Archinect - News

Is Tesla having its "iPhone moment" with the launch of the Model 3?

2016-04-13T12:50:00-04:00

On March 31, [Elon Musk's] Tesla Motors unveiled its long-promised Model 3, a $35,000 electric car that will go 215 miles per charge. The market response suggests to some the potential as a category killer, not just in electric vehicles, but mainstream cars in general: in the week since, more than 325,000 Model 3s have been pre-ordered by people putting down $1,000 per reservation, the company said April 7. Even deep Tesla skeptics call this demand unprecedented.

For more on the auto industry and car culture:

Lake Flato Architects splits reservation cost for Tesla Model 3 with employees

2016-03-23T12:39:00-04:00

San Antonio-based Architecture firm Lake Flato announced that it took upon itself to offer to its employees the opportunity split the $1,000 cost of the reservation deposit for the Tesla Model 3. "As our Teslas and TSLA have been very good to us for the last 3+ years, we felt that it would be a great time to contribute more broadly to the adoption of sustainable transport." -Lake Flato Partner

Health care, a decent salary, and a pretty good deal on one of the globe's most environmentally friendly (and svelte-looking) automobiles: Lake Flato Architects is setting itself apart in the benefits department by offering to go in on the deposit for a new Tesla with its employees. No word on who's called shotgun yet.

What else is happening with Tesla? Well, all of this:

Wired takes a look inside Tesla's car factory of the future

2016-01-12T18:45:00-05:00

"Robots hate litter," reads a health and safety sign. "Please don't give them any more reasons to overthrow mankind." It's also fair to say that naming your robots makes the whole process of constructing cars vaguely ridiculous. "Wolverine and Iceman lift the cars to tramline two," our tour guide informs us with the zeal of a true believer, adding, as he did after virtually every sentence, that this is 'kind of amazing'.

A look inside Tesla's growing Gigafactory: "It will blow your mind."

2015-11-19T13:24:00-05:00

Musk had warned me that the scale of the place would be overwhelming. "It will blow your mind. You see it in person and then realize, Fuck, this is big." He was right. It was impossible not to feel awestruck by the sprawling, 71-foot-tall structure stretched out, miragelike, before me as I drove into a shallow canyon. [...] When the Gigafactory is finished, it will be only slightly smaller than Boeing’s Everett, Washington, plant, which is the world’s largest building by volume.

Did Tesla almost go bankrupt without anyone noticing?

2015-05-05T19:39:00-04:00

Can a high-profile company led by a celebrity CEO come within two weeks of bankruptcy without anyone noticing? In early 2013, ...Tesla Motors came so close to running out of cash that its brash leader, Elon Musk, approached Google about buying the company, according to a new Musk biography. A surge in sales of the company’s pricey Model S sedan staved off disaster. Musk broke off the Google talks, no longer needing a white knight. And no one outside the two companies knew about it.