Those are some of the tidbits that came to light during a slightly surreal Tesla Motors Annual Shareholder Meeting yesterday. Held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the event went hard to port shortly after the company's captain took the helm.
Instead of recapping the progress the electric car manufacturer had made in the past twelve months, and his expectations for future, his presentation was a retelling of the entire history of the effort. For two hours or so, Musk, while sailing through the somewhat familiar seas of the past dozen years, and joined by co-founder and CTO JB Straubel, as well as the occasional other early employee, told the tale of Tesla, regaling with personal anecdotes and behind the scene secrets.
While you can get some idea of the topics covered by checking out the numerous screen captures we took throughout the presentation, the real message it seemed they wanted to convey was Tesla has a unique and solid foundation which would help it achieve its hugely ambitious growth targets. Did we mention this portion of the event lasted for two hours?
Here's what Musk said, exactly, about charging Model 3 drivers extra for access to the company's free Supercharger network:
"Free supercharging fundamentally has a cost. The obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap, and far cheaper than gasoline, to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package."
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