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Why is Tesla getting more and more secretive?

Tesla's unorthodox vision and the even more unorthodox means it is using to achieve that vision have made it what it is: a tiny company with an overachieving product and an oversized stock valuation and voice in the global EV discussion. However, one of its unorthodox practices has been giving investors pause for a year now: not divulging information in its quarterly reports that could be taken as adverse developments. An article in Seeking Alpha called "The Incredible Shrinking Tesla Disclosure" lays out the timelines and details to support one analyst's suspicions for why Tesla will no longer say how many reservations it has, how many cars it's building, and where those cars are going. The company has never reported sales by month, not in the US or any other market. However, for more than two years it provided the number of reservations it had, but stopped that practice in Q1 of 2013 after it revamped its reservation process to allow prospective buyers to customize a Model S in three steps and place a non-binding order, rather than place their names on a list. The change meant, to Tesla, that the new reservations numbers wouldn't accurately correspond to the previous numbers, so they disappeared to be replaced by general numbers preceded by phrases like "were over" or "up from about." Yet Tesla still calls that three-stop process "a reservation" and continues to give them general numbers, and those numbers have gone down. Analysts take that as one instance of Tesla going dark when a metric heads down. Then, again after years of doing so, the company stopped reporting deliveries by market. Instead of investors and analysts getting a breakout of how many cars went to each market - the US, Europe, the Asia-Pacific - Tesla only provided a global delivery number, which Tesla says is how many cars were delivered to customers. Observers, having tried to parse the numbers and detected a downturn in US sales, and knowing China is missing its targets, said this was the second instance of Tesla getting quiet about numbers it didn't like. The third instance is production numbers, which didn't make an appearance in the Q3 report of 2014. Tesla used to say how many cars it had built in the quarter, but in its last report it said instead that production was affected by a two-week shutdown to retool its factory in Fremont, California, and it wouldn't predict production for the coming quarter, either - something else it formerly did.

Tesla stock goes on wild ride following negative report

Trading Tesla Motors stock is not for the faint hearted. For example, the stock was worth $235.24 at the end of trading on Friday but then dropped to $221.67 by the end of Monday. After yesterday's trading, it was back up to $242.77, a gain of almost 10 percent on the day. The movement was apparently due mostly to a negative article in The Wall Street Journal and then a social media response by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The Journal originally reported that Model S sales had declined 26 percent in September, and that caused the TSLA drop. Later, there was the clarification that this only refered to US sales, but it wasn't until Musk Tweeted that the, "Article in WSJ re Tesla sales is incorrect. September was a record high WW (worldwide) and up 65% year-over-year in North America" that things on the Tesla stock front really picked back up. Questions remain about Tesla's actual production and sales numbers. Unlike many other automakers, Tesla doesn't release monthly sales figures but it does talk about quarterly figures in investor calls every three months. During the last call in July, Tesla said it had delivered 7,579 Model S EVs in the second quarter of 2014 (the most ever delivered in a quarter) and said it remained, "on track for more than 35,000 deliveries in 2014." This target was questioned by analysts, which led to the Journal piece, and then the response Tweet. We don't know what'll happen with the stock today, but we will know the company's official delivery numbers when Tesla issues its Q3 2014 Financial Results after the close of trading on Wednesday, November 5.

Recharge Wrap-up: Panasonic, Tesla on Gigafactory deal?

Bentley has been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for reductions of carbon, water use and waste production in manufacturing. The Carbon Trust is an organization that helps groups such as businesses and governments reduce carbon emissions, use of energy and resources, and waste output. From 2011 to 2013, Bentley reduced CO2 emissions by 16 percent per car manufactured, curtailed water use by 35.7 percent, and saw significant waste reductions. Darran Messem of Carbon trust says, "Bentley is clearly passionate about continuing to improve its environmental performance, which is reflected by the fact the company has consistently invested in new technology." Read more in the press release below. Chevrolet is giving 12 Volts to MBAs Across America. The organization will use the range-extended electric cars in its efforts to help MBA students learn from and work with small business owners. As part of the MBAs Across America program's first year, four students drove 8,000 miles to provide entrepreneurs with free business counseling. The program has expanded, and this year, teams of MBAs will use the Volts to travel to 25 cities to offer their services. Learn more about the partnership between Chevrolet and MBAs Across America in the press release below. A professor from the University of Michigan has found fuel cycle analysis to be too flawed to be relied upon for measuring CO2 impacts of transportation fuels. Professor John DeCicco of the university's Energy Institute feels that the flaws in calculating the carbon footprint of liquid fuel production and combustion make such lifecycle analysis impractical. He suggests, instead, to focus to carbon capture. Since capturing CO2 directly from a vehicle is probably never going to happen, DiCicco believes the solution is to capture carbon from the atmosphere in sectors outside of transportation. Says DiCicco, "Research should be ramped up on options for increasing the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and on programs to manage and utilize carbon fixed in the biosphere, which offers the best CO2 removal mechanism now at hand. Such strategies can complement measures that control the demand for liquid fuels by reducing travel activity, improving vehicle efficiency and shifting to non-carbon fuels." Read more at Green Car Congress. Global transportation energy consumption is expected to increase by 25.4 percent by 2035, according to a report by Navigant Research.