Month: July 2019

Enlarge / Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., speaks during an unveiling event for the Tesla Model Y crossover electric vehicle in Hawthorne, California, U.S., on Friday, March 15, 2019. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The second quarter of 2019 was banner one for Tesla in terms of building and delivering new electric vehicles. As it reported earlier in July, the company built 87,048 EVs and delivered 95,356 of them. However, the company lost $408 million over the same three months according to the latest earnings report. Although it's the second loss-making quarter in a row, it's still an improvement on Q1 2019.

Encouragingly, automotive revenue grew healthily compared to Q1. Tesla brought in $5.3 billion in this category, only $111 million of which was for selling emissions credits. Now that the Model 3 is on sale in several continents, and 77,634 were delivered to customers during the quarter, Tesla says that the majority of orders were for the long range Model 3. The company reports that the average sales price is around $50,000 and that manufacturing costs are declining. Tesla also reveals that, now that it has sold several hundred thousand cars on three continents, it is beginning to gain some insight into the mix of options its customers prefer.

Tesla says that all the equipment in the factory in Fremont, California has been tested at a run rate of 7,000 Model 3s a week. The company says it's now aiming to build 10,000 cars a week by the end of 2019.

Enlarge (credit: UNC Charlotte)

Recent excavations south of Jerusalem unearthed a ditch used to defend against siege towers, along with a ruined house Crusaders may have used as cover during a battle. The finds confirm some oft-questioned details of historical accounts of the First Crusade, including how a ditch along the city’s southern wall thwarted the attacking siege engines. And this new evidence provides tangible links to events recorded 920 years ago.

The end of a five-week siege

In July 1099, European armies, fresh from the siege of Antioch, converged on Jerusalem (then ruled by the Muslim Fatimid Dynasty) and attacked the walled city from two sides. On the north, the crusaders would eventually breach the walls and perpetrate a slaughter that still echoes across the centuries. But on the south, a deep, wide ditch just outside the city’s wall kept the siege towers from closing to disgorge their cargoes of armed men.

A priest traveling with the army of Raymond de Saint Gilles, the Count of Toulouse, described the ditch and the crusaders’ efforts to advance. Toulouse reportedly offered his troops an extra payment of gold dinars to venture close to the guarded walls under cover of darkness and fill in part of the ditch. The Frenchmen succeeded; their siege tower got through, slamming against the stone wall of Jerusalem to bring them face to face with an enemy who had traded arrow volleys with them for the last five weeks.