Review: A deep new history of Tesla takes the shine off Elon Musk - Yahoo Finance

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk are talking on the phone.

The 2016 unveiling of the make-it-or-break-it Model 3 is coming soon, but Tesla is in serious financial trouble.

So goes the juiciest allegation in “Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century" by Wall Street Journal reporter Tim Higgins.

“Power Play” at its core is about the many employees not named Elon Musk who made essential contributions to whatever success the carmaker enjoys today.

Straubel, the Stanford engineer who teamed with Musk to take over the original Tesla, founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

Musk was the money man, Straubel the brains behind the battery technology.

Straubel departed Tesla in 2019 after the board of directors agreed to a pay plan that has made Musk one of the richest people on the planet.

Another key player who gets his due here is Sterling Anderson, the self-driving-car pioneer who headed Tesla’s Autopilot project, only to quit after Musk rejected his push for driver-monitoring technology to keep people safe.

Musk said he didn’t want to add technology that might nag Tesla customers.

There is also Peter Rawlinson, who came to Tesla from Lotus as chief engineer for the Model S.

Musk turned on manufacturing executive John Ensign in a rage: “This is unacceptable that you had a person working in your factory that knows the solution and you don’t even know that!” Ensign was fired.

Ensign — now chief operating officer at Los Angeles electric bus maker Proterra — didn’t want to embarrass the worker by saying so in front of Musk.

In fact, Toyota ended a partnership with Tesla over such issues.

No question: Tesla has earned a prominent place in motor vehicle history under Musk.

While the rest of the auto industry sought to protect its internal-combustion business under the assumption few people would buy an alternative, Musk showed that stylish, fast and fun electric cars would prove popular.

Tesla did deliver just shy of 500,000 cars last year, but that’s still less than 1% of the world market.

Tesla profits today come mostly from sales of emissions credits to other automakers and $10,000-per-customer payments for "full self-driving" technology — which, Musk admitted in a recent analyst call, doesn’t work.

Higgins quotes Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas at an early crisis point: “The biggest question is if Tesla can remain solvent long enough to capitalize on the forthcoming technology breakthroughs." The word “forthcoming” is key here.

While Tesla now has four cars on the market, only future projects will justify the company’s jaw-dropping $625 billion market value.

In 2016, Musk promised that a self-driving car, a Tesla semi truck and a new, possibly jet-powered roadster were imminent.

He faked an innovative solar roof tile in 2016 before Tesla bailed out SolarCity, a company owned by Musk’s cousins.

I’ve covered Tesla as a reporter since 2016.

Operating profit at Panasonic surged more than 27 times in the first quarter.The Japanese firm said demand for home appliances and automotive batteries helped it recover from a hit last year.Profit between April and June rose to $950 million, some 50% higher than market expectations.And its strongest performance for a first quarter since 2008.Moving away from low-margin consumer electronics, Panasonic has become a key supplier of batteries to Tesla.That said, its home appliances such as air conditioners and TVs, have also sold well this year as people spend more time at home.Panasonic's automotive division has been benefiting from growing demand for electric car batteries.It's been in partnership with Tesla for a decade, although the relationship has at times been testy.Panasonic is launching a test line in Japan to make Tesla's so-called 4680 battery cells.The automaker claims it will halve battery costs and help it ramp up battery production 100-fold by 2030.Tesla this month posted record vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, weathering a global chip crunch better than rivals.Panasonic also has a battery partnership with Toyota.

Volkswagen must change its approach to how it sells electric vehicles (EV) in China, the world's largest car market, Chief Executive Herbert Diess said, in a response to poor EV sales there.

"Positive momentum continued during the second quarter across all of our businesses as the global economic recovery increased demand for our products," Chief Executive Darren Woods said