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Following incidents in Washington state, Mexico andTennessee, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it would probe fires that occurred recently over a six week period in Tesla Motors’ electric Model S. And this week, as revealed in a Detroit News story, the NHTSA looks like they’re serious – at least more serious than Germany’s transportation safety authority. Why bring up Germany? Because as the regulatory heat bears down in the U.S. on Tesla and high-profile CEO Elon Musk, they have trotted out the Eastern Europe nation to demonstrate that they’ve been absolved of any culpability in the fires. The...

After three recent fires, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said he asked the National Highway Tranportation Safety Administration to investigate its Model S. NHTSA said no he didn’t. Tesla has been saying it received the highest safety rating in the U.S., a “new combined record of 5.4 stars.” NHTSA says there’s no such thing. Musk said he expects the investigation will clear Tesla after incidents in which metal objects struck the underside where the Model S battery is located. NHTSA says we’ll see, and a decision whether there should be a recall will likely take months. Maybe a lie...

A California-based solar company backed by several Obama supporters has been receiving millions in federal tax credits while losing $322 million since 2008, raising concerns about the company “becoming the next Solyndra.” Among SolarCity Corp.’s biggest investors is Elon Musk -- the high-profile donor and fundraiser who co-founded PayPal and whose companies SpaceX and electric-car company Tesla Motors have received at least $846 million in loans and startup money from the Obama administration. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, warned about SolarCity’s financial standing in a letter Monday to the Treasury Department. “There is...

The federal government announced on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into two recent battery fires in the Tesla Motors Model S sedan. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s decision came amid public speculation over the electric car’s safety and the battery pack’s design after reports of three fires in six weeks. Two of the fires occurred on American highways when the cars hit debris in the road. A third, in Mexico, took place after a high-speed crash into a wall and a tree. The drivers in all three incidents were unhurt. Tesla also said late on Monday that...

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government's auto safety watchdog has opened an investigation into battery fires in Tesla Model S electric cars. The National Highway Traffic Administration says fires broke out in two of the cars in the U.S. after the undercarriage hit metal road debris. The debris pierced the batteries and caused a thermal reaction and fires. In each case, the car warned the driver of the damage, and both escaped without getting hurt. The probe affects more than 13,000 cars from the 2013 model year that were sold in the U.S. Tesla has sold about 19,000 of the...

Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, seems to have reached cult status with green ideologues, as well as with many in the media. Musk's name often goes hand in hand with descriptive monikers like "visionary" and "genius." Of course, what Musk is really a genius at is getting politicians to fund his private businesses ventures with taxpayer money so they don't have to make a profit. It might also be time to step back and ponder the genius of Musk's latest idea. It is for Tesla to compete with Ford's best selling F-series trucks by offering up an electric pickup truck....

Our engineering background is limited. Maybe our readers could tell us if Tesla's founder's idea of a supersonic airliner (that takes off vertically and lands vertically just for added difficulty) is technically possible. Elon Musk has more ideas about transportation using electricity. In a recent interview, which seemed more like an outlined discussion than a true inquisition, the rock star of automotive manufacturing revealed two more ideas that involve using electricity to move people. The first is not that hard to envision. A pickup truck powered by electricity. We will address that in another story. The second, is a real...

ISON is in an Outburst Now. The Hidden Code This is the quote from the 12 minute 35 second video that BPEarthWatch posted on YouTube.com:"God talks to our DNA." This quote comes from the 3 minute 14 second to the 3 minute 18 seconds part of that video.BPEarthWatch has a lot of information in this video and information that, I believe, should be discussed. He took 200 or 300 pages of information and tried to boil it down to this video and he's talking about ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) Waves and the Earth's Resonance Frequency of 7.8 Hz or...

Super trendy electric car manufacturer Tesla has seen “it’s biggest one-month loss of market value” according to Bloomberg news.Tesla lost 17 percent of its value in the month of October. This means that the value of the Palo Alto based company has slipped from its peak of $23.5 billion to $19.4 billion. Bloomberg notes that the company’s loss of value in the month of October is higher than its entire market valuation at the beginning of 2013.This slide has been blamed on a readjustment of expectations as the company attempts to come to grips with the challenges facing it now that...

DETROIT -- Tesla Motors (TSLA) shares dropped Monday after reports of a second fiery crash involving the Palo Alto company's Model S electric car.

What does a man capable of building electric cars and space launch vehicles need? Perhaps a submarine car once driven by James Bond. When the car-turned-submarine from the 007 classic "The Spy Who Loved Me" was sold at auction in September for nearly a million dollars, the identity of the buyer was kept secret, as it usually is in collector car auctions. Thursday night, a Tesla Motors spokeswoman confirmed that the submarine, modeled after a Lotus sports car, had been bought by Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk. Musk plans to take the movie prop and turn it into an actual...

Cats and dogs. Oil and water. Name any cliche about polar opposites and they have probably been used to compare the oil industry and electric vehicles. So, it seems almost impossible that an oil company would make the claim that electric vehicles will be the predominant transportation fuel, but Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A ) is making that very claim. Is Shell contemplating going into a new business? Are they playing some kind of Jedi mind trick on us? Let's take a look at some of the things that Shell is saying and see if it is making a compelling...

Not all that long ago, news broke which indicated that General Motors (NYSE:GM) had formed a special committee with the sole purpose of studying Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and assessing the upstart EV maker as a threat to GM’s business. While Tesla produces a minute fraction of the number of cars that GM makes, the latter’s fear of the California-based Tesla isn’t completely unfounded: This year to date, Tesla’s market valuation has rocketed to $23 billion, nearly half of the $50 billion that GM is worth on the public exchange. “At this pace, if the bubble doesn’t burst, 10-year-old Tesla could eclipse...

A fire (screen capture from Jalopnik.com) that torched a Model S from the formerly Teflon Tesla Motors on Tuesday blackened its front end, lowered its stock price, and (further) revealed a corporate arrogance not seen since Fisker Karmas were alight. But CEO Elon Musk saw to it that taxpayers werefully paid back their $465 million Department of Energy loan, so as watchdogs over the public purse we can forget all about it and just go on about our business – right? Wrong. The incident near Seattle still should be of great concern because Tesla still heavily depends on tax breaks...

Yesterday, a Model S collided with a large metallic object in the middle of the road, causing significant damage to the vehicle. The car’s alert system signaled a problem and instructed the driver to pull over safely, which he did. No one was injured, and the sole occupant had sufficient time to exit the vehicle safely and call the authorities.Subsequently, a fire caused by the substantial damage sustained during the collision was contained to the front of the vehicle thanks to the design and construction of the vehicle and battery pack. All indications are that the fire never entered the...

The internet has been abuzz with stories about General Motors competing with Tesla by offering a vehicle that will get 200 miles on an electric charge and cost only $30,000. One headline even declared that GM might be the winner of the competition with the title reading, " GM Takes on Tesla- and Just Might Win." The only problem is that the car being hyped does not even exist. Nor may it ever. GM has much experience in the field of green vehicle hype now having a couple of years under their belts with the Chevy Volt. Those in the...

The word on the street is that the Obama administration is ready to reignite the Department of Energy loan program for alternative vehicles. I think I’ve harped on Fisker Automotive, Vehicle Production Group and the battery-failure twins Solyndra and A123 Systems enough for you all to remember that each one of these flops received large loans from DOE… and failed to pay them back. The controversial loan program was taken offline by then department head Steven Chu two years ago. Well, it’s back. Chu’s successor, Ernest Moniz, is hoping that the department can jump-start the loan program again — and...

So, coming across this article on Tesla ranking above the likes of Porsche, Volvo and Land Rover in sales in California, I recalled a recent article that wasn't quite as glowing as the propaganda a few weeks ago about their Earnings Report.The article I recalled (I'll get to that) wasn't quite as glowing. To put it bluntly, there is still quite a lot at risk for Elon Musk & Tesla. For one thing, the glowing propaganda on their earnings is about as equally honest as the housing recovery in public statements from industry reps and government officials. Worse, the aforementioned...

an unlikely newcomer is getting top honors: the Tesla Model S.It’s the first electric car to win Motor Trend’s Car of the Year; an unprecedented 99 out of 100 rating from Consumer Reports; and now, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it’s also the safest car ever.But if the Model S really is the car of the future, then why has Texas banned its sales in the state and why are lawmakers in several other states trying to do the same? To answer that, first you need to meet Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He plans on opening 50...

As much as electric car builders hail their vehicles as the future of transportation, one question they couldn't answer fully was just how well their vehicles would withstand a crash. Automakers have spent decades finessing their chassis; what happened when an engine-less vehicle went head-on into a barrier wasn't clear, and as the post crash-test smoldering of a Chevy Volt demonstrated, the batteries posed new challenges. Leave it to Tesla to provide the first hard evidence — with data from U.S. government tests showing the Model S sedan may be the most crash-proof passenger vehicle on the road today. Normally,...