Did You Know That All Of Tesla’s Products Are Acronymized To Spell SEXY CARS?
Back in February this year, Tesla took part in the Scaled Machine Learning Conference. Tesla’s Senior Director of Artificial Intelligence Andrej Karpathy gave a presentation on the use of artificial intelligence for full self driving.
While the whole presentation is informative and throws light on Tesla’s scaling machine learning models, data algorithms, and infrastructure, there was one particular slide that caught our attention. This showed the whole Tesla range consisting of eight products and the font used to depict them spells out as SEXY CARS. Is this a mere coincidence or an intentional wordplay?
Elon Musk has been on a quest to bring ‘S3XY’ back with Tesla’s vehicle naming convention. First with the Model S, ‘S’ for sedan, and Model X, ‘X’ for the look of the Falcon Wing doors, and now with the upcoming Model 3 and Y.
But now it looks like Telsa might drop the ‘Model’ plus ‘letter’ naming scheme after the Model Y completes the ‘S3XY’ vehicle lineup, according to Elon Musk.
Tesla originally wanted the Model 3 to be called the Model E, which would have really made the lineup spell out ‘SEXY’, but Ford shut down the plan.
Since 2013, Tesla officials had been referring to the company’s upcoming third generation vehicle as the “Model E”, which would have joined the models S and X in Tesla’s lineup to make “S-E-X” with the Model Y to follow later – the vehicle is confirmed, but has yet to be unveiled or assigned an official public timeframe.
The name stuck for a while, but during the shareholders meeting in July 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company had to drop its “Model E” trademark after Ford threatened to sue over having a similar naming scheme. At the time, Musk said that “Ford tried to kill sex.”
Since then, Tesla has been referring to the upcoming third generation vehicle as the “Model 3”, but Tesla is clearly trying to keep “SEX” alive by using three horizontal lines to represent the ‘3’.
Now while discussing a possible name for its upcoming minibus announced with the ‘Master Plan Part Deux’, someone suggested ‘Model B’, which is in line with Tesla’s current naming convention, but Musk said that he thinks Tesla should move away from that after the Model Y:
But then Musk agreed that ‘B S3SXY’ would also make for an interesting vehicle lineup.
Musk Must Be Singing I’m Sexy And I Know It
We all know that Musk originally wanted the ‘SEXY’ in Tesla’s portfolio. The Model 3 was supposed to be called the Model E, but Ford shut down the idea before it could even see the light of the day}.
For the uninformed, Ford has been applying for a trademark on the “Model E” moniker since 2000. It had been a roller-coaster relationship till 2013, but the Blue Oval decided to stick with it when Tesla applied for it in 2013. Looks like Ford is the jealous, insecure type. Anyway, this led to Tesla naming the car Model 3, but stylized it to look like E. Either way, Musk’s SEXY range was complete.
However, the other products in the company’s lineup are stylized to read as ‘CARS’. That’s C for Cybertruck, A for the All-Terrain Vehicle that was showcased along with the Cybertruck, R for Roadster, and S for the Semi. Tesla can truly say that it has SEXY CARS in its range. This will also help people remember the vehicles in Tesla’s portfolio. Sweet.
Conclusion
Tesla has gotten the SEXY out, but the CARS are yet to come. Which vehicle are you most looking forward to – the unconventional pickup truck, the fancy ATV, the electric sports car, or the all-electric Class-8 truck? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
New Tesla Model Y completes joke that Elon Musk has been working on for 10 years
‘This could be Tesla’s most profitable vehicle, with the giant asterisk that the company doesn’t do some of the dumb things it has in the past’
It has taken 10 years, but Elon Musk has finally got to the punchline.
The Tesla CEO has revealed the company’s new car: the Model Y, the last part of one of Mr Musk’s many long term plans.
It means that the company now makes the Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y. Parked next to each other, the model numbers spell out S3XY.
The release ends a plan that began more than 10 years ago, when Tesla unveiled the Model S.
He celebrated the move with a strange tweet on Twitter, posted soon before the car was unveiled at a launch event.
Mr Musk has said that he would have liked to have the word written with the “E”, but that wasn’t possible because Ford opened the copyright to the name.
The new all-electric SUV known as the Model Y was unveiled to cheers from a hangar-packed crowd of Tesla customers, employees and members of the media welcomed a blue Model Y as it rolled out onto a stage next to the automaker’s other models.
“It has the functionality of an SUV, but it will ride like a sports car,” CEO Elon Musk told the crowd. “This thing will be really tight on corners and we expect it will be the safest midsize SUV in the world by far.”
The Model Y seats seven and has a panoramic glass roof and a 15-inch (38-centimeter) touchscreen interface for accessing all the car’s controls.
The all-electric, mid-size SUV will start at $39,000 for the standard range version, which the company said can go 230 miles (370 kilometers) on a single charge. The long-range model, which starts at $47,000, has a range of up to 300 miles (483 kilometers) on a single charge – less range than the Model 3.
A dual-motor, all-wheel drive version of the Model Y starts at $51,000 while the performance version of the car, which boasts acceleration of 0-60 mph (97 kph) in as little as 3.5 seconds and a top speed of up to 150 mph (241 kph), starts at $60,000.The Model Y may be Tesla’s most important product yet as it attempts to expand into the mainstream and generate enough cash to repay massive debts that threaten to topple the Palo Alto, California, company.
Tesla got a huge boost toward ensuring its survival with the 2017 debut of its Model 3 sedan, but an SUV could have even more mass appeal, given how popular SUVs have become in the U.S., Europe and Canada.
The U.S. market share for SUVs, crossovers, vans and pickup trucks stood at 69 percent in January, up from just 48.5 percent a decade ago, according to the research firm IHS Markit.
But most SUVs still run on gasoline, leaving Tesla to cater to consumers looking for an all-electric alternative. The Model Y’s main competition in this still-nascent market is likely to be the Mercedes-Benz EQC, and to a lesser extent, the Jaguar I-Pace, according to the research firm LMC Automotive.
“This could be Tesla’s most profitable vehicle, with the giant asterisk that the company doesn’t do some of the dumb things it has in the past,” said Gartner analyst Mike Ramsey.
Many of Tesla’s past follies have been tied to Musk’s penchants for making grandiose promises that the company hasn’t been able to keep in terms of production, delivery and execution.
Production of the Model 3 quickly fell behind schedule as Tesla struggled to come up with adequate manufacturing capacity and it took much longer than anticipated to lower the sedan’s starting price to the $35,000 level that Musk had been promoting. Instead, the lowest priced version of the Model 3 had been selling for $43,000 until a couple weeks ago when Tesla reached the promised price point by laying off thousands of workers and imposing other cost-cutting measures.
Overseeing the ramp-up of Model 3’s production nearly drove Musk to exhaustion last year, a factor that may have contributed to a mystifying pattern of behavior that included tweeting about having lined up the financing for a potential buyout of Tesla. That misleading statement jeopardized his job and resulted in a $40 million settlement with stock market regulators.
Musk alluded to the troubled production of the Model 3 during his remarks to the crowd Thursday night.
“Because of extreme challenges with the Model 3 production, we have to basically allocate all resources to Model 3 production, because otherwise we’re going to die,” Musk said with a chuckle, eliciting laughs from the crowd.
He then added: “2018 probably felt like aging five years in one. It was really intense.”
Tesla expects to deliver the performance, long range, rear-wheel drive and dual-motor, all-wheel drive versions of the Model Y in the fall of 2020. The standard version of the Model Y is expected to roll out in the spring of 2021.
As with all electric vehicles, the distance that the Model Y can cover on a fully charged battery is likely to be one of its key selling points – or downsides. Teslapegged the Model Y’s range at up to 300 miles compared to 325 miles for the Model 3.
Tesla is hoping there will pent-up demand for the Model Y, nearly four years after Musk first began touting the company’s plans to make an SUV. Bringing in early down payments for the vehicles would help Tesla generate the cash it needs to repay nearly $1.7 billion in loans that come due within the next 16 months.
The company began the year with about $11 billion in debt and $3.7 billion in cash, but those figures presumably fell recently when it repaid about $920 million in bonds.
Another $566 million in notes are scheduled to be repaid this November followed a $1.1 billion credit line in June 2020.
Consumers who plop down their deposits for the Model Y may have to cross their fingers for their vehicles to be delivered on schedule.
Tesla’s recurring production and delivery problems have resulted in consumers having to wait longer than they were originally told. Musk now says Tesla has worked out those issues.
Ramsey, though, remains skeptical about whether the company will have adequate manufacturing capacity for the Model Y. He expects the Model Y’s journey to the mass market to provide another wild ride for the company, its investors and customers.
“Until Elon is gone, Tesla is going to be a crazy company that occasionally makes breathtaking products,” Ramsey predicted.
Additional reporting by agencies