here with a story.

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
by Eric Berger
Published 2 Mar 2021

See Merlin engine Spikes, Branden, 262 Spincraft, 19, 151 Stanford University, 21, 129, 152, 155, 160 Starhopper, 1–2, 4, 265 Starship, 1, 3, 4, 35, 140, 235, 237, 247 Starship Troopers (movie), 168 Star Trek (TV show), 164, 176 Stock options, 15 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 169 Suffredini, Michael, 221 Sunburn, 165–66 Super Heavy Launch System, 247 Supersonic retropropulsion, 233 Survivor (TV show), 75 Swamp Works, 24–25 TacSat, 113–14 Tahiti, 117, 118 Team America: World Police (movie), 93 TEA-TEB, 157–58, 194 Teets, Peter, 103, 104–5 Tesla, 181, 182, 201–2, 216–16, 217, 221, 256 Tesla Model S, 202 Tesla Roadster, 182, 201–2 Texas State Police, 28–29 Texas State Technical College, 45 Thomas, Ed “Eddie,” 77, 119–20, 121, 141, 159, 195, 262 Thompson, Chris, 239–42, 261 Falcon 1, 14–15 Washington, D.C. debut, 106 Flight Three, 177 Flight Four first-stage C-17 transport, 188–89, 191–92 payload, 184 refurbishment after transport, 193, 194–95, 196 founding of SpaceX, 10, 12, 14–18 Li and, 130 Merlin engine, 18–19, 151 Omelek site, 71, 75 everyday life, 166 fact-finding visit, 56–57 first launch attempt, 78–79 Wisconsin trip, 18–19, 151 Thompson, Ryan, 241 Thompson, Taylor, 241 Timeline, 263–65 Titan rockets, 48, 65–66, 224 TiungSAT-1, 54 Tobey, Brett, 236 Trade secrets, 43, 111 Trailblazer, 164 Trump, Donald, 235 TRW Inc., 32, 33–34, 37, 41, 43–44, 161 TR-106 (low-cost pintle engine), 33–34 Turbopumps, 37–38, 40, 92, 248 Turkish goulash, 168, 197, 242 recipe, 267–68 2001: A Space Odyssey (movie), 18 United Launch Alliance, 110–11, 112, 228, 236, 255 University of Bremen, 70 University of Delaware, 129 University of Idaho, 30–31 University of Michigan, 227 University of Southern California, 6, 7, 9, 20 Vance, Ashlee, 216 Vandenberg Air Force Base, 52–53, 64–67 Air Force plans for, 64–65 Falcon 1 static fire test, 47–49, 58–61, 65–66 procurement of site, 50–52 Vietnam War, 62 Virgin Galactic, 40, 241–42, 247 Virgin Orbit, 245 Von Braun, Wernher, 91 Walker, Steven, 98–99, 224 Wertz, James, 50, 79–80 White Sands Missile Range, 79–80 Whitesides, George, 241–42 World War II, 55 XCOR, 39–40 XPRIZE Foundation, 10 Zero-G flight, 141–42 Zurbuchen, Thomas, 227–28 Photo Section (SpaceX) An overview of Omelek, the remote island on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific that became SpaceX’s launch site for the Falcon 1.

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
by George Gilder
Published 16 Jul 2018

Will the Sirens offer a new machine of economic growth and progress, investment and capital accumulation, and continued economic dominance? Or is The Dalles a monument to an expiring business strategy? Are the days of centralization over? CHAPTER 7 Dally’s Parallel Paradigm Is this Life after Google or what? Bill Dally is about to take me to the Palo Alto Caltrain station in his self-driving Tesla Model S.1 In the Nvidia garage in Santa Clara, I board the sleek gray boron steel and titanium missile, noting its futuristic payload of a 1,200-pound lithium-ion battery. Should be enough to get me to the station. Fully charged, it can almost replace sixty pounds of gasoline in the tank of an internal combustion engine.

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green
by Henry Sanderson
Published 12 Sep 2022

‘They acknowledged it and they knew there was something there but they would have assigned high risk to it. They didn’t do anything to react to it. And I think they misjudged that terribly. They had an opportunity at that time to make it much more difficult for new entrants.’ It was a cosy market, ripe for disruption. * On a drizzly, cold March day, I’m driven in a gleaming black Tesla Model S through the wet paddy fields outside an industrial city in the middle of China to see the beating heart of the battery economy. ‘This all used to be countryside,’ a young staff member, who studied in Bristol, told me as we approached the factory gates. Nearby, cows strolled freely despite the fumes emanating from the plant, which rose out of the cold mist, a concrete hulk of pillars, encircled with large rusted pipes.

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It
by Daniel Knowles
Published 27 Mar 2023

The trouble with Musk’s idea is not the tunneling itself (though I doubt it will be easy to reduce the cost of tunneling by anything like the amount you can reduce the cost of rockets), but rather the idea that you could funnel people in individual cars through them. It is simply a question of space. Take, for example, a single train on the Victoria Line in London. With a length of 133 meters, a single Victoria line train can hold around 1,000 passengers. A single Tesla Model S is just shy of five meters long, meaning that, bumper-to-bumper, you could fit twenty-six of them in the space occupied by one train. Even if each one held five passengers, that still gives you eight times fewer passengers than the single train. And obviously the cars could not actually drive exactly bumper-to-bumper, even on skates, nor would they be occupied by five passengers each.

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car
by Anthony M. Townsend
Published 15 Jun 2020

Hawkins, “Tesla’s Autopilot Was Engaged When Model 3 Crashed into Truck, Report States,” The Verge, May 16, 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/16/18627766/tesla-autopilot-fatal-crash-delray-florida-ntsb-model-3. 28Brown spent a mere 25 seconds of the final 37 minutes of the trip: National Transportation Safety Board, Collision between a Car Operating with Automated Vehicle Control Systems and a Tractor-Semitrailer Truck near Williston, Florida, Accident Report NTSB/HAR-17/02, PB2017-102600, October 12, 2017, 15. 28A single light touch: National Transportation Safety Board, Collision between a Car, 11. 28an audible alert after 60 seconds: David Shepardson, “Tesla, Others Seek Ways to Ensure Drivers Keep Their Hands on the Wheel,” Reuters, last modified June 23, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autos-selfdriving-safety/tesla-others-seek-ways-to-ensure-drivers-keep-their-hands-on-the-wheel-idUSKBN19E1ZA. 29riding in the passenger seat: Telegraph Reporters, “Tesla Owner Who Turned On Car’s Autopilot Then Sat in Passenger Seat While Travelling on the M1 Banned from Driving,” The Telegraph, April 28, 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/28/tesla-owner-turned-cars-autopilot-sat-passenger-seat-travelling/. 29The intoxicated driver was found passed out: Doug Smith, “CHP Uses Autopilot to Stop a Tesla Model S with a Sleeping Driver at the Wheel,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2018, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-tesla-driver-asleep-20181202-story.html. 29“Because of the impressive ability of Tesla’s Autopilot”: Patrick Olsen, “CR Finds That These Features Making Driving Easier but Introduce New Safety Risks,” Consumer Reports, October 4, 2018, https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/cadillac-tops-tesla-in-automated-systems-ranking/. 29one-third of the three-hour trip looking away: Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman, Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), 60–61. 29“pointed at the driver’s face”: Alex Roy, “The Half-Life of Danger: The Truth behind the Tesla Model X Crash,” The Drive, April 16, 2018, http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/20082/the-half-life-of-danger-the-truth-behind-the-tesla-model-x-crash. 29after 15 seconds it disengages: Jonathan M.

Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner
by Po Bronson
Published 14 Jul 2020

If the company wired a billion neurons together, connected this network to cameras and a computer trained to drive, and let it run, would it learn common sense? I don’t know. But I know who to talk to. He is famous for building a brain interface company and revolutionizing aerospace. He lives three hundred miles south, in Malibu. And he loves cars. Tony Stark. So I rented a Tesla Model S and drove south. Once on the I-580 I flicked on the autopilot. The cameras and AI brain of the car took over. It was a beautiful fall day. In the Bay this meant eighty-degree temps and blue skies. There are cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors all over the car. These are its eyes. I set the speed at 75 mph and took my hands off the wheel.

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters
by Eric J. Johnson
Published 12 Oct 2021

It wasn’t bureaucratic redundancy, as I had thought, but the translation of the attribute into a format that gave the information most helpful to people with different goals that helped the two different groups of car buyers.3 Cars have other attributes with multiple possible names. People interested in speed aren’t looking for an engine with a 347-cubic-inch displacement, they’re looking for a car that accelerates quickly. Probabaly, 0-to-60 times are closer to those consumers’ goals than engine size. Consider a Tesla Model S that sports a special software switch for Ludicrous+ Mode that allows it to go from 0 to 60 in less than 2.3 seconds, faster than any other production-line car. Because the car is electric, terms like cubic inch displacement do not represent how it does on the goal of acceleration. The central lesson of this section, then, is that attributes can do more than present technical specifications.

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
by Brett King
Published 5 May 2016

The same smartphone is 30 to 40 times more powerful than all of the computers that Bank of America had in 1985.2 An Xbox 360 has about 100 times more processing power than the space shuttle’s first flight computer. If you wear a smartwatch on your wrist, it likely has more processing power than a desktop computer dating back 15 years. The Raspberry Pi Zero computer, which costs just US$5 today, has the equivalent processing capability of the iPad 2 released in 2011. Vehicles like the Tesla Model S carry multiple central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), creating a combined computing platform greater than that of a 747 airliner3. Within 30 years, you’ll be carrying around in your pocket or embedded in your clothes, home and even within your body computing technology that will be more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer built today, and probably even more powerful than all of the computers connected to the Internet in the year 1995.4 Networks and Interwebs The early days of the Internet began as a project known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), led by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA) and the academic community.

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire
by Bruce Nussbaum
Published 5 Mar 2013

CHAPTER 6 147 It was 3:44 in the morning: “SpaceX Launch—NASA,” http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/ commercial/cargo/spacex_index.html, accessed September 7, 2012. 147 The Dragon capsule was free: Clara Moskowitz, “SpaceX Launches Private Capsule on Historic Trip to Space Station,” May 22, 2012; http://www.space.com/15805-spacex-private -capsule-launches-space-station.html, accessed September 7, 2012. 147 Just days after the launch: “Space X,” accessed September 7, 2012, http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/ commercial/cargo/spacex_index.html. 148 This flight was, after all: “Elon Musk, CEO and Chief Designer,” http://www.spacex.com/elon-musk.php, accessed September 7, 2012. 148 Many know Elon Musk: Ibid. 148 pretty much at the nadir: Encyclopedia of World Biography, http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/ Li-Ou/Musk-Elon.html#b, accessed September 7, 2012. 148 By 2002, eBay realized: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-941964.html, accessed September 7, 2012. 148 In 2002, Musk became the CEO: Margaret Kane, “eBay picks up PayPal for $1.5 Billion,” CNET News, July 8, 2002; http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/ Li-Ou/Musk-Elon.html#b, accessed September 7, 2012. 149 A year later he founded a second: Will Oremus, “Tesla’s New Electric Car Is Practical and Affordable, as Long as You’re Rich,” Slate, June 20, 2012, accessed September 7, 2012, http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/ 2012/06/20/tesla_model_s_new_electric_car_is _practical_affordable_for_the_rich.html. 149 But Musk said in his celebratory: Ibid. 149 In 2007, just before the biggest: Gabriel Sherman, “The End of Wall Street as They Knew It,” New York magazine, February 5, 2012, accessed September 7, 2012, http://nymag.com/news/ features/wall-street-2012-2/index3.html. 149 Historically, banks never accounted: Gillian Tett, Financial Times US editor and author of Fool’s Gold, shared this information at a March 10, 2010, presentation at Columbia University; Sherman, “The End of Wall Street as They Knew It.” 150 the majority of business school graduates: personal interview with Roger Martin; Rakesh Khurana, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 328–31, 349. 150 But by the end of the century: Ibid. 150 Top bankers received astonishing: Linda Anderson, “MBA Careers: Financial Services—A Breadth of Opportunity,” Financial Times, January 29, 2007, accessed September 7, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ 3baa68a4-ad5a-11db8709-0000779e2340,dwp_uuid=991cbd66-9258-11da -977b0000779e2340.html#axzz22nEQOvia. 150 When BusinessWeek ran: January 31, 2000, issue, cover story by Michael Mandel. 151 An inequality gap: Sam Pizzigati, “Happy Days Here Again, 21st Century–Style,” Institute for Policy Studies, March 13, 2012, accessed September 7, 2012, http://www.ips-dc.org/blog/ happy_days_here_again_21st_ century-style. 151 Alice Waters’s groundbreaking organic: “About Chez Panisse,” http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Chez_Panisse, accessed September 7, 2012. 152 Just as important, Gen Y: I joined Parsons in 2008, and I am indebted to my Parsons students for these and other insights into Gen Y culture. 152 You can pay about a hundred bucks: TechShop website, http://www.techshop.ws/, accessed September 7, 2012. 152 Make magazine, launched in 2005: http://makezine.com/magazine/, accessed September 7, 2012. 153 The Faires celebrate “arts, crafts”: http://makerfaire.com/newyork/2012/index.html, accessed September 7, 2012. 153 Generation Y, on the other hand: interviews with Kelsey Meuse in my classroom and after graduation. 154 Bombarded with as many as five thousand: Louise Story, “Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad,” New York Times, January 15, 2007, accessed September 5, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/ media/15everywhere.html?

Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work
by Iain Gately
Published 6 Nov 2014

When he started Tesla, most electric car manufacturers were building small autos for eco-warriors (who’d rather not be seen on wheels at all), or making wolves in sheep’s clothing – SUVs with large petrol and small ancillary electric motors – in order to take advantage of grants for green vehicles. Musk instead went for comfort and performance. The Tesla Model S does 0 to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds, tops out at 130 mph, and has more boot room and better safety standards than a Volvo. Musk’s ambition is to retire to Mars. His counterproposal to the CHSR is the ‘Hyperloop’, a part pneumatic, part electromagnetic and part solar-powered system, which he claims could fly pods of commuters through elevated steel tubes between San Francisco and LA in about half an hour for a tenth of the price of building its rival.

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster
by Nick Timiraos
Published 1 Mar 2022

News that the respected head of the central bank wasn’t on his feet would only amplify the sense of panic. Normally a security officer ferried him to work in a black SUV. Now, when he did venture to the Fed’s headquarters at 20th Street and Constitution Avenue, Powell climbed behind the wheel of his Tesla Model S to make the fifteen-minute drive alone. There weren’t many ways to unwind, other than neighborhood walks with his wife and daughter when possible in the evenings. He had broken his little toe after tripping on a canvas tote bag at home, preventing him from using his stationary exercise bike. The muni market The $3.9 trillion market for municipal debt became a top priority after the March 23 announcements.

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
by Adam Greenfield
Published 29 May 2017

A single sentence buried halfway through the post delivers this disquieting explanation for the cause of the crash: “Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.” Horrifyingly, Brown’s Model S never slowed, never even thought to slow, because it didn’t see anything it might have needed to slow for. This apparent whiteout gives us some insight into the way a Tesla Model S equipped with Autopilot perceives the world. In failing to detect the outline of a white truck against a white sky, this ensemble of sensors and interpretive algorithms foundered at the most basic task of vision, resolving a figure from its background. That it did so is unsurprising, though, when we consider what Autopilot was actually designed to do: keep the car centered on well-maintained freeways with clear, high-contrast lane markings.

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen
Published 13 Sep 2021

Another vulnerability that can be exploited is AI’s decision boundaries, which can be estimated and used to camouflage the input data, so that AI would make mistakes. For example, one researcher designed a new pair of sunglasses that made AI recognize him as Milla Jovovich. Another researcher put some stickers on a road that fooled the autopilot in a Tesla Model S into switching lanes and driving directly into oncoming traffic. In the beginning of “Gods Behind the Masks,” Amaka uses a mask to trick the face recognition system at the train station. These types of camouflage would be extremely serious if deployed in war—imagine if a tank is camouflaged to be recognized as an ambulance.

Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence
by Jacob Turner
Published 29 Oct 2018

For instance, in early 2017, a UK police force announced it was piloting a program called the Harm Assessment Risk Tool to determine whether a suspect should be kept in custody or released on bail, based on various data.85 Self-driving cars are among the most well-known examples of AI. Advanced prototypes are now being tested on our roads by both technology companies like Google and Uber, but also traditional car makers such as Tesla and Toyota.86 AI has also caused its first fatalities: in 2017, a Tesla Model S driving on autopilot crashed into a truck, killing its passenger87; and in 2018, an Uber test car in autonomous mode hit and killed a woman in Arizona.88 They will not be the last. From AI which kills accidentally to AI which kills deliberately: several militaries are developing semi and even fully autonomous weapons systems.

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future
by Ed Conway
Published 15 Jun 2023

The price of photovoltaic modules halved 500 times between 1975 and 2019, to the extent that new solar cells are now considerably cheaper, per megawatt hour of power, than new coal or gas-fired plants. It’s the same story for both offshore and onshore wind turbines, whose price has fallen by roughly 13 per cent year on year. Then there are lithium-ion batteries, whose cost per kilowatt hour has fallen from $7,500 in 1991 to $181 in 2018 – a staggering 97 per cent decline. The battery in a Tesla Model S cost around $12,000 in 2022; in the early 1990s the same battery capacity would have cost nearly a million dollars. The more we learn about how to transform materials into products, the more jelly rolls clink their way down the conveyor belts of gigafactories like the one we visited in Nevada, the better we get at it, and, for the most part, the cheaper these products become.3 That this happens across so many different products is no coincidence.

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 14 Jun 2017

Forbes has recognized Steve several times on the Midas List, and named him one of “Tech’s Best Venture Investors.” In 2016, President Barack Obama announced Steve’s position as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. He sits on the boards of SpaceX, Tesla, and other prominent companies. Steve was the world’s first owner of a Tesla Model S and the second owner of a Tesla Model X, following Elon Musk. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? Gift #1: The Scientist in the Crib by Alison Gopnik. I give this to any fellow geek about to have their first child.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

Bitcoin is the world’s largest crypto currency, so-called because it uses “cryptography to regulate the creation and transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities.” Bitcoin acceptance is growing rapidly, and it is possible to use Bitcoins to buy cupcakes in San Francisco, cocktails in Manhattan, and a Subway sandwich in Allentown. They can also be used to purchase a new Tesla Model S, to pay your DIRECTV bill, to sign up with OkCupid, or even to book a ticket on Richard Branson’s upcoming Virgin Galactic space flight. Because Bitcoin can be spent online without the need for a bank account and no ID is required to buy and sell the crypto currency, it provides a convenient system for anonymous, or more precisely pseudonymous, transactions, where a user’s true name is hidden.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 6 Dec 2016

The real-time nature of Twitter allows news stories to break faster than traditional media (even at the time, my startup, Digg). In allowing myself to feel these features through the eyes of the users, I can get a sense of the excitement around them. * * * This type of thinking can also be applied to larger industry trends. My colleague and friend David Prager was one of the first owners of the Tesla Model S. The second he received the car he graciously allowed all of his friends to test-drive it. What stuck with me most was not the car, but the sound it made. When he dropped me off, he slammed on the acceleration pedal and was whisked up a large San Francisco hill. All I heard was the electric swish/hum of acceleration.