Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) was trading about 1.75% lower after its CFO announced his retirement at the luxury electric car company’s Annual General Meeting yesterday.
Deepak Ahuja, who joined the company in 2008 will leave his post later this year, staying on during the management transition until the appointment of his successor, said Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk at the AGM in Mountain View.
But the AGM was not all about nostalgia and Musk said that Tesla has made progress on its driverless, ‘autopilot’, function for newer versions of its Model S sedan, which will allow drivers to – almost, given regulatory constraints – use an autonomous driving feature on highways. A beta version of this ‘app’ should already be available for selected customers by the end of June.
Musk suggested that within a few years fully driverless cars will be on the roads as early as one to three years from now. Tesla is not alone and German carmakers such as Mercedes Benz have already started to sell cars with a, albeit more complicated, driverless system called ‘Assistenzsystmen’.
Separately, Tesla announced its intention to continue to expand the Supercharger network for recharging electric vehicles beyond the United States. The company has also upgraded its Home battery systems, announced last April, to address skeptical opinions from 3.3 kilowatts to seven kilowatts.
Tesla’s new SUV, the Model X, which has suffered many delays, will hit dealerships by the end of the summer such that the first customers get their keys at the end of the third quarter 2015. The Model X has already gathered 20,000 orders.
For the full year 2015, Tesla has undertaken to deliver 55,000 vehicles. All in all, the AGM has confirmed Tesla’s health and optimistic outlook with many revolutionary technologies, improving from their promising infancy.
Finally, Musk announced at the AGM that Tesla has no plans to spin off its aerospace company Space Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). In typical optimism, Musk said that “Only if there were regular flights to Mars”, would he envisage an IPO of SpaceX.
The company is well on its way to realizing Musk’s vision to turn Tesla from a single car manufacturer or a supplier to a provider of self-service energy - a ‘one stop shop’ to eliminate consumers’ dependency on utility and oil companies – and interplanetary exploration.