When Slate Auto, a start-up, unveiled a roughly $25,000 electric pickup truck last month, social media lit up with comments. Many people saw the no-frills vehicle, with an easy-to-repair body and nostalgic hand crank windows, as a refreshing antidote to today’s overstuffed and increasingly unaffordable cars. How unaffordable? Average monthly …
In March, after a steep decline in Tesla’s share price, Elon Musk told employees, “Hang on to your stock.” The chair of Tesla’s board, Robyn Denholm, has not heeded his advice. Ms. Denholm has made $198 million in the past six months selling Tesla stock that she earned for serving …
On a frigid day in early January, as she worked in her office in the Boston suburb of Billerica, Mass., Siyu Huang received a two-word text message. “Spinning wheels,” it said. Attached was a short video clip showing a car on rollers in an indoor testing center. To the untrained …
Musk or not, Tesla’s challenges remain Tesla shareholders appear relieved that Elon Musk seems set to stay on as C.E.O., after the automaker’s chair denied a report that the board had explored finding his successor. Company shares are up in premarket trading. But even if Musk — who has said …
For decades, the world’s largest car factory was Volkswagen’s complex in Wolfsburg, Germany. But BYD, the Chinese electric carmaker, is building two factories in China, each capable of producing twice as many cars as Wolfsburg. Recent data from China’s central bank shows that state-controlled banks lent an extra $1.9 trillion …
The question posed to Wen Han, founder of the electric truck maker Windrose Technology, was a simple one: Is it accurate to call the firm a Chinese company? After some rambling, Mr. Han settled on an answer: “I would describe it as Chinese origin.” There’s a reason it felt like …
As President Trump puts new tariffs on goods from China and threatens a trade war with allies like Mexico and Canada, one global company is likely to suffer less than most of its competitors: Tesla. But the electric car maker led by Elon Musk, which accounts for a third of …
When Jennifer Trebb first pulled into her driveway two years ago with her sleek Tesla Model Y, it was — as she put it — “kind of like a ‘Back to the Future’ moment.” She was helping the environment, she said, but driving a Tesla also had cachet. “It was …
A union takes on Tesla over its stock price As Elon Musk’s norm-shattering influence in Washington has grown — consider his unprecedented cameo at President Trump’s first cabinet meeting on Wednesday — he has drawn intense scrutiny and opposition. The latest pushback comes from the American Federation of Teachers, one …
Elon Musk’s role as President Trump’s cost-cutting czar and his immersion in right-wing politics appears to be diverting his attention from Tesla at a perilous moment for the electric car company. Tesla’s car sales fell 1 percent last year even as the global market for electric vehicles grew 25 percent. …