In this file photo, Elon Musk arrives at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
By Michael Liedtke and Tom Krisher
Tesla is working on new battery technology that CEO Elon Musk says will enable the company within the next three years to make sleeker, more affordable cars that can travel dramatically longer distances on a single charge.
But the battery breakthroughs that Musk unveiled Tuesday at a highly anticipated event didn't impress investors. They were hoping Tesla's technology would mark an even bigger leap forward and propel the company's soaring stock to even greater heights.
Musk reiterated that timetable during Tuesday's showcase and then added it might take up to three years before the battery technology translates into a new Tesla model selling for $25,000. That would be a dramatic markdown from Tesla's cheapest car now, the Model 3, a sedan that starts at $35,000 but usually ends up costing buyers more than $40,000.
“We don't have a truly affordable car and that is something we want in the future," Musk said during an event shaped by the restrictions imposed by a pandemic that requires people to keep their distance.
Besides lowering the price, Musk promised the new battery technology would help Tesla reduce the size of its vehicles by about 10% and extend their range by 56%. That projection implies the Tesla cars using the new batteries will be able to travel 500 miles (800 kilometers) or more on a single charge, surpassing the distance many gas-combustion cars can traverse before needing to refuel.
Musk took the stage before a mostly online audience, although there was a small group of shareholders who won a lottery for the right to sit in Tesla vehicles parked in a lot near the company’s Fremont, California, factory located about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco.
“It is a little hard to read the room with everyone in cars,” Musk joked as he began his presentation during an early phase of the event that was devoted to Tesla's annual meeting of shareholders.
But the shareholders in attendance frequently beeped their horns to provide a different form of applause as Musk rattled off Tesla’s accomplishments since the company held its last annual meeting 15 months ago.
Since then, Tesla has posted four consecutive quarters of profits to reverse a long history of losses, while boosting its production and laying the groundwork for future expansion by opening or beginning work on three more factories in Shanghai, Berlin and Austin, Texas. All that progress has caused Tesla’s stock price to soar by fivefold so far this year and boost the company’s market value to nearly $400 billion.
No one has benefited more from the run-up than Musk, who has seen his estimated wealth climbed to $89 billion — the fifth-largest fortune in the world, based on estimates by Forbes magazine.
“What happens when companies get bigger is things tend to slow down. We are going to speed up," Musk said Tuesday.
He said he believes Tesla will remain a step ahead of its competition in the electric vehicle market and persuade more consumers to abandon gas-combustion cars with its new battery technology. The breakthroughs that he outlined Tuesday involve some highly technical changes to the composition and design of batteries, along with new manufacturing processes.
Even as Tesla tries to set new standards in batteries, Musk made it clear that the company will also continue to rely on Panasonic and other suppliers.
Musk has a history of being too ambitious in his promises. For instance, 17 months ago, he bragged that Tesla was on the verge of breakthroughs in autonomous driving technology that would enable the company to deploy a fleet of robotic taxis by the end of this year.
He has since backpedaled slightly from that goal, although Tuesday he said he believes Tesla's $25,000 car will be capable to driving on its own.
Gamestop shares were up on The Wall Street Journal report that the video game retail company plans to enter the NFT and crypto space. Adam Hollander, the founder of Hungry Wolves NFT, joined Cheddar to break down how it could be a lifeline for the struggling meme stock darling. "They're not resigning themselves to becoming the next Blockbuster story, and so while people may not be buying as many video games in a retail environment anymore, NFTs, in particular, people are starting to expect more gaming utility on the backend — at least for a variety of projects — and I personally think its a very smart move for them to do this," Hollander told Cheddar.
On Saturday, New York will join neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut in authorizing mobile sports betting. Matt Kalish, president and co-founder of Draftkings North America, joined Cheddar to talk about the landmark change that is estimated to rake in $500 million in annual tax revenue on a potential billion-dollar market. Kalish also addressed the possibility that legalized sports betting in the Empire State could cannibalize his company's revenues in the bordering states. "It's pretty inconvenient, you know, to go across the border to make a bet. And people were doing it, but I think it really stifled a lot of the opportunity," he said. "So while there's some of that going on, I think really a tremendous amount, like a giant percent, of New York will be very incremental."
Ben Armstrong, founder of Bitboy Crypto, joins Cheddar News to discuss Bitcoin's downward trend and what's next for crypto after protests in Kazakhstan cause crypto miners to shut down.
Jake Carbone, senior data analyst at InfluenceMap joins Cheddar News to talk about a new report by The Guardian and InfluenceMap that reveals how companies are creating fossil fuel ads designed to look like Google search results.
Satoshi Island is looking to become the world's first blockchain-driven economy. James Law, the chief architect of the planned private community, joined Cheddar to discuss the vision for the potential crypto capital of the world and how it will be brought to life. For people looking to live on the island, Law said they will be able to purchase land and homes and even design their own dwellings both in real life and via the metaverse. "Satoshi Island has already been digitally scanned. We have an absolute digital twin already in our metaverse," he said. Citizenship applications are expected to be launched via NFTs, he told Cheddar.
Satellite launch service Virgin Orbit has gone public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger with NextGen Acquisitions with a valuation of about $3.2 billion. CEO Dan Hart joined Cheddar's "Between Bells" from in front of his LauncherOne rocket in New York City's Times Square to talk about what's next after the IPO, an upcoming "Above the Clouds" mission to deliver commercial and national security payloads, and the benefits of their rockets being launched from commercial 747 aircraft. "We can launch anywhere in the world," he said. "There are almost 80 space agencies across the world, for instance, and about 10 of them have space launch. We can give them a space flight capability overnight by taking a runway and turning it into a spaceport."
Tech and entertainment giant Sony appears to be getting serious about automaking. An electric concept SUV — the Vision S-02 — was unveiled at CES 2022 and is slated to be produced by a new subdivision, Sony Mobility. This comes after the company revealed the Vision S concept Sedan at CES 2020.
The highly transmissible omicron variant of COVID-19 has forced school districts nationwide to return to virtual instruction, but there remain concerns about the quality of education students are receiving online. Andy Bird, CEO of Pearson, an education publisher and assessment service provider, joined Cheddar's "Opening Bell" to talk about steps educators and parents can take to make the remote learning experience an easier one, noting that one of the biggest advantages teachers can have is flexibility. "You cannot take a rigid timetable that works in the analog world and replicate that in the digital world. You need to have flexibility. Asynchronous learning, I think, is a very important part," he told Cheddar.
