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Someone in SF is exposing the wild 'Truth' about Tesla, and it includes 'anal itching' [w/video]

We'd like to give our heartfelt thanks to Ryan Block, former editor of Autoblog sister site Engadget, for sharing on Twitter one of the wackiest bits of anti-Tesla writings we've every come across. This is well beyond the anti-Tesla rage that once dominated conservative media coverage – it steps fully into tinfoil hat territory. We're not doctors, but perhaps someone needs lithium in its pharmaceutical form. Did you know, for example, that, "By driving a Tesla, you are involved in organized crime"? Or that, "By driving a Tesla, you are saying you have no morals"? Or even that, "By driving a Tesla, you are supporting spying?" Yes, friends, all this and more is explained (somewhat) in a small-font pamphlet that Block found, photographed and put up on Twitter yesterday. According to Block, the flyers have been distributed around San Francisco, being left anonymously on the windshields of parked Teslas. We can't quite follow all of the logic thrown together here, but it appears that someone is mad at the electric vehicle manufacturer for its ties to the government, Google and the media. Then there's this: "Psychographic, demographic and marketing studies have been published showing that Tesla drivers have a higher-than-average inclination towards drugs, strange sexual behavior and risk." We don't know if Tesla drivers are as extreme as all that, but there was at least one Model S driver who was recently spotted doing some odd moves in and out of his sunroof (see video below). Did we mention that Model S seats are known to cause "anal itching"? Maybe it's all part of the conspiracy. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Tesla launches Model S in UK, says Euro factory could be upcoming [w/video]

With the first UK deliveries of the 49,900-pound (about $84,000 at today's rates) Tesla Model S completed, it's time for the company to get back to business. For CEO Elon Musk that means discussing a long-anticipated rumor - a dedicated European production facility to build the luxurious EVs from the ground up.
Obviously, though, such a hefty investment would need to be worth the company's while, which is why Musk told Automotive News Europe that sales will need to hit 160,000 units before a factory is considered. The company has recorded over 3,400 sales in Europe during the first four months of 2014, which actually surpasses the 2,000 cars sold in the US.
Tesla currently maintains a factory in the Netherlands, although it only installs batteries in cars shipped from Tesla's Fremont, CA facility, rather than building cars from scratch. The factory, in Tilburg, is set to expand, while a new research and development facility is set to open in the UK in 2015 or 2016, according to Musk.

2016: The year of the autonomous-car promise

About half of the news we covered this year related in some way to The Great Autonomous Future, or at least it seemed that way. If you listen to automakers, by 2020 everyone will be driving (riding?) around in self-driving cars. But what will they look like, how will we make the transition from driven to driverless, and how will laws and infrastructure adapt? We got very few answers to those questions, and instead were handed big promises, vague timelines, and a dose of misdirection by automakers. There has been a lot of talk, but we still don't know that much about these proposed vehicles, which are at least three years off. That's half a development cycle in this industry. We generally only start to get an idea of what a company will build about two years before it goes on sale. So instead of concrete information about autonomous cars, 2016 has brought us a lot of promises, many in the form of concept cars. They have popped up from just about every automaker accompanied by the CEO's pledge to deliver a Level 4 autonomous, all-electric model (usually a crossover) in a few years. It's very easy to say that a static design study sitting on a stage will be able to drive itself while projecting a movie on the windshield, but it's another thing entirely to make good on that promise. With a few exceptions, 2016 has been stuck in the promising stage. It's a strange thing, really; automakers are famous for responding with "we don't discuss future product" whenever we ask about models or variants known to be in the pipeline, yet when it comes to self-driving electric wondermobiles, companies have been falling all over themselves to let us know that theirs is coming soon, it'll be oh so great, and, hey, that makes them a mobility company now, not just an automaker. A lot of this is posturing and marketing, showing the public, shareholders, and the rest of the industry that "we're making one, too, we swear!" It has set off a domino effect – once a few companies make the guarantee, the rest feel forced to throw out a grandiose yet vague plan for an unknown future. And indeed there are usually scant details to go along with such announcements – an imprecise mileage estimate here, or a far-off, percentage-based goal there. Instead of useful discussion of future product, we get demonstrations of test mules, announcements of big R&D budgets and new test centers they'll fund, those futuristic concept cars, and, yeah, more promises.