On Friday, Tesla launched a social platform named Tesla Engage, in part to spur customers to take political action that benefits Elon Musk's electric vehicle and solar company.

While Tesla Engage soft-launched last year and is basically a continuation of the company's online community-building efforts, it represents a more centralized approach to organizing its fans and members of official Tesla Owners Clubs for political purposes.

Tesla's fan base is the envy of all automakers. While it was cultivated in the company's early Roadster years, the fandom grew exponentially with CEO Elon Musk's nonstop engagement with fans and critics online, in particular on Twitter and YouTube.

Tesla fans today run the gamut from vocal, sometimes rabidly so, brand loyalists to bullish stockholders, Elon Musk admirers, auto enthusiasts who love the way a Tesla vehicle drives, and others who want to reduce their environmental impact by driving an electric car or installing solar.

The company's public policy team wrote, on a post introducing its latest effort:

Some of the issues seeded on Tesla Engage at launch include:

• How to bring about a change in metering rules at public EV charging stations in Canada. Currently, EV charging is billable by the minute or the hour in Canada. Many Tesla and other EV drivers want metering to be based upon electricity consumption, not time spent charging.
• Disaster relief in Texas. Tesla is encouraging owners to donate to a long list of charities in the state that is home to Tesla's second U.S. auto plant and SpaceX Boca Chica facilities. Donating to help people in Texas recover from the cold weather and energy crisis has the added benefit of making Tesla, a newcomer to the state, and its proponents look good.
• And in a post aimed at Tesla fans in Nebraska, the company is urging residents to push state legislators to change laws that bar Tesla and others from selling vehicles directly to consumers there, i.e., without operating a franchise dealership in the state. They have even provided a quick way for fans to submit public comments on legislation to the Nebraska Senate or to contact the appropriate committee members.

Tesla has long battled to change the laws around direct sales in the U.S. Nebraska and Texas are among more than half a dozen holdouts where Tesla is not supposed to sell directly to consumers and must instead ship vehicles from other states to customers who order online.

The company has succeeded in reversing bans on direct sales in many other states over the past decade, including in Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey and Utah. Tesla is joined by Lordstown Motors, Lucid Motors and Rivian in its efforts to reverse bans on direct sales.

Tesla is expected to retire its earlier Tesla Forums on March 15, rendering comments and posts there "read-only."

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Tesla Inc. has agreed to recall 134,951 Model S and Model X vehicles with touchscreen displays that could fail and raise the risk of a crash following a request by U.S. auto safety regulators last month, according to a recall posted on the Government website on Tuesday.

 


 

The National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) made an unusual request for recall. 13 A letter to Tesla stating that it had formally concluded the 2012-2018 Model S and the 2016-2018 Model X vehicles pose a safety issue. Automakers usually agree to voluntary fixes before the Auto Safety Agency formally requests a recall.

The Agency noted that touchscreen failures posed significant safety issues, including loss of rearview or backup camera images, exterior turn signal lighting, and windshield defogging and defrosting systems that "may decrease the driver’s visibility in inclement weather."

By 27 January, NHTSA had asked Tesla to respond to its request for recall. Tesla agreed to the recall on the same day, the company said.


 

Tesla said in its filing with NHTSA that "in the interest of bringing administrative closure to the investigation and to ensure the best ownership experience for our customers" it agreed to a voluntary recall.

NHTSA opened a probe in June 2020 into complaints that media control unit (MCU) failures led to touchscreen displays not working.

NHTSA said last month that "during our review of the data, Tesla provided confirmation that all units will inevitably fail given the memory device’s finite storage capacity."

Many complaints told Tesla that the owners had to pay to replace the unit after the warranties had expired. Tesla will replace the defective part and pay back customers who have paid to replace the part that failed because to lifetime wear.

Tesla acknowledged the problem but said if the display was not working, "the driver can perform a shoulder check and use the mirrors. If the screen is not visible to control the climate control and defroster settings, the driver will be able to manually clear the windshield."

The recall will begin on 30 March. NHTSA requested a recall of 158,000 vehicles, but Tesla stated that the recall does not include some vehicles with upgraded processors built after March 2018.
 

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Electric automaker Tesla said Monday that it has invested around $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and it plans to begin accepting the digital currency as payment for its high-end vehicles soon. The price of Bitcoin soared 15.4% to around $44,500 Monday in reaction to Tesla’s announcement, according to CoinBase.

The California-based electric car maker headed by Elon Musk revealed the new strategy in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, saying its investment in digital currency and other “alternative reserve assets” may grow.

Bitcoin has drawn enthusiasts for its scarcity and security, but the volatile digital currency still is not widely used to pay for goods and services. It’s mostly been a store of value, like gold, with some limited merchants like Overstock accepting bitcoin for payment. It’s also used by those distrustful of the banking system or criminals seeking to launder money.

Whether other major companies will follow Tesla’s lead in investing in Bitcoin or accepting it for transactions is unclear. A vehicle is a large purchase, which could make Bitcoin a better fit to pay for it, but the wild price swings in Bitcoin could be a significant risk to any merchant who decided to accept it.

“It was wise of Tesla to announce that it will deem its investment in Bitcoin as an “alternative asset.” That is certainly appropriate because Bitcoin might be coming into greater acceptance as a currency, but it is not cash,” said Anthony Michael Sabino, a professor of law, at St. John’s University.

Tesla is in a unique position to accept digital currencies for payment since the automaker does not rely on a network of independently owned dealerships to sell its vehicles unlike traditional car companies such as General Motors and Ford.

Whether Tesla will get a definitive competitive advantage in accepting Bitcoin remains to be seen. The automaker could be simply investing in Bitcoin because Musk has been known to have eclectic tastes. Musk launched a Tesla car into space to demonstrate the payload capabilities of his SpaceX company rockets.

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