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Man steals, crashes, catches on fire and breaks in half Tesla Model S

Multiple injuries were reported in a dangerous high-speed crash involving a Tesla Model S this holiday weekend in Los Angeles. The EV was apparently stolen from a local Tesla store and was driven at triple-digit speeds through LA a little before 1 am, a sergeant Campbell from the Los Angeles Police Department's Pacific Division told KTLA 5. "They tried to help but there was too much smoke." – Eyewitness Following a call from employees at the store, police chased the apparent thief through LA until he crashed into two cars and a lamp post. The Model S split in half, with the back end getting wedged into a nearby synagogue while the front half caught on fire. An eyewitness told NBC Los Angeles that, "Everybody who was looking was screaming. They tried to help but there was too much smoke." What, exactly, caused the fire is unknown, but let's just rehash the old chestnut that Tesla EVs are not inherently fire traps and that driving at over 100 miles per hour is a dangerous endeavor in any vehicle. It was originally reported that the thief died, but he, along with people from the cars he hit, were taken to the hospital for treatment and he is reportedly still alive. More to come, most assuredly, and for now you can watch three local TV news video reports below.

2016: The year of the autonomous-car promise

About half of the news we covered this year related in some way to The Great Autonomous Future, or at least it seemed that way. If you listen to automakers, by 2020 everyone will be driving (riding?) around in self-driving cars. But what will they look like, how will we make the transition from driven to driverless, and how will laws and infrastructure adapt? We got very few answers to those questions, and instead were handed big promises, vague timelines, and a dose of misdirection by automakers. There has been a lot of talk, but we still don't know that much about these proposed vehicles, which are at least three years off. That's half a development cycle in this industry. We generally only start to get an idea of what a company will build about two years before it goes on sale. So instead of concrete information about autonomous cars, 2016 has brought us a lot of promises, many in the form of concept cars. They have popped up from just about every automaker accompanied by the CEO's pledge to deliver a Level 4 autonomous, all-electric model (usually a crossover) in a few years. It's very easy to say that a static design study sitting on a stage will be able to drive itself while projecting a movie on the windshield, but it's another thing entirely to make good on that promise. With a few exceptions, 2016 has been stuck in the promising stage. It's a strange thing, really; automakers are famous for responding with "we don't discuss future product" whenever we ask about models or variants known to be in the pipeline, yet when it comes to self-driving electric wondermobiles, companies have been falling all over themselves to let us know that theirs is coming soon, it'll be oh so great, and, hey, that makes them a mobility company now, not just an automaker. A lot of this is posturing and marketing, showing the public, shareholders, and the rest of the industry that "we're making one, too, we swear!" It has set off a domino effect – once a few companies make the guarantee, the rest feel forced to throw out a grandiose yet vague plan for an unknown future. And indeed there are usually scant details to go along with such announcements – an imprecise mileage estimate here, or a far-off, percentage-based goal there. Instead of useful discussion of future product, we get demonstrations of test mules, announcements of big R&D budgets and new test centers they'll fund, those futuristic concept cars, and, yeah, more promises.

Apple's merger chief met in secret with Tesla CEO Elon Musk

There's no lack of connections between two of the most darling Silicon Valley companies, Apple and Tesla Motors. Most recently, the electric car manufacturer hired away Apple's "Hacker Princess," Kristin Paget, but it's possible to look back as far as 2010 to see when Tesla hired the man who worked on the Apple Store experience, George Blankenship, to get the Tesla Stores in order (he left in late 2013). More recently, there's been outside calls for the two to link arms, namely from banking analyst Adnaan Ahmad who said Apple should just up and buy Tesla (some have also predicted that General Motors could do just that in 2014) in late 2013. But nothing in this list ties the two companies together as strongly as a new report in the San Francisco Chronicle: Apple's chief of mergers and acquisitions, Adrian Perica, secretly met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk last spring. Neither company is talking publicly, and the Chronicle's source is choosing to remain anonymous, but it appears that Tesla and Apple may have been at least a little bit interested in working together well ahead of Ahmad's call. He wrote that buying Tesla would bring another Steve Jobs-like figure (Musk) to the computer giant as well as give the maker of iPhones and iPads another market to explore (remember the iCar idea?). The Chronicle does admit that there's no upside for Tesla that's quite as obvious, and one analyst said a partnership would make more sense than a buy out. There could be other scenarios on the table, as well. Perhaps it was to discuss a joint giga-battery plant? Or maybe Musk's visit to Cupertino was just a courtesy call, in case Tesla ever needs access to Apple's famously deep pockets. We don't know, but the news does give us a slew of interesting possibilities to ponder. There's a lot more over in the Chronicle, including how Apple may be branching out into new medical devices. Related Gallery Tesla Model S View 24 Photos News Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 9to5MacImage Credit: Copyright 2014 Drew Phillips / AOLTip: Ellen K. Auto News Green Tesla Electric icar