Fremont

A German publication, Captain Gadget, managed to get authorization from Tesla to film the Model X assembly line at the Fremont factory in California. The result is rare footage of Tesla’s highly automated assembly line and rarely seen sections of the factory.
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Google Glass Enterprise Edition has been leaked in full at this point, but what good is new enterprise-focused hardware unless it’s being used in the field? APX Labs, one of Google’s Glass at Work partners, has confirmed on its site that it has signed renowned maker of electric vehicles Tesla Motors as a client, and there is speculation that the company is using the latest unannounced Glass hardware to increase productivity at its Fremont factory…

Update: While multiple people close to the situation say that Tesla is still deploying both Glass and Vuzix hardware in some capacity at Fremont and running trials to compare the platforms, Tesla has reached out saying that “Tesla does not use Glass hardware in the Tesla Factory”. It seems that, while we’re confident Glass was at Fremont at one point, the company has recently moved away from Google’s platform. A person says that Google engineers were at one point referring clients like Tesla to Vuzix while the Enterprise Edition was in development.

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Last night, Tesla held its first ‘Meet Model X’ event to let more people, especially reservation holders, have access to the vehicle. The company regularly holds similar events for the Model S, but it appears to be the first of its kind for the automaker’s new all-electric crossover.
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A fire on the roof of the Tesla Fremont factory has been reported this morning. The Fremont fire department already reported that it has been extinguished.
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Fred did some excellent work sorting out the Model X pricing but I was surprised to hear that I’d be able to buy a Model X for $75K  before incentives and $65K with…next year.  But how does Tesla get to the $75K price point without going against CEO Elon Musk’s “Model S +$5000” pricing scheme? After all a Model S 70D is currently listed at $75,000.
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Tesla Motors released its delivery results today for July through September 2015 and confirmed that the company delivered 11,580 cars during the quarter. For the first time, the number includes two different models in the same quarter: Model S and Model X.

Presumably, only the 6 Model X’s delivered during the launch earlier this week are accounted for in the third quarter results, meaning Tesla delivered ~11,574 Model S’s beating its previous record of 11,532 units achieved during Q2 2015.
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SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive and Chairman Elon Musk are officially announcing a new high-efficiency solar panel today at the Inside Energy conference. During an interview at the conference, Elon Musk was talking about his other venture, Tesla Motors, and he revealed that the recent launch of the Model X caused a big uptick in orders for Tesla’s other vehicle, the Model S.
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SolarCity announced today that it has built the most efficient rooftop solar module with 22% efficiency according to a third party tester: Renewable Energy Test Center. Until now, SunPower’s X-Series panel was considered the most efficient rooftop panel with 21.5% efficiency.

SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive says that the new modules will produce between 350 to 360-watt compared to the company’s current 260-watt panels.
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One thing a lot of us were wondering as Tesla delivered the first few Model X’s yesterday is what software version would the Model X be using considering Tesla is still beta testing the upcoming v7.0 with new Autopilot features.

It turns out the Model X is running a unique update of v7.0 without the new Autopilot features: Autosteer and lane changing.

DragTimes published a quick video of the UI at the Model X launch event. You can watch the video below the break:
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Tesla launched the Model X last night in Fremont. You can read our quick overview of Elon Musk’s walk-through of the vehicle here, but here’s the video of the event and a roundup of the videos shot during the press day leading up to the event.

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Some reservation holders have been waiting for over 3 years for the Model X, and now it’s finally here. Tonight Tesla launched its all-electric SUV in Fremont, California in front of a crowd of reservation holders, employees and journalists. We already knew a lot about the Model X prior to the launch – 0 to 60 mph in 3.2 secs, AWD, up to 257 miles range – but Tesla CEO Elon Musk still had a few surprises…
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Tesla Motors is holding a launch event tonight for the Model X at the former Solyndra building near Tesla’s Fremont factory. The company will open the doors at 7PM local time (10PM ET) and the event will start at 8PM (11PM ET). Tesla will livestream the event on their website and we will be live-blogging it here:
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As images of the Tesla Model X are rolling off the assembly line, we are seeing a number of improvements to the car over prototypes that have been publicly shown. One such improvement was revealed in a video showing the front trunk or ‘Frunk’ of the Model X. Compare the size of the Frunk in the shipping model above to a Prototype shown off by CEO Elon Musk last year.

Another image of the Model X Frunk, straight on the assembly line, is below. 
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‘Wild’ may be an exaggeration but at the Tesla plant in Fremont, a spy caught a prototype Model X opening and closing (video below) its Falcon Wing doors . The spies seemed to be concerned about the door closing mechanism, and many of the mules we’ve seen have had partially opened doors,  but it is unlikely that this is the final design/spec.

In any case, we’ll be live on the Model X launch on the 29th, come back and join us! 
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Tesla is still tuning the Model X’s options ahead of its launch scheduled for September 29th at the Fremont factory. Earlier this month, the company added an option for hitch accessories directly at the purchase of the vehicle in order to get around the limitations of the ‘Falcon Wing’ doors. Later, it updated the EPA-rated range to 250 miles for the P90D version of the all-electric SUV. Today we learn Tesla now added an option for a 6-seat configuration to the vehicle.
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On Monday morning Tesla Motors sent out invites for the Model X launch event, which will take place at the Tesla Fremont Factory on September 29th (7PM PT ). The picture on the invite gives us a first look at Tesla’s new headlights which have been camouflaged on prototypes until now.
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A few months after SolarCity bought the former headquarters of the defunct solar panel manufacturer, Solyndra,  Tesla is now announcing that they signed a lease for the 500,000 square feet plant Solyndra used to operate. The building is located just a few minutes away from Tesla’s Fremont factory.

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