For the exclusive use of T. Song, 2015.

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REV: JANUARY 24, 2014

ERIC VAN DEN STEEN

Tesla Motors
“Tesla is in California, so it is not April Fool’s yet!” tweeted Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, around 10 PM PT on March 31, 2013. “First profitable Q for Tesla thanks to awesome customers & hard work by a super dedicated team”1 he had tweeted a few minutes earlier. And indeed, on May 8,
Tesla announced a net income of more than $10mln on $560 mln in sales.2 Tesla had outsold both
Nissan and GM in electric cars in the U.S.3 Its Model S had sold more than the BMW 7 and Audi A8 combined.4 Tesla raised its Model S sales target for its first full year from 20,000 to 21,000 cars.5 Over the next three months, its stock price …show more content…

It consisted of the engine, the transmission, and a number of auxiliary systems. The engine in a conventional car (CVs) was an internal combustion (IC) engine that converted gasoline into power in the form of a fast-rotating axle. Because of its size and weight, the engine was typically placed above the front wheel axis, and then required a special design to prevent it from being pushed into the car’s passenger cabin in a crash.a The transmission transformed the rotation of the engine axle into an appropriate rotation speed for the wheels through a variable set of gears. This was necessary because IC engines had a limited speed range in which they were effective, losing power and stalling below 700 rpmb while topping out at 7000 rpm.17 The transmission also permitted to disconnect the engine from the wheels when the car was standing still to allow the motor to keep running. Transmissions were complex and required their own lubrication.
In most cars, the transmission powered the front wheels. Such front-wheel drive cars had more conservative handling and were cheaper to make than rear-wheel drive cars, such as BMW and
Mercedes, which required a costly and space-taking connection between the motor in the front and the rear wheels.