Tesla News [Feb 12, 2023]

Tesla (TSLA) investors closed off the week with the stock closing +2.05% the last 5 days, which means it sits at +82.14% YTD.

Here's this week's news for Tesla, let's go through it together.

LEGEND: Positive News | Neutral News | Negative News

It's official - all Model Y models in the US now qualify for the $7,500 EV rebate!

As a result, Tesla has increased prices on some variants slightly - the Y Long Range increased by $1,500 and Y Performance went up $1,000.

Tesla keeps adjusting prices to optimize for margins - which is great news for investors.

Hertz planned to purchase 100,000 Tesla's by now, but have only done 50,000 purchases.

According to Bloomberg, Tesla only accounts for 11% of Hertz's current fleet, and they are well behind their goal (which was to have more than double this by end of 2022!).

This appears to just be a slower adoption (perhaps due to supply constraints from Tesla or perhaps due to Hertz's financial position), but they are still focused on hitting that goal of 100,000 Tesla's.

There were a few developers with the Police adoption with Tesla's this week.

The RCMP in Canada have added the Model Y to their cruiser fleet! The Westshore RCMP department is running a pilot program and this is the first (of hopefully) many Model Y's to join.

Meanwhile on the other side of the border, the Somerset police department released a Facebook post outlining their reasoning for getting a Model Y. The bottom line is that they expect cost savings of $84,000 over the span of 10 years - hard to say no to those kind of savings!

Tesla is slowly taking over Europe - the Model Y is the #2 best selling car in January 2023.

Sales in Denmark increased 10.7% YoY, with 481 units. sold. Denmark is one of the more forward countries for EV adoption - with a whopping 21% of all sales being EV in January, and Tesla is capturing a huge part of this opportunity.

On the other side of the pond, Tesla's Model Y took the #1 spot in California, and the Model 3 took the #2 spot! 

Very strong start to the year for Tesla, worldwide.

Tesla appears to be gearing up for launching their Insurance program in Europe. 

According to a job posting from Tesla, they are looking for positions in the Insurance Europe department, This is a positive sign that their program will expand to the continent soon.

Insurance can be a very lucrative segment for Tesla as they have full insight as to how each driver performs - and they can optimize premiums based on habits (thus reducing their risk and increasing their profits).

Elon tweeted that their upcoming Investor Day (March 1st) will reveal their Master Plan 3.

Giga Texas also is titled in this image posted by Elon, implying that Gigafactory's development (and announcements) are all but certain.

Eyes peeled for this event in a few weeks.

Twitter user @munybrr tweeted some pictures of a newly wrapped Tesla Semi that will be featured in the Superbowl this weekend.

The bright colours and sleek design of the Semi is sure to create some buzz with consumers - which is excellent marketing and awareness for Tesla.

Tesla is rumoured to be announcing a Giga Mexico factory soon, and we got confirmation from the President of Mexico that there's one of two locations that could be selected in Mexico - Neuvo Leon or Hidalgo.

This indirectly confirms plans for a Gigafactory!

No word on Tesla yet on this, however it's expected to be announced on their upcoming Investor Day in a few weeks.

The NTSB has cleared Tesla's Autopilot of any fault in a fatal crash in Texas in 2021.

The determination of the crash was due to excessive speed and the driver losing control of the car - nothing to do with Autopilot.

This is a huge relief for Tesla as this brings it one step closer to getting full approval in the US eventually once FSD is fully released.

Tesla may need to open their Supercharging network to 3rd parties in the US if it wants to be eligible for the $7.5B Department of Transportation subsidy.

This plan is aimed at improving EV charging infrastructure across the country and although not finalized, it appears Tesla may have to open the chargers or risk being left out of this essential "free money".

Tesla has been piloting opening their Supercharging network in other countries (Europe and Australia) so the US is likely coming soon.

Tesla's V4 Hardware got approval to be sold in Europe for Model S/X.

The V4 is suppose to be 4x better than V3 for FSD however details are still not finalized at this time (but coming soon!).

Ross Gerber has announced he wants to join Tesla's Board of Directors (BOD).

This move is in an effort to steer Tesla in the right direction (in his eyes) and have influence over future business decisions Tesla makes. He is well known in the Tesla community and has built up a reputation of going a big Tesla supporter over the years.

Tesla has hired a new lawyer to join the team as they continue to work to strengthen their Legal department.

Brandon Ehrhart (from Dish Network) is the newest member of the team.

Tesla has been facing constant legal issues around the world with regulations, approvals, etc., and Musk likely foresees this to only get worse over the years, so the focus is to make sure the right people are in place to help Tesla move forward with their mission and win legal battles.

Tesla has been ordered to halt production on Solar Panels at Giga Berlin. 

The government of Germany claims that Tesla did not have approval to put down concrete stakes to get these panels installed. This is yet another bump in the road but Tesla will now work to get an approval here to move forward with their efforts.

We look forward to spending a few minutes with you next Sunday for some new Tesla news!

Disclosure: I am a Tesla (TSLA) shareholder at the time of publishing.