Tesla can now sell its vehicles in New Jersey

Tech Crunch reports that Tesla has won it's legal battle against New Jersey legislators.

Last year, New Jersey (along with four other states) infamously banned Tesla from selling the Model S inside of the state. The ban was put in place because Tesla Motors sells it's vehicles directly to consumers out of their own show rooms.

"But what about that is illegal?"

It was opposed by car dealerships because car companies selling directly to consumers would destroy their business model, of buying from the company and then selling to consumers for a profit. Thats right; an outdated group of business owners lobbied against Tesla from breaking through their monopoly on car sales.

Elon Musk posted on Tesla's official blog after the ban:

"On Tuesday, under pressure from the New Jersey auto dealer lobby to protect its monopoly, the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, composed of political appointees of the Governor, ended your right to purchase vehicles at a manufacturer store within the state."

Thankfully the ban has been lifted, but for months it was true that New Jersey had "ended [the consumer's] right" to purchase an item that would be otherwise completely legal.

Do American consumers have the right to purchase what they want? Do American businesses have the right to sell whatever they want? At what point (if any) is it justifiable for the government to intervene?

I think intervention should only take place in the situation of danger to an American citizen. It most certainly should not be used to protect a monopoly. 

Do you think American's have the "right" to purchase/sell what they want? 

Schools dealing with cyber bullying

Watch this video from New York Times.

"Cyber bullying isn't going to stop if someone gets suspended; it's always going to be a problem. The only way to stop cyber bullying is to shut off Facebook, Instagram, Kik...all that stuff"

If it's always going to be a problem, I think school need to educate students on how to deal with these problems on their own. Of course the school needs to intervene, but like the student said, they can only do so much.

Rapper Tyler the Creator has infamously tweeted this about cyber bullying:

While explicit and immature, it is important to recognize this type of viewpoint. Bullying exists everywhere, and people need the skills to combat it independently for times after high school is over. There is bullying in college, in the workplace, and in every community. I believe that along side programs that work to stop bullying, schools should also educate students on how to "close their eyes" and "walk away from the screen."

Although it might seem like they are ignoring the real problem, it is important to teach students in a way that will assist them in the rest of their lives.

Only 30% of Google's employees are female.

An article on CNN reports that google lacks gender diversity. The women that they do manage to get jobs at the company work in lower paying, non-technical and non-leadership positions. Just 17% of Google's engineers are female, and women make up just 21% of the company's leadership. Only one of the company's top 12 executives (YouTube director Susan Wojcicki) is a woman.


Unfortunately, recent government diversity reports show that google is not alone in this issue. Cisco, Intel, Dell, Ebay, and Ingram Micro all struggle to maintain a gender diverse staff.


The article offers one popular explanation for this: that not enough women are graduating with the technical degrees required for the positions. CNN claims that the diversity problem starts in college. Intel's chief diversity officer Rosalind Hudnell states that "An engineering degree is probably the best you can get for finding a job, yet we don't have enough diverse students taking an interest." Data from the Computer Research Association backs up this statement; last year only 13.4% of those graduating with these technical degrees were women.


While this all makes sense, some might question if the problem really is women "not taking an interest," but instead the lack of opportunity for women in America.

In an article from USA Today, Coleen Carrigan, an anthropologist who researches high-tech cultures stated that "Women and underrepresented minorities have been denied access to resources and opportunities that would allow them to enter and succeed in computer science,"

However, I am skeptical about her claim. The article also offers that students coming from high schools where computer science isn't taught, are disadvantaged from those who do. But what is stopping women specifically from taking those classes along with the men at schools where they are offered? There is no proof that women specifically, in comparison to men, have been denied the opportunities to seek these degrees.

If that means the answer is that women just aren't taking enough interest, then why do you think that is? Leave a comment

Tesla job fair overcapacity

NBC News reported that on Saturday, a job fair in Fremont, California, was cancelled by Tesla after it caused a traffic jam and reached over-capacity. The Fremont Police Department tweeted that the "overwhelming response" to Tesla's job fair resulted in a major backup on I-880. 

The success of the Fremont factory has indeed been very "overwhelming." According to Tesla Forums, the company now uses over 50% of the 5.4 million square feet for the development of the Model S and X, and other future vehicles. The factory was built in 1984 in a partnership between Toyota and General Motors. In 2009, General motors backed out of the factory, and Toyota built it's last vehicle there in 2010 due to it being unprofitable.

Tesla bought the factory and has now seen massive success where the two largest automotive brands could not.

This speaks volumes on the ability of a new American company to enter what was thought to be a saturated market. As I mentioned in my last post, it is foolish of other companies to not take them seriously, because in many ways, Tesla is already winning the race.

Do the overwhelming number of people that want to work for Tesla a good thing? Or will it make the company over-hyped an unable to meet its reputation?

Mercedes and Cadillac take different approaches towards Tesla

In a recent interview with AutoBlog at the New York Auto Show, a Daimler (Mercedes) executive was gave a quote on how Mercedes will deal with the competion with Tesla Motors. 

He claimed Tesla has no network" and only offers "little shops that don't have service capacity. "Tesla is great, but you've got plenty of well-established brands that mean luxury."

To me, this quote shows ignorance, and the companies refusal to except Tesla as a competitive product. Tesla is known famously for it's immense network of superchargers all over the country. It has a non-traditional set-up for service centers due to the fact that the car is run by computers that can be fixed remotely by engineers. 

Are Tesla's not worthy for the market because they don't have a well-established brand? Just because a company has been around for awhile doesn't mean it will always make quality products, and just because a company is new doesn't mean it can't. Tesla outsold all the competition in it's class this last quarter, including the Mercedes E-class, Audi A6, and BMW 5 Series. 

Cadillac is taking a much smarter approach to the new competition. An executive from GM stated that Tesla offers "a great opportunity and a learning exercise for all of us, and will help us traditional manufacturers to think twice about electric mobility.

By noting the successful qualities of Tesla, other companies can improve themselves. It is speculated that the success of the Model S prompted the earlier than expected developement of Cadillac's own electric luxury vehicle, the ELR. 

By not choosing to simple ignore new competition, I think that Cadillac will see greater success than Mercedes in the coming years.

Do you think Mercedes is right to think that Tesla will fizzle out and not be a threat to the company, or do you think they should pay attention to them?

"too little, too late," SAT.

The College Board recently announced changes to its SAT college entrance exam. Leon Botstein, the president of a selective liberal-arts college, wrote a commentary in Time Magazine about it.
In the article, he states that "the SAT is part hoax and part fraud. It needs to be abandoned and replaced."

An article from CNN outlines these changes. The test change the maximum score from 2400 back to 1600, which no longer includes the essay. It will also stop penalizing for wrong answers. 

The president of The College Board claims that the new test turn away from the focus on tricks and trying to eliminate answer choices, and instead shift towards requiring students to justify their answers.

So what's the problem with these tests?

Leon Botstein claims that high school grades are much better at predicting a students performance in college than the SAT. He labels the SAT as a "bizzare" and "outdated" method, because knowing how to do something in real life isn't defined by the ability to choose the correct answer from a set of options, that may or may not be intentionally misleading. 

He also adds that the new changes will not save the test from it's uselessness. The exam claims that it is objective, but the most statistical pattern that stands out the most is the correlation between high income and high test scores. "The richer one is, the better one does on the SAT." 

I can think of a couple things that might explain this. First, higher income families have access to tutors that can help train students to spot the "tricks" that Botstein referenced. They might also be more expectant to attend college, so they will put more effort into the test. 

Colleges also help keep the College Board's monopoly on testing by using the test to benefit their ranking. Colleges can boost their scores by admitting students with high scores on the test. Botstein says that the victim of this relationship are the students, and "our nation's educational standards."

The test taking requirements currently in place are not realistic ones. I think it would be much more beneficial to find out students academic capability based on real world scenarios. While I attended a private tutor to prepare for the ACT (a similar test), I was shocked by the amount of "tricks" there were for taking the test. For example, questions that begin with a certain phrase are most often answered by "D) none of these." Students that might have the equal or greater intelligence than I do might answer this question wrong because they couldn't pay someone to tell them that. 

I have never taken the SAT, so I can't speak about the test itself. If you have, can you compare it to the ACT, and describe what type of questions were asked? How would you change it to make it less objective?

Koenigsegg coming to America

Koenigsegg is a Swedish super-car company founded by brilliant engineer Christian von Koenigsegg. They are most famous for the production of the Agera R, one of the greatest technical marvels of the automotive industry in the past decade.

Up until now, they could not be purchased in the US, but according to Road and Track, they will be finally brought to the states and sold from "Manhattan Motor Cars" dealerships.

The United States is the worlds biggest super-car market, so why are we just getting this vehicle now?
Well, the car costs 1.5 millions dollars. Koenigsegg has stated in the past that they believe that Americans
"just can't afford this car." Almost insulting isn't it?

After the 2008 financial crisis and the introduction of stricter regulations in the United States, they shifted their focus to European and Asian markets.

It's weird hearing that the U.S. is "too poor" for a product. We're #1!
Right?