Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison owns 1.75% stake – worth $1 billion - in Tesla, making him the second-largest individual investor in the electric car manufacturing company.His holding was confirmed in a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Tesla co-founder & CEO Elon Musk owns about a fifth of the company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
According to the filing, Ellison indirectly owns 3 million Tesla shares through the Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust.
Tesla has now officially broken ground at the Gigafactory 3 and CEO Elon Musk made a few interesting comments, including confirmation that Tesla will produce the upcoming new Model Y at the factory.READ MORE...
The electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla has announced that some customers in left-hand drive European countries can now configure and buy its Model 3 car.
The U.S. firm announced the change via its Twitter handle: READ MORE...
On the other hand, Tesla’s share price rose 7%, but it’s difficult to draw a conclusion on that basis alone -- if the year had ended a week earlier, Tesla’s price would have dropped by 5%.Volatility surrounding Tesla has been an area of concern.
Perhaps a more useful way to look at the two companies is by their respective growth strategies.
While FCAU’s growth story is an impressive one with an ever expanding SUV brand boosting the company’s margins, Tesla is yet to report a full year profit.
According to one Morgan Stanely analyst, however, Tesla has the potential of an eventual addressable market at $15 trillion – nearly 20% of the entire world's GDP.
Tesla stock price fell -9% on the news.
At 90,700 vehicles, total deliveries of Tesla vehicles fell a bit short of Wall Street’s delivery estimates, but was higher than the previous quarter’s figure.Tesla also announced that it is slashing prices by $2,000 for Model S, Model X and Model 3 each – a move that is apparently a response to the reduction in federal tax credit.
Total production of Tesla vehicles increased +8% to 86,555 vehicles.
As of this weekend with only just over a day left in the quarter, Tesla still had over 3,000 Model 3 vehicles left in inventory in the US, according to a source familiar with the matter.READ MORE...
The electric car maker's stock jumped +3% on the news, during pre-market trading on Friday.
Ellison is currently the executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corp. Wilson-Thompson is the global head of human resources at Dow component Wallgreens Boots Alliance WBA.
Tesla indicated it was looking for independent directors who could would “complement the current board's experience"."In Larry and Kathleen, we have added a preeminent entrepreneur and a human resources leader, both of whom have a passion for sustainable energy", Tesla said.
Earlier this year, a settlement between Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed Musk to remain CEO of the company but required him to step down as chairman of the board.
Ford Motor Co (F.N) said Friday it is recalling 874,000 pickup trucks in North America with engine block heaters for fire risks.READ MORE...
Declining auto sales in China has U.S. carmakers concerned, with four straight months of declines squeezing profitability in the world’s biggest car market.
According to the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers, auto sales in China fell ~14% in November over the same month in 2017.Low-end vehicles got hit the most, while premium brands have continued to see growth.
Toyota is recalling around 70,000 Toyota and Lexus vehicles in North America, to replace air bag inflators that could have deteriorated.
The recalled car models include the 2003 to 2005 Corolla, the 2002 to 2005 Sequoia, the 2003 to 2005 Tundra and the 2002 to 2005 Lexus SC.About 65,000 of the recalled vehicles are in the U.S.
While Takata uses ammonium nitrate to create a small explosion and inflate the airbags, it can degenerate and burn too quickly – something that could eventually blow a metal canister apart.
Elon Musk might set up a Tesla store in his birth country soon.Replying to a South African’s question on Twitter about when he would open a store in South Africa, Musk tweeted, “Probably end of next year”.
While various countries including the U.S., China, Australia and Germany already have Tesla stores, Africa does not have any.
And now, a Bloomberg report says that a proposal to lower Chinese tariffs to 15% (from 40%) on U.S.-made cars has been sent to China’s Cabinet for review, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
In July, China hiked tariff rate on imported U.S.-made cars to 40% as a retaliatory move against U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.But earlier this month, trade talk between Trump and China President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a summit in Buenos Aires apparently spurred some hope of a truce with Trump indicating that China could lower tariffs on U.S. cars.
However, China’s decision on car tariffs is yet to be finalized.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk might be interested to buy some of the five factories that General Motors (GM) would idle in 2019, according to an interview he recently gave to CBS.At present,Tesla produces electric cars in the U.S. at its California plant that it bought from a joint venture operated by GM and Toyota Motor Corp.
GM wants to shut down five factories in North America as part of a restructuring plan.
Fiat Chrysler might reopen a defunct Detroit factory of the company.
The auto manufacturing company is reportedly planning to re-purpose a building in the northwestern side of the Detroit into an assembly site for a three-row Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV model, according to The Detroit News. The Jeep is scheduled to debut in the year 2021.Previously, Chrysler used the Detroit site for engine production until 2012 when it was shut down.
If reopened, the Detroit factory could employ up to 400 people.
Currently trading below $10 per share, Ford is already down around 25% for the year.However, it still remains a relatively profitable company with strong footing in some of the fastest-growing automotive segments.
Unlike its U.S. rivals General Motors (GM) and Fiat-Chrysler (FCAU), who have managed to impress the industry and investors by evading bankruptcy, Ford is still in the middle of a turnaround.
Virtually synonymous with the history of the automobile, Ford’s third-quarter earnings surpassed analyst’s expectations, but was still down compared to the same quarter in 2017.
Although the automaker has performed pretty well in North America, it is still struggling in international businesses, especially in South America, China and Europe.
The company now has segregated its China business from its Asia-Pacific counterpart and has hired an executive to run just that region, but Ford has so far been unable to match pace with the rapidly changing consumer tastes of the
President Donald Trump tweeted that China is willing to scrap tariffs on cars imported from the U.S.
Following his agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday to hold off on further tariffs for the time being, Trump posted a tweet saying China is ready to “reduce and remove” car tariffs.However, he did not mention by how much or when that would happen.
Also, the Chinese government has not mentioned cutting car tariffs following the Trump-Xi meet in Buenos Aires.
The tariff-slapping battle between the U.S. and China for a large part of 2018 has reportedly hurt profit margins and/or affected operations of major automakers like Ford, BMW and Daimler.
The autonomous vehicle wing of GM, Cruise Automation, gets a new CEO in Dan Ammann.The new CEO will take the reins of the self-driving car subsidiary of GM, which was acquired by GM in 2016.
Ammann will replace one of the co-founders and the current CEO of the company Kyle Vogt, who is expected to move into the role of chief technology officer.
According to GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, "these appointments further demonstrate the company’s commitment towards transforming mobility through the safe deployment of self-driving technology and move us closer to our vision for a future with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.
General Motors recently announced their new restructuring plan, whereby the company intends to cut 15,000 jobs and possibly shutter four U.S. factories across North America.
Hearing about this decision, U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at GM on Twitter and said that he may consider cutting “all” of the automaker’s “subsidies” if they plan to close down factories in U.S. Further, he pointed out that nothing was “being closed in Mexico & China” and that GM’s bet on China wouldn’t pay off.
But avoiding China is just not on the cards for GM, as it could spell disaster for them.
Why?
First, China has emerged as the world’s largest car market, and GM has been selling more cars in China than in all of North America since 2014.In Q3 2018, GM sold 835,934 cars in the Chinese market including joint ventures, versus 700,000 in the U.S.
Shares of the American multinational, General Motors Company, soared more than 5% in Monday’s trade after the carmaker released its transformation plan for the future.
As a part of the restructuring strategy, the company plans to undertake cost-cutting measures, which include curbing its vehicle line-up in the U.S. and closing U.S. and overseas plants, despite triggering layoff fears.
According to the company, this restructuring strategy is expected to help strengthen its core business, capitalize on the future of personal mobility, and drive significant cost efficiencies.
As per GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, the aforementioned moves are expected to increase GM's free cash flow from autos by $6 billion in the next two years, including cost savings worth $4.5 billion and reduced capital spending worth $1.5 billion by 2020.
With plans to allocate additional resources to electric and autonomous vehicles, the company announced the closure of five plants in 2019 as a part of its $4.
On Monday, GM chairman and CEO Mary Barra revealed during a conference in Detroit that the auto maker is planning to end production at the Oshawa assembly plant, along with two other facilities in Detroit and Warren, Ohio. The company apparently is looking to focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles.
According to Barra, GM's restructuring of its product manufacturing process will result in cost savings of an estimated $6 billion for the company by 2020, and might include slashing its global salaried and salaried contract staff by 15 per cent.But it is not yet fully clear exactly how many of the 2,500 jobs at Oshawa will be lost.
Unifor, which represents 315,000 unionized workers in Canada, said late Sunday that while it does not have the complete details yet, it knows that no GM product has been allocated to the Oshawa Assembly Plant past December 2019.