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YC-backed Statiq wants to bootstrap India’s EV charging network
Electric vehicles (EVs) are spreading throughout the world. While Tesla has drawn the most attention in the United States with its luxurious and cutting-edge cars, EVs are becoming a mainstay in markets far away from the environs of California.
Take India for instance. In the local mobility market, two- and three-wheel vehicles are starting to emerge as a popular option for a rapidly expanding middle class looking for more affordable options. EV versions are popular thanks to their reduced maintenance costs and higher reliability compared to gasoline alternatives.
Two-wheeled electric scooters are a fast-growing segment of India’s mobility market.
There’s just one problem, and it’s the same one faced by every country which has attempted to convert from gasoline to electric: how do you build out the charging station network to make these vehicles usable outside a small range from their garage?
It’s the classic chicken-and-egg problem. You need EVs in order to make money on charging stations, but you can’t afford to build charging stations until EVs are popular. Some startups have attempted to build out these networks themselves first. Perhaps the most famous example was Better Place, an Israeli startup that raised $800 million in venture capital before dying from negative cash flow back in 2013. Tesla has attempted to solve the problem by being both the chicken and egg by creating a network of Superchargers.
That’s what makes Statiq so interesting. The company, based in the New Delhi suburb of Gurugram, is bootstrapping an EV charging network using a multi-revenue model that it hopes will allow it to avoid the financial challenges that other charging networks have faced. It’s in the current Y Combinator batch and will be presenting at Demo Day later this month.
Akshit Bansal and Raghav Arora, the company’s co-founders, worked together previously as consultants and built a company for buying photos online, eventually reaching 50,000 monthly actives. They decided to make a pivot — a hard pivot really — into EVs and specifically charging equipment.
Statiq founders Raghav Arora and Akshit Bansal. Photos via Statiq
“We felt the need to do something about the climate because we were living in Delhi and Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India is home to a lot of the polluted cities in the world. So we wanted to do something about it,” Bansal said. As they researched the causes of pollution, they learned that automobile exhaust represented a large part of the problem locally. They looked at alternatives, but EV charging stations remain basically non-existent across the country.
Thus, they founded Statiq in October 2019 and officially launched this past May. They have installed more than 150 charging stations in Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai and the surrounding environs.
Let’s get to the economics though, since that to me is the most fascinating part of their story. Statiq as I noted has a multi-revenue model. First, end users buy a subscription from Statiq to use the network, and then users pay a fee per charging session. That session fee is split between Statiq and the property owner, giving landlords who install the stations an incremental revenue boost.
A Statiq charging station. Photo via Statiq
When it comes to installation, Statiq has a couple of tricks up its sleeves. First, the company’s charging equipment — according to Bansal — costs roughly a third of the equivalent cost of U.S. equipment. That makes the base technology cheaper to acquire. From there, the company negotiates installations with landlords where the landlords will pay the fixed costs of installation in exchange for that continuing session charge fee.
On top of all that, the charging stations have advertising on them, offering another income stream particularly in high-visibility locations like shopping malls which are critical for a successful EV charging network.
In short, Statiq hasn’t had to outlay capital in order to put in place their charging equipment — and they were able to bootstrap before applying to YC earlier this year. Bansal said the company had dozens of charging stations and thousands of paid sessions on its platform before joining their YC batch, and “we are now growing 20% week-over-week.”
What’s next? It’s all about deliberate scaling. The EV market is turning on in India, and Statiq wants to be where those cars are. Bansal and his co-founder are hoping to ride the wave, continuing to build out critical infrastructure along the way. India’s government will likely continue to help: its approved billions of dollars in incentives for EVs and for charging stations, tipping the economics even further in the direction of a clean car future.
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Elon Musk says Tesla is open to licensing Autopilot, supplying powertrains and batteries to other automakers
Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted on Twitter on Tuesday night that the automaker would be “open to licensing software and supplying powertrains & batteries” to other automakers. Musk added that that would even include Autopilot, the advanced driver assistance software that Tesla offers to provide intelligent cruise control in a number of different driving scenarios.
Musk was addressing a Teslarati article about how German automakers are looking to close the technology gap between themselves and Tesla when it comes to producing EVs. Volkswagen Chairman Herbert Diess has in past comments expressed admiration for Musk and Tesla’s accomplishments on multiple occasions.
VW has created its own EV platform, which it intends to use as the base for a number of different electric cars, ranging from sport sedans to SUVs. The company is also openly pursuing licensing its MEB platform to other automakers, and struck such a deal with Ford last July for the American automaker’s European business.
Musk says that Tesla’s interest in licensing stems from its underlying goal, which is “to accelerate sustainable energy, not crush competitors,” according to his tweet. This isn’t the first time the automaker has indicated a willingness to be more open in pursuit of that goal: In 2014, Musk penned a blog post announcing that Tesla would be making its intellectual property freely available to “anyone who, in good faith, wants to use [its] technology.”
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Tesla from taking aim at potential competitors via legal action on occasion — it filed suit against electric automaker Rivian and four of its former employees last week, alleging theft of trade secrets and poaching key talent.
A platform licensing or supplier relationship would be an entirely different arrangement, of course, and one with plenty of precedent in the automaker industry. Nor would it necessarily negatively impact Tesla’s own auto sales, as the company offers a number of other selling points above and beyond its underlying powertrain and battery tech.
At the time of Volkswagen’s announcement, the German automaker said it expects it could make up to $20 billion in revenue through the MEB deal with Ford, with a significant chunk of that coming from MEB parts and components supply. Tesla could realize similar gains but perhaps amplified globally, especially if it can ramp powertrain and battery production beyond the capacity needs of its own vehicle demand capacity.
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Tesla’s Megapack powers its small, but growing energy storage business
Tesla’s energy storage business picked up steam in the second quarter and even played a minor role in the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of profitability, according to earnings reported Wednesday.
Commercial and residential energy storage sales as well as solar are still mere slices of Tesla’s overall business, which is largely dominated by automotive. However, second-quarter results show some promise for energy storage, particularly Megapack, the utility-scale energy storage product that launched in 2019 and is modeled after the giant battery system it deployed in South Australia.
While Tesla does provide separate deployment stats for solar and energy storage, it combines the two when reporting revenue, making it impossible to fully measure the success of Megapack. However, Tesla made a point in its earnings statement to flag Megapack as a winner in the second quarter and noted that it turned a profit for the first time.
“There’s a lot of demand for the product and we’re growing the production rates as fast as we can,” Drew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, said during Wednesday’s earnings call.
For the past four years or so Tesla has been asking investors to view it as an energy company instead of just an automaker. Some analysts think that the real value in Tesla’s business will be when it actually achieves some level of parity between the two sides of the shop — a goal that Musk is also shooting for.
But energy storage and solar has remained in Tesla’s automotive shadow, despite assurances that these business products will eventually be equals. For now, energy storage remains a small, but growing, fraction of Tesla’s revenue.
CEO Elon Musk predicted its energy business would be roughly the same size at its automotive unit over the long term. He did not provide a timeline.
One product that Tesla is hoping will accelerate the growth of its energy storage business is Autobidder, the company’s machine-learning platform for automated energy trading.
Autobidder provides grid stabilization and ensures that things are “super smooth,” Musk said, adding that it is necessary in order to solve the sustainable energy problem
Overall, energy storage deployed was up 61% on a quarterly basis (from 260 megawatt hours to 419 megawatt hours) signs that the business is beginning to recover to levels before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Energy storage deployments in the second quarter were still only 1% higher than the same period last year, illustrating that Tesla still has a ways to go before it hits numbers reached in the third and fourth quarters of 2019.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s solar deployments shrank.
Tesla installed 27 MW of solar in the second quarter, down 23% from the previous quarter and off 7% from the same period last year. Some of that slippage is likely due to the economic slowdown and shelter in place orders that swept the U.S. in response to COVID-19.
Tesla became the leading solar installer in the United States with its acquisition of SolarCity but its position slipped as Sunrun and Vivint Solar surged in the U.S. market. Now, its looking to regain some of that ground with its Solar Roof, a new shingle-like product that has been development and testing for years. Tesla said Wednesday that installations of the Solar Roof roughly tripled in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. However, the company did not provide specific figures, making it unclear just how many Solar Roof installations it has completed.
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Tesla holds on to recent gains with bullish analyst target of $2,300
Wall Street darling Tesla is holding on to its recent gains today on the back of a bullish analyst report, despite some weakness in tech shares.
Tesla has seen its value skyrocket in recent quarters, rising from a 52-week low share price of $211 to $1,548.81 today. That figure, however, is low in the eyes of some. Enter Piper Sandler.
The Piper analyst report, which was first released late Monday, gives Tesla a new price target of $2,322, up from the group’s prior price target of a little over $900 per share. The stock still has room to run, some believe, perhaps explaining some of the mania that related companies have seen in recent weeks, including fellow electric car manufacturers Nikola, Nio and others.
It was enough to prompt a “wow” from Tesla CEO Elon Musk via a tweet Monday evening.
Wow
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2020
The Piper report cites two key factors for its new Tesla price target: The company’s edge in manufacturing and resulting unit volume, and the possibility that software will allow the company to eventually generate operating margins in the mid-20s.
On the manufacturing front, Piper increased its 2020 delivery estimates based on Tesla’s recent second-quarter numbers. The firm believes Tesla can hit its original 2020 delivery guidance of 500,000 units, which it notes is impressive, given factory closures due to COVID-19.
Piper suggested Tesla can scale rapidly in the coming years. The constraint isn’t customer demand, but instead capacity, the analyst suggested. Of course, building out production capacity is no small and cheap feat. Still, with customer demand wide open, Piper sees big revenue gains moving forward.
The latter argument feels more speculative. A 25% operating margin implies that the automotive company’s gross margins would need to be far higher, a seeming stretch for a company that sells molded metal and plastic in a competitive market.
The basis of Piper’s argument centers on Tesla’s software, specifically its FSD, or “full self-driving” feature, an $8,000 add-on that provides advanced driver assistance over its standard Autopilot system.
Let us provide some quick backstory so that everyone understands: Today, Tesla vehicles come standard with Autopilot, an advanced driver assistance system that offers a combination of adaptive cruise control and lane steering. Tesla once charged for this feature as well, but made it standard in April 2019.
The more robust and higher-functioning version of Autopilot is called full self-driving. FSD includes the parking feature Summon as well as Navigate on Autopilot, an active guidance system that navigates a car from a highway on-ramp to off-ramp, including interchanges and making lane changes. The system now recognizes and responds to traffic lights, as well.
Still, Tesla vehicles are not self-driving cars. The system requires a human driver to remain engaged at all times.
Piper believes the FSD price will continue to rise, driving up margins. The firm predicted the cost of FSD could rise as high as $40,000.
“Thanks to the high-margin nature of the FSD package, we think that by the 2030s, Tesla could conceivably be selling vehicles at cost — or even below cost — while still achieving higher operating margins,” Piper wrote.
There is a very material catch to all of this. Tesla is able to recognize FSD revenue on its balance sheet as it rolls out more features. In other words, Tesla has to keep improving the product to be able to capture that entire line item.
In the first-quarter earnings call, Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn explained that the company takes “roughly half” of the FSD as revenue. The other half of it goes into deferred revenue.
“Our deferred revenue balance is continuing to grow,” he said at the time. “It’s a little bit over $600 million. And so as we release features with time, at the end of every quarter, we take a look at what features have been released, associated value and then we can release that from the deferred revenue into our financials for that quarter. And then cars going forward, once the feature is released, we can recognize that revenue.”
For Tesla shareholders, institutional and retail alike, Piper’s report is welcome. Now Tesla has to live up to raised expectations. The company reports earnings on July 22. TechCrunch will be tuned in.
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Sunrun’s $3.2 billion Vivint Solar bid challenges Tesla’s energy ambitions
Tesla’s 2014 acquisition of SolarCity turned the electric vehicle manufacturer into the undisputed largest player in residential solar, but that lead has steadily eroded as its major competitor, Sunrun, surged ahead with more aggressive plans. Now with the $3.2 billion acquisition of the residential solar installation company Vivint Solar, Sunrun looks to solidify its place in the top spot.
From Tesla’s very early days Elon Musk has tried to define the company as an energy company rather than just a manufacturer of electric vehicles. When Tesla made its $2.6 billion bid for SolarCity the move was viewed as the culmination of the first phase of its “master plan,” which called for Tesla to “provide zero emission electric power generation options.”
Now that plan faces a major test from a publicly traded competitor that’s focused solely on providing residential solar power and the ability to lower costs for its panels through greater efficiencies of scale, according to analysts who track the solar energy sector.
“Sunrun will be freaking big,” Joe Osha, an analyst at JMP Securities, told Bloomberg News. “They are clearly looking for ways to get scale and efficiency.”
Indeed, the combined companies will save roughly $90 million per year thanks to operational efficiencies, according to a statement from Sunrun. And the economies of scale will give the companies even more leverage when they contract with utilities on feeding power into the electric grid.
As Sunrun acknowledged in the announcement of its acquisition of the Blackstone-backed Vivint, the combined customer base of 500,000 homes represents over 3 gigawatts of solar assets. That figure still is only 3% penetration of the total market for residential solar in the United States.
Sunrun had already edged out Tesla for the top spot in residential solar installations, and together the two companies account for 75% of new residential solar leases each quarter, according to data from Bloomberg NEF.
“Americans want clean and resilient energy. Vivint Solar adds an important and high-quality sales channel that enables our combined company to reach more households and raise awareness about the benefits of home solar and batteries,” Sunrun CEO and co-founder Lynn Jurich said in a statement. “This transaction will increase our scale and grow our energy services network to help replace centralized, polluting power plants and accelerate the transition to a 100% clean energy future.”
Even as Sunrun’s $1.46 billion stock (and the assumption of about $1.8 billion in debt) creates a massive competitor to Tesla’s solar business, there’s an opportunity for Tesla to sell more batteries through its residential solar competitor.
Sunrun and Vivint will likely be pushing their customers to add energy storage to their solar installations, and that means using either Tesla’s Powerwall batteries or its own Brightbox batteries manufactured in partnership with LG Chem .
Investors have responded to Sunrun’s latest maneuver by pouring money into the stock. Sunrun’s shares were up more than $5 in midday trading.
Image Courtesy: Yahoo Finance
“Vivint Solar and Sunrun have long shared a common goal of bringing clean, affordable, resilient energy to homeowners,” said David Bywater, chief executive officer of Vivint Solar, in a statement. “Joining forces with Sunrun will allow us to reach a broader set of customers and accelerate the pace of clean energy adoption and grid modernization. We believe this transaction will create value for our customers, our shareholders, and our partners.”
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Software shares set new records as tech rallies
In another up for technology shares, software companies saw their values reach new heights today.
The day’s trading comes after a sell-off last week eased some of technology companies’ rebounds from their COVID-19 lows; stocks in tech companies have more than made up for their early-year declines in mid-2020, with the Nasdaq reaching 10,000 points before giving up some ground.
Today the Nasdaq Composite index rose 0.15% to 9,910.53 points, just a few bips short of its all-time highs. A thematic tech index focused on fintech also saw their values recover to a mote under previous highs. The S&P 500 fell 0.36% to close at $3,113.41 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index decreased 0.65% to $26,119.13.
But software companies, tech’s highest fliers, set new records as measured by the Bessemer cloud index. According to the Financial Times, the software-and-cloud tracking index has seen gains of more than 45% during the last year, a sharp advance during a year of economic uncertainty and occasional stock market carnage.
Looking around more broadly, tech shares with a bit more of a value flavor — GAAP profitability, regular dividends, etc. — performed well, with Apple setting new record highs as well. The smartphone giant and services shop is worth more than $1.5 trillion, underscoring how attractive stable-tech has proved in 2020. On the same theme, Microsoft is a few points from all-time highs, and is worth around $1.48 trillion.
But while software’s growth has proved attractive, as has the stability of megacorp tech shops, less certain bets have also proved attractive. Nikola, an electric vehicle company that went public recently in a reverse debut, is still worth around $26 billion despite having no reported revenue. On a similar theme, Tesla shares are up from around $225 a year ago to over $993 today, a gain of 340% or so. In Q1 2020 the company posted 38% year-over-year growth.
$420 per share feels like a long time ago.
Speaking of transportation, Uber and Lyft had separate announcements Wednesday that should have primed the ol’ investor pump. Instead, shares of both companies bopped from flat to slightly down throughout the day.
Uber announced Wednesday that it will manage an on-demand service for Marin County in the San Francisco Bay area, marking the company’s broader push to Software as a Service and public transit.
Transportation Authority of Marin (TAM) will pay Uber a subscription fee to use its management software to facilitate requesting, matching and tracking of its high-occupancy vehicle fleet, starting with a service that operates along the Highway 101 corridor. Marin Transit trips will show up in the Uber app and let users book and even share rides.
This fundamental piece of news should have appealed to investors. Today they responded with a resounding “meh,” even though it represents the first steps into generating a new stream of revenue.
Uber shares closed down 0.60% to $33.29.
Meanwhile, rival Lyft pledged Wednesday that every car, truck and SUV on its platform will be all electric or powered by another zero-emission technology by 2030, a commitment that will require the company to coax drivers to shift away from gas-powered vehicles.
The target, which Lyft plans to pursue with help from the Environmental Defense Fund, will stretch across multiple programs. It will include the company’s autonomous vehicles, the Express Drive rental car partner program for rideshare drivers, consumer rental cars for riders and personal cars that drivers use on the Lyft app.
Perhaps investors understand that even with a decade-long timeline, the target could be difficult to meet.
Lyft shares closed at $35.32, down 3.79%.
TechCrunch has slowed its public market coverage as tech equities have returned to a more stable period; that they have made back lost ground has been worth noting, but lower volatility has lowered the market’s newsworthiness. Still, from time-to-time when new all-time highs are hit, it’s worth putting our toes back into the water. And on days when different blocs of public tech set records, we can’t help but make a public note.
Tech and tech-ish stocks: still in fashion.
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Volkswagen launches home EV charging system sales ahead of ID.3 vehicle deliveries
Volkswagen has started to sell a home-charging device as the automaker prepares to bring its new ID family of electric vehicles to market.
The ID.3 is the first electric vehicle under the ID label and will only be sold in Europe. Customers who made reservations for the launch edition, known as ID.3 1st, will be able to order their vehicle starting June 17. Volkswagen said this week that the deliveries for the ID.3 1st will begin in September.
And that means that, at least for now, the home-charging device known as Wallbox will only be available for sale in eight countries in Europe. Volkswagen is making three versions of the Wallbox that will range in price between €399 and €849 ($448 to $953). Those prices don’t include the cost of installation.
All of the versions will have a charging capacity of up to 11 kilowatts, permanently mounted Type 2 charging cable and integrated DC residual current protection. For now, just the base model is available, according to VW.
The two premium models, the ID. Charger Connect and ID. Charger Pro, will be available later this year. These models come with additional software that allows for the kind of interaction and analytics that Tesla owners are more familiar with. The ID. Charger Connect will allow customers to link their smartphone to control charging processes. The ID. Charger Pro has that connectivity feature plus an integrated electricity meter designed for commercial uses. The integrated meter can be used to bill electricity costs for company car drivers, according to VW.
Image Credits: Volkswagen
The ID.3 is the first model in the company’s new all-electric ID brand and the beginning of its ambitious plan to sell 1 million electric vehicles annually by 2025. The ID.3 will only be sold in Europe. Other models under the ID brand will be sold in North America.
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GM reveals an EV for (almost) every purse and purpose
Ed Niedermeyer is an author, columnist and co-host of The Autonocast. His book, Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, was released in August 2019.
More posts by this contributor
General Motors’ EV day didn’t just mark the launch of a new flexible battery architecture and an ambitious plan to deploy this underlying foundation across all of the automaker’s brands, including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC.
It was a resurrection, albeit with a modern twist.
The company’s announcement this week gave new life to its brand ladder — a portfolio that ranges from the heights of luxury to the most basic utility — and tipped its hand about how it will bring EVs “across the chasm.”
This game plan isn’t new. GM is bringing back a strategy that once defined its success and reshaped America’s automotive landscape. This strategy worked for GM until complacency crept in and the brand ladder collapsed. This time, GM is aiming to avoid these snares.
History lesson
Henry Ford’s moving assembly line birthed the early auto industry, but as American prosperity grew in the 1910s-20s, it was General Motors that laid the foundations of the modern car market. Under then-chairman Alfred Sloan, the amalgamation of once-independent automakers united under a strategy that would, in his words, create “a car for every purse and purpose.” From a value Chevrolet to a sporty Pontiac, from a discreetly plush Buick to a majestic Cadillac, and with countless brands in between, what became known as Sloanism birthed the idea that there should be a car to reflect every American’s self-image and social status.
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Panasonic is ending its solar cell partnership with Tesla
Panasonic said it will stop producing solar cells and modules at Tesla’s factory in Buffalo, N.Y., ending a four-year joint venture with the electric automaker.
Nikkei Asian Review was the first to report that Panasonic planned to end its production agreement with Tesla . Panasonic has since issued an announcement to explain its decision. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Panasonic said it will cease solar manufacturing operations at the Tesla factory by the end of May. The company will exit the factory by September.
Panasonic employs about 380 people at the factory. Those employees will be given severance packages. Panasonic said it will work with Tesla to identify and hire qualified applicants from its impacted workforce. Panasonic said in its announcement that Tesla plans to hire qualified applicants to new positions needed to support its solar and energy manufacturing operations in Buffalo.
Panasonic struck a deal in 2016 to jointly produce solar cells at Tesla’s “Gigafactory 2” plant in Buffalo, N.Y. Panasonic committed to share the cost of equipment needed for the plant. The joint venture deepened the relationship between the two companies, which already had established a partnership to produce battery cells at Tesla’s factory near Reno, Nev.
Panasonic’s decision to exit the factory comes as Tesla tries to scale up its energy business as well as meet employment requirements at the state-funded factory. The Buffalo factory was built with $750 million in taxpayer funds and then leased to Tesla. Under a deal reached with the state, Tesla must employ 1,460 people there by April or face a $41.2 million penalty.
As reports of Panasonic’s exit circulated, Tesla told Empire State Development, the New York economic development authority that oversees the factory, that it has exceeded its hiring commitment.
“Tesla informed us that they have not only met, but exceeded their next hiring commitment in Buffalo. As of today, Tesla said they have more than 1,500 jobs in Buffalo and more than 300 others across New York State,” Howard Zemsky, chairman of Empire State Development said in a statement.
Panasonic’s decision to move away from global solar products has no bearing on Tesla’s current operations nor its commitment to Buffalo and New York State, according to Tesla, Zemsky said.
The development authority will verify the company’s data, Zemsky said, who added that the count does not include the Panasonic positions.
Panasonic never received incentives from the state, according to Zemsky.
As Panasonic exits New York, it still works with Tesla under a separate joint venture to produce battery cells at a massive factory near Reno, Nev. Panasonic said in a statement that the decision “will have no impact on Panasonic and Tesla’s strong partnership in Nevada.” The two companies will continue their electric vehicle battery work taking place at Tesla’s Gigafactory, according to Panasonic.
In recent years, reports have suggested the relationship between Panasonic and Tesla has become strained. Tesla’s acquisition in February 2019 of Maxwell Technologies fueled speculation that the automaker wanted to develop its own battery cells.
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Tesla Model 3 makes Consumer Reports ‘Top Picks’ list for 2020
Tesla’s Model 3 is among the top 10 choices for car buyers in 2020, according to Consumer Reports. The nonprofit organization released its “Top Picks” of the year on Thursday, and it included Tesla’s most affordable vehicle alongside cars from automakers including Toyota, Subaru, Honda, Kia and Lexus.
The Model 3 was chosen as one of three vehicles in the $45K-$55K category, alongside the Lexus RX and the Toyota Supra. CR lauded its “thrilling driving experience,” including “impressive handling and quick precise steering [that] help it feel like a sports car.” They did ding it slightly for having a “stiff ride” overall, but said that that’s more than made up for by its long EV battery range and emission-free eco-friendly qualities.
Consumer Reports also specifically called out a worry about the Model 3 that “Autopilot, an optional system on the vehicle, does not require the driver to stay engaged, creating safety concerns.” Tesla has always positioned Autopilot as a driver-assist feature that still requires a driver to be ready to take over control at a moment’s notice, but critics have suggested its implementation can lead to misuse resulting in inattentiveness.
Clearly, that concern wasn’t enough to prevent CR from counting the Model 3 among its top recommendations for vehicles in 2020. Tesla also ended up ranking 11th overall out of 33 automakers in Consumer Reports’ 2020 automotive brand report card, climbing eight positions from last year. The Model 3, and the rapid improvements that Tesla was able to make in its production as it scaled assembly of the vehicle, clearly helped it in the eyes of the consumer-focused nonprofit.
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