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Past Tesletter articles
[Video] Third Row Podcast with Elon Musk and Sandy Munro
The Third Row crew talk with Sandy Munro and Elon Musk Tesla manufacturing and hardware.
From issue #107[Video] Third Row Podcast with Elon Musk and Sandy Munro
The Third Row crew talk with Sandy Munro and Elon Musk Tesla manufacturing and hardware.
From issue #107A 2020 recap from Tesla
Tesla has managed to hit a bunch of milestones in 2020 despite of the challenges presented. Well done, and of course, we also thank the Tesla team.
From issue #154A possible look at what V11 could bring
The former Head of UI Design at Tesla recently left the company and uploaded a pretty cool animation to his online portfolio. Will this be in a future new UI? We don’t know but the UI and the animations look 🔥🔥🔥
From issue #162At Tesla Design Studio
Insightful interview with Tesla’s Pawel Pietryka, product designer and lead on company’s mobile UI team. The interview covers his role, his motivation to join Tesla, and how the team works.
Read more: Work With Us
From issue #62CyberTruck and Franz
Franz von Holzhausen is Tesla’s chief designer. He joined Tesla to lead the design of the Model S, and since then, he has produced so many awesome cars. We really appreciate Franz and love seeing him so happy posing in front of the Cybertruck. Thank you, Franz, for all that you do!"
From issue #257Elon Musk and the early days of Tesla: interview part 1
Our friends from TOSV together with Ryan from The Kilowatts and Eli from My Tesla Adventure had the amazing opportunity of sitting down with Elon for four hours and set the record straight in the early days of Tesla. This is part 1 of the interview.
From issue #219Elon Musk on life, the universe, and everything: Interview part 2
Here is part 2 of the interview that John (who would text me if I don’t mention his name here), Kelvin, Ryan, and Eli, did with Elon. This part of the interview is a bit less about Tesla and more about Elon, but we thought you would like it.
From issue #220Elon Musk receives the Axel Springer Award 2020
Live streaming of the event, which took place last December 1st in Berlin, and another great interview with Elon Musk. He answers questions about going to Mars, fully autonomous cars, the role of AI in society, why Berlin to build the first Gigafactory in Europe, and even some personal questions like why techno music is important to him.
From issue #140Elon Musk: A future worth getting excited about
About one hour interview where Elon talks about Tesla, Space X, and the future of humanity.
From issue #212Elon Musk: Interview Part 3
Third and final segment of the interview that John, Kelvin, Ryan, and Eli did with Elon. In this one, Elon confirms that the production prototype of the Cybertruck is now closed, talks about FSD, and much more (some Tesla, some not).
From issue #222Elon's Story, Part 1
The folks at Third Row Tesla Podcast had the chance to interview Elon Musk in person a couple of weeks ago. As you may or may not know, we normally don’t include articles about Elon’s personal life in this newsletter but in this case, we’re making an exception. If like us, you’re passionate about Tesla, I’m sure you’ll enjoy listening to Elon Musk sharing his story and why he put everything on the like to build SpaceX and Tesla.
Farewell and godspeed Andrej!
If you have been a subscriber for a while, you sure by now know who Andrej Karpathy is, but in case you don’t, Andrej has been really important to the evolution of Autopilot, Full Self-Driving, and the entire area of AI at Tesla. He’s worked there for five years and directed the Autopilot team at first and the AI team more recently.
I’ve been a Tesla owner for almost five years now, and I’ve been able to experience firsthand how much better Autopilot has become through the years. Five years ago my car didn’t even use all the cameras for Autopilot and had trouble even staying in its lane. While this has not all been Andrej, he has been a core contributor to the team and enabled a lot of brilliant minds to shine under his leadership.
I certainly will miss Andrej at Tesla and seeing his awesome presentations, the Tesla Autopilot team is amazing and Andrej is too.
Thank you for everything that you have given to the Tesla community, we wish you the best in your future endeavors Andrej!
💚 Ignacio and Vanessa
From issue #225Farewell Drew, thank you for the hard work!
Drew Baglino has announced his departure from Tesla after 18 impactful years, reflecting on his journey from a junior firmware/electrical engineer to participating in Tesla’s mission for sustainable energy. It seems so recent when we sent our issue 70 with the subject “Thanks JB” right after JB announced his departure and that Drew was taking over. I didn’t know Drew at that point, but he has done a tremendous job since then, and he will be greatly missed.
You are great, Drew, thank you for everything ❤️.
From issue #313Happy Birthday Elon!
We don’t usually feature news about Elon Musk’s personal life but… we thought we’d make an exception for his birthday: Happy Birthday Elon!
Interview with Elon Musk
A 20-minute interview with Elon Musk where he talks about battery cell production plans in Berlin, original vehicle designs in Berlin and Shanghai, the environmental impact of what Tesla is doing, and more.
From issue #139Join the GigaBerlin 4680 cell team
I love watching this sneak peek of the 4680 Battery Production in Giga Berlin. Beautiful, I want to watch it in a loop now 😊.
From issue #144New video game and user interface team being built in Austin
Tesla is building a new video game, software, and user interface team out of Austin. Electrek has found several job listings unrelated to the factory showing that Tesla is building a new software team around video games and user interface in Austin. If you’re in this space and would like to work for Tesla, this may be your opportunity to do so!
From issue #127Ryan McCaffrey interviews Franz
Ryan McCaffrey, from the podcast Ride The Lightning, had the opportunity to interview Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen. This is rare since Franz doesn’t normally give many interviews and Ryan did a great job at interviewing him (you can tell his full-time job is interviewing people). Listen to it if you haven’t done it yet!
From issue #82Sandy Munro interviews Elon Musk
Elon and Sandy talk about Tesla production, mega-castings, Model 3 seats, structural battery packs, MBA’s, and short-sellers.
From issue #149Tesla Bot Actuators Team
Check out this awesome video by Tesla! It shows the people behind the scenes of the Tesla Bot, more specifically the actuators team. They’re the ones who design, model, and make the actuators that make the Tesla Bot move. It’s super cool!
From issue #251Tesla China design team recruit video
In the video, we can see Franz von Holzhausen approached by a person who shows him a design while he replies ‘who did this?’. It is known that Tesla wants to design at least one car in each new factory (at least in Giga Shanghai and in Giga Berlin) and, of course, they need to recruit the best talent to achieve this. Is this going to be the team designing the new $25k Tesla?
From issue #159Tesla’s Chief Designer On The Cybertruck
Don’t let the clickbait title fool you - the interview with Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s Chief Designer, is a must-see. Franz shares his experiences working at Tesla, working side-by-side with Elon Musk since 2008, and designing some of the company’s most iconic vehicles, including the revolutionary Cybertruck. Watch it to learn more about the man behind the designs that are shaping the future of transportation.
From issue #245Thanks JB
JB Straubel is part of the founding team at Tesla and until last week he was the CTO of the company. JB and Elon meet in 2003 and joined Tesla after Elon invested in their series A. As Elon mentioned in the presentation of the quarter, “If we hadn’t had lunch in 2003, Tesla wouldn’t exist, basically”. JB is transitioning from being an executive to an advisory role, and honestly, no one can’t blame him for wanting a change after 15 years at the same company (and the company seems in good hands).
From Tesletter, we just wanted to thank JB - maybe someone can foward this to him? - for all his hard work and dedication, as Tesla owners and shareholders we love your work. From the bottom of our hearts: THANK YOU!
What unreleased FSD Autopilot sees
Tesla and Elon Musk are being pretty aggressive recruiting people for their AI team. To the point that it seems they’re even publishing unreleased FSD footage on their website.
Read more: Tesla
From issue #97Workshop on Scalability in Autonomous Driving by Andrej Karpathy 📹
Mostly a rehash of stuff from the last talk he gave in February, but there’s some new details about speed limit signs that starts at 11:00 and also some impressive demos of the birds-eye view predictor handling complex intersections and lane lines at 19:45.
See more: YouTube
From issue #117
