Hayden Sonnad, founder of Tesloop, responds to investor Jillian Manus regarding why Uber cannot partner with Tesla to compete in intercity routes.
Assertion Partly supported
Sonnad: Musk assured free lifetime Supercharging for Model S long-distance travel
“So I brought the idea up with Elon Musk at the shareholders meeting in 2015, and at that point he assured me that Tesla would pay for all of the fuel costs for long distance travel in the Model S forever.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sonnad: Tesloop exposes more people to Teslas than Tesla's marketing
“Well, how I see it, at least in the short run, we're really, we're doing Tesla a favor, because when you look at the numbers of Tesla's test drives, and how they're trying to get customers in their cars, we're actually introducing a lot more people into Tesla'…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sonnad: Tesla executives are aware of Tesloop's commercial Supercharger use
“As of right now, they haven't drawn that line, and we are, in somewhat collaborating with Tesla, they're aware of what's happening, they're aware we're using it for commercial use, and right now they haven't said anything about that, and there are a lot of peo…”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Sonnad: Long-distance electric transit can only use Teslas for four years
“The first is that for the next four years, this can only be done on Teslas. They have the only platform with big batteries and supercharging and nice cars that allows this model to happen.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sonnad: Tesla will not enter city-to-city transit market
“We don't think Tesla's gonna try to do this himself. Elon Musk is not about creating city to city transit. Right now, one of his biggest focuses is automizing manufacturing, and there's a lot of focus on that from Tesla and the rest of his companies, that we d…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sonnad: Tesla's autonomous rideshare restriction does not ban Tesloop
“I don't know the exact details, but that, that announcement wasn't fully true because it doesn't actually eliminate us from using their autonomous ride sharing. There's some weird clauses in there that actually do let us proceed with everything that we're doin…”