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Tesla prepping Supercharger network for big growth across Europe

It'd be a nice life to be able to tour across Europe in a Tesla Model S. And that's something the California-based electric-vehicle maker is looking to enable by the end of the year. We're ready. Who's got the key fob? Tesla opened three Supercharger stations in Germany on Thursday and is aiming to string enough together to let drivers roam across the continent purely by Supercharger power by the end of 2014, Bloomberg News says. The company now has 23 Superchargers in Europe, including nine in Germany and six in Norway. Those high-powered stations can half-charge a Model S in about 20 minutes. Tesla has 97 Superchargers in North America. Tesla's most recent Supercharger deployments across the Pond merely reinforces Tesla chief Elon Musk's pledges earlier this year to ensure that all European Tesla owners would be within reach of a Supercharger by year-end, Tesla spokeswoman Liz Jarvis-Shean wrote in an e-mail to AutoblogGreen. Musk said in March that Tesla drivers would be "able to travel almost anywhere in Europe using only Superchargers" by the end of 2014. Earlier this month, Tesla started deliveries of right-hand-drive Model S sedans in the UK. Additionally, Musk estimated that the company would open a factory in Europe once annual sales on the continent reached 160,000 units. By all accounts, that's likely to be a long way off. Earlier this year, Tesla dropped the price of the Model S in Europe, though the company said that move was due to the strengthening Euro and not because of any demand issues.

Is Tesla quietly sitting on 3,000 cars?

Tesla's 2014 third quarter financial report mixed some positive news with gloomy messages. On one hand, the electric carmaker posted its best quarter ever in terms of deliveries, including its best single day with 907 EVs delivered. The company also announced expanded production to get even more vehicles out the door by the end of 2015. However, the Model X got delayed yet again and higher prices in Europe were mulled. Dousing the results with a bit more cold water, a Merrill Lynch investor letter claims there's more to be pessimistic about the business than meets the eye.
The Daily Kanban, quoting research meant for Merrill Lynch clients, claims that Tesla had "approximately 3K vehicles stocked in inventory or in transit" at the end of the Q3. That's a fairly large number considering that the company reports selling 7,785 units for the whole quarter. The statement is also surprising because the automaker has a reputation for keeping excess supply low, and there are allegedly waiting lists for Model S sedans. CEO Elon Musk maintains that the automaker has a problem being able to keep up with high demand, as well.
According to Daily Kanban, the letter further states, "China is proving to be more challenging for Tesla to penetrate than expected." The automaker does not break out sales by region in its Q3 financials to check this assertion, however, the company does report the recently opened store in Shenzhen is one of its top-grossing stores worldwide and that there are now 23 Supercharger locations in 10 Chinese cities.

Tesla only 8th greenest automaker, BMW is best, says Newsweek

We imagine some readers will be surprised by this. Newsweek has just put out its rankings for the top "green" companies in the world, and while Tesla Motors chief Elon Musk can crow about how green his electric vehicles are, the company as a whole apparently falls behind some traditional automakers. Quite a few of them, actually. In Newsweek's Global 500 list of the greenest 500 largest publicly-traded companies in the world, BMW ranked best among automakers at Number 26. Not surprisingly, Toyota was close behind at 35, while Nissan came in at 152. What's a little more puzzling is that Tesla fell behind Ford (178), and General Motors (289). That's a lot of pickups versus a few Model S EVs. Go figure. Then came Hyundai (306) and Honda (316), which are a little more palatable. Tesla? It came in at 431. Newsweek's measurement standards include eight categories that include a lot of verbiage and involve things like energy productivity (which is defined as revenue in US dollars divided by total energy consumption), greenhouse-gas emissions productivity (revenue divided by GHG emissions), water usage, waste levels and something called "green revenue" (revenue derived from products that "contribute positively" to the environment). Newsweek says that its results are reproducable by a third party. Take a look at the list here and find the details on how the numbers are compiled here. Featured Gallery 2014 BMW i3: First Drive View 33 Photos News Source: Newsweek via Torque News Green BMW Tesla