By Karl Peskett.
Things are getting tense in Tesla town. Just last month the company announced it would be cutting jobs to reduce its overheads, with around seven percent of the company being laid off.
The timing couldn’t be worse, especially for the public relations department which has to deal with the ire of people probing why the company made US$139 million profit in the last quarter of 2018 yet still needs to sack a large swathe of its staff.
The reason is it needs to have money in the bank because if its share price doesn’t start heading north, there’s a huge payout needed to cover convertible bonds. And then there’s also the Model Y production line in needs to set up.
So you’d have to wonder why it’s laying off employees when it’s going to need them soon enough. But it’s all about balancing the books.
One department that won’t be happy with the way things are playing out is the North American delivery division. These are the people that deliver cars to their owners, and from a team of 230 people, around 150 have been let go.
One employee told Reuters that there weren’t enough deliveries to sustain such a large department. But while Tesla has said that its focus for this current was to deliver cars for those awaiting their vehicles in China and Europe, it could also be because Tesla endeavoured to supply enough cars to take advantage of a US$7,500 tax credit.
However, Tesla couldn’t quite get them all through and the tax break was reduced by 50 percent at the end of 2018. And this will be slowing demand down and, therefore, deliveries.
The next few months should be an interesting roller coaster ride for investors and staff alike. Watch this space.
Bendy wheels a thing of the future
You know the horror of the sound. A large bang, with a severe jolt that runs through the cabin. It feels like you’ve just run over a brick, but the reality is the road has washed away, creating a pothole.
If you’ve ever hit one with enough speed, you know the damage they can do. Sometimes it’s no more than a chunk of rubber out of the tyre. But in other instances, it can badly damage the wheel, bending the rim and deflating the tyre. If it has happened to you, the huge thump and then hissing sound gives it away.
These situations could be a thing of the past, thanks to Michelin. In association with Maxion Wheels, the companies have come up with a flexible wheel. It still has plenty of metal and a basic wheel as its centre, but some of the spokes have been attached separately to an outer rubber rim, as well as the tyre’s bead being inserted against the thick rubber surround.
The result is when the car hits a pothole or a hard ridge, the wheel’s rubber outer section takes the majority of the hit, with extra force being transferred to some of the spokes, which also flex slightly.
Everything springs back to normal after the hit, creating an absorption of the immense forces created. It should improve the car’s ride also, because it won’t just be the tyres and suspension absorbing any bumps – it will be the wheels as well.
But don’t worry – just because Michelin is involved doesn’t mean you have to use their tyres. The company says that anyone’s tyres will fit on these wheels.
Windscreen replacements are going to get more expensive
O’Briens, Novus and Instant Windscreens may have a tough job ahead of them soon. A report out of the US has illustrated just how complex something like the replacement of a windscreen has become.
While cars from a few years ago just had a rear view mirror attached to them, it’s the addition of technology like rain-sensing wipers, pedestrian detection, radar sensors and autonomous braking systems that have changed the game.
Now, the windscreen is part of these systems, so it’s not as simple as calling out someone to replace the glass. But it’s also not as simple as attaching new sensors, either.
Because the safety systems mean life and death, quite literally, a small crack or chip can change things dramatically. Thus when a windscreen is replaced, there are alignment procedures that need to be done and calibration of the sensors. Even variations of millimetres when the windscreen is put back can throw out the directional orientation of the sensors, necessitating specialist equipment and certain testing conditions.
One figure quoted by the New York Times was around US$1600 for a windscreen replacement. Looks like the one free windscreen a year from insurance companies may be disappearing, too, at those prices.
