Are drivers relying too much on technology?

US electric carmaker Tesla has said it will fall short of its annual shipment targets, sparking worries about its production capabilities. Tesla shipped 14,370 cars in the second quarter, missing its target of 17,000. The missed production goals come at a crucial time for Tesla. The company is still in the headlines after the driver of a Tesla car using self-driving technology died in Florida last month after colliding with a lorry.

Joshua Brown loved his all-electric Tesla Model S so much he nicknamed it Tessy. And he celebrated the Autopilot feature that made it possible for him to cruise the highways, making YouTube videos of himself driving hands-free. In the first nine months he owned it, Mr. Brown put more than 45,000 miles on the car. “I do drive it a LOT,” he wrote in response to one of the hundreds of viewer comments on one of his two dozen Tesla-themed videos. His postings attracted countless other Tesla enthusiasts, who tend to embrace the cars with an almost cultish devotion.

In 1986, for reasons that now seem absurd, the Audi 5000 became the victim of a national panic over “sudden acceleration incidents.” These were, allegedly, events in which the car shot forward even though the driver was not stepping on the gas, but was rather pressing on the brake as hard as possible. There had always been a certain number of these incidents reported to regulators. Regulators didn’t do much with them, because they assumed what you are probably assuming: The drivers were not, in fact, stepping on the brake, but were flooring the gas.

Officials are currently investigating the first fatal Tesla accident.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is opening a preliminary evaluation into Tesla’s autopilot feature after the fatal crash of a Model S that was in self-driving mode, the electric automaker said Thursday.

Tesla Motors Inc. 's bid to buy the biggest U.S. rooftop solar installer has little to do with selling cars. Rather, it's about solving two of the biggest problems standing in the way of the next solar boom. And perhaps a good deal more.

Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade. Will customers be willing to pay to take full advantage of equipment that’s already on the car?

A few things need to be cleared up about the supposed safety of Model S suspensions: First, there is no safety defect with the suspensions in either the Model S or Model X. Since we own all of our service centers, we are aware of every incident that happens with our customer cars and we are aware of every part that gets replaced. Whenever there is even a potential issue with one of those parts, we investigate fully. This, combined with extensive durability testing, gives us high confidence in our suspensions. With respect to the car that is discussed in the blog post that led to yesterday’s news (more on the blog post below), the suspension ball joint experienced very abnormal rust. We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt.

Earlier this morning, we reported on a strange Model X accident that ended with the SUV crashing into a building in Irvine, California. Fortunately, no one was severely injured in the accident, but the Model X owner claims that the vehicle accelerated on its own while entering a parking space and the driver was unable to decelerate before it ‘autonomously’ crashed into the building.

Preston Tucker launched a car company shortly after World War II. Those who saw "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," starring Jeff Bridges know the general outline of the man who raised millions in a stock offering only to be dragged into federal court and tried for fraud. Tucker was acquitted but his business was ruined. Someone who should study the Tucker story is Elon Musk: His actions with Tesla mirror some of the things for which Tucker got in trouble. Musk and Tesla have done nothing wrong, mind you. But remember that Tucker was ruined by the government and he had done nothing wrong either.

Following the Tesla Model 3 unveil in March, CEO Elon Musk said that a “part 2” unveiling event will follow “closer to production”, which is set to start in late 2017. He ad…

The company's giant battery manufacturing facility outside Reno, Nevada will be celebrating a grand opening in just two months' time.

North Carolina denied Tesla Motors’ bid to attain a second dealership license in the state, saying the automaker must go through a third-party dealership group. The North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles ruled Friday that Tesla did not meet the requirements to become exempt from state law prohibiting manufacturers from owning dealerships. Tesla had hoped to open a second North Carolina dealership location at its existing gallery and service center in Matthews, N.C., a suburb of Charlotte. The company has one dealership in the state, in Raleigh.

A few weeks ago, I finally tried Tesla Motors' "autopilot" feature. A Tesla rep and I tooled around Houston's I-45 in a Model X crossover SUV for 15 minutes, just long enough to test the vehicle's adaptive cruise/automatic lane-keeping wizardry. Once I toggled on the autopilot, the rep relaxed by checking e-mail on her phone. This sent a clear message: keep an eye on the dumb journalist when he's driving the $140,000 SUV, but once the machine takes over, everything’s fine.

Tesla may pride itself on making the world a better place through eco-friendly electric cars, but it's not immune to ethical concerns. Mercury News has discovered that at least one of Tesla's contractors has been using sub-contracted, low-paid labor (as little as $5 per hour) from eastern Europe to work on the automaker's facilities.

To get to Tesla’s Gigafactory, you drive east from Reno, Nevada, turn into a sprawling industrial center, and make a left on Electric Avenue. The high desert landscape dwarfs everything, even the vast white building with the red stripe along the top. As you reach the gate with the security guard, the breadth of Tesla’s ambitions becomes clear. Even the name itself suggests more to come: Gigafactory 1.

Tesla chief says educating the public on climate issues is essential in countering oil and gas lobby’s influence over big political decisions

Tesla will sell 168.5 megawatt-hours of behind-the-mete energy storage systems to SolarCity this year. That's more than six times what it sold to SolarCity in 2015 -- and 60% more than the entire market reported last year.

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made an interesting comment that went mostly unnoticed during a talk in Norway. While talking with Minister of Transport and Communications Ketil Solvik-Olsen, Musk said that based on early data from the Autopilot program, Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving system, the probability of an accident happening is about 50% lower when the system is activated.