Tesla tops Instagram to become the ‘Fastest Growing Brand in the World’

Joey Klender

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Posted on February 10, 2020

Tesla has become the “Fastest Growing Brand in the World,” according to a new report from Brand Finance, a London-based business valuation company.

Brand Finance’s Technical Director, Alex Haigh, was a guest on a recent episode of the Tesla Daily Podcast with Rob Maurer to discuss the company’s performance last year. Haigh was adamant about highlighting Tesla’s growth despite the past year being challenging for the automotive industry as a whole

Tesla is one of the over 5,000 companies that Brand Finance analyzes. In the firm’s 2020 Brand Finance Annual Report, Tesla climbed considerably from 264th to 147th on the list of Top 500 most valuable brands. Haigh states that this is an impressive feat considering the automotive industry endured barriers such as Brexit, the U.S.-China trade war, and a “general slowing of economic growth.”

“The biggest trend that we’re seeing is a move toward electric vehicles. Tesla is kind of the ‘poster boy’ of that trend, and that sort of dominant position in the market has led to growth that is pretty much unseen. It is unseen in more or less any other brand,” Haigh stated.

Tesla held the largest positive brand value change from 2019 to 2020. The company saw a 64.9% rise in value, beating social media platform Instagram for the top spot with 58% growth. This is due to the electric car maker’s ability to establish itself as an innovative force in the automotive industry.

“The thing about Tesla is that it’s sort of seen as so innovative and at the forefront of electric vehicles. So as the market for electric vehicles grows and grows and grows, it will ride that wave and be at the forefront of that wave. While the brand may not be quite as well known or something that an everyday person would consider just by virtually it being a type of car they’re not accustomed to, as that acceptance grows, it will be able to capture lots of customers just by the fact that it is so innovative,” Haigh said.

Despite Elon Musk expressing his distaste of “branding” in the past, Tesla has emerged as a leader in sustainability and luxury vehicles. Over the years, Tesla has become synonymous with performance and luxuriousness, all while maintaining its environmentally-sustainable approach to transportation and energy. The company is, undoubtedly, a very strong brand today.

It is quite amazing that Tesla has gone from almost broke during the financial crisis to the fastest growing brand in the world in its relatively short tenure in the auto industry. After recently overtaking Volkswagen as the second most valuable automaker in the world by market cap, Tesla has practically proven itself as a mainstay in the automotive sector.

You can watch the Tesla Daily Podcast with Alex Haigh below.

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Tesla tops Instagram to become the ‘Fastest Growing Brand in the World’

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Tesla fan Casey Neistat builds Cybertruck-inspired CyberBike

Randell Suba

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Posted on February 9, 2020

YouTube personality Casey Neistat rides the world’s first “Tesla CyberBike” inspired by the upcoming all-electric Cybertruck in his latest video.

Casey Neistat, with 11.9 million followers on YouTube, showcased an electric CyberBike that features the same dystopian look of Tesla’s Cybertruck but unlike the latter that’s made of ultra-hard 30x cold-rolled stainless steel, the CyberBike is a  made of aluminum.

The Cybertruck-like exoskeleton is actually a camouflage shell for the Super73 electric motorbike that Neistat is testing, and the team from Super73 helped him build the CyberBike “because he cannot wait for the Cybertruck.”

“…while you can ride the CyberBike, you can’t ride it that well especially when you have to make a turn. See we had to get the handlebars and stick them out of the CyberBike’s windows that make it almost impossible to steer,” Neistat explained.

“See Super73 is this electric bike company and have this dope new bike coming out and they wanted me to test it but we needed a way to test it where other people wouldn’t be able to see the bike cause it wasn’t finished yet,” he explained.

Casey Neistat Super73 CyberBike (Source: Casey Neistat | Twitter)

The online celebrity who rose to fame during the early vlogging days of YouTube is also a known Tesla fan. Last year, Neistat drove his Model X from New York to Los Angeles. He was also given exclusive access by the electric carmaker when the Model 3 came out.

Just like the much-awaited all-electric pickup truck, Neistat gave the Cyberbike a controversial unveiling by throwing something onto the bike with matching glass-breaking sound effects.

He tested the eye-catching CyberBike on the road and just like the Tesla Cybertruck, it did not disappoint.

Onlookers threw him praises such as “that bike is fresh” or “that bike is dope” and of course, he wasn’t able to avoid curious bystanders taking snapshots of the Cyberbike.

In place of the huge truck bed of the Cybertruck that can be used for Camp Mode, Neistat’s Cyberbike features a 3D-printed plastic insert that has enough space for a six-pack beer.

The YouTube celebrity described the electric bike to be janky, hard to drive and not particularly safe but admitted that the team at Super73 had a difficult time building the tribute bike. He shared how they designed the body on cardboard before putting several panels of aluminum together to make a unibody that looks like the Cybertruck.

Unlike the Cybertruck that was recently spotted while filming a segment for Jay Leno’s Garage, the last segment of the world’s first Tesla CyberBike video involves a police officer flagging Neistat down. There was no cause for concern it seems, and the celebrity YouTube cruised along the beachfront.

For sure, Elon Musk will have a blast seeing the CyberBike by Neistat and Super73. He could even let the Neistat use his latest EDM track “Don’t doubt yer vibe” in a followup video.

Check out the video below featuring the CyberBike:

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Tesla fan Casey Neistat builds Cybertruck-inspired CyberBike

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Tesla Autopilot takes on multiple twists and turns through Hollywood Hills

Nicole Arce

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Posted on February 9, 2020

A Model 3 owner drove his Tesla on a challenging test drive through a twisty section of Mulholland Drive in Southern California while the vehicle was on Autopilot. The Model 3 was able to complete the drive with minimal intervention from the driver, though the all-electric sedan’s overall proficiency left much to be desired.

The host of YouTube channel The SummerLake Report wanted to see the limits of standard Autopilot before his car was equipped with a HW3 retrofit so he drove his Model 3 through Hollywood Hills on Mulholland Drive. As the two-minute video shows, the Tesla made it through the route’s twists and turns, though it had to slow down to about 20 mph as it navigated the harder parts of the road. At one point, the driver had to intervene to ensure that the car stayed on its lane.

The Model 3 in the video is using Tesla’s Autopilot, which features Autosteer and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control. These features keep the car in a clearly marked lane while it matches the speed of other vehicles around it. In future iterations, FSD will be able to respond appropriately to traffic lights, stop signs, and other road markings for a smooth inner-city driving experience.

A look at the FSD preview sent out by Tesla late last year shows that its vehicles are actively detecting and recognizing objects found on city roads, such as trash cans, lane lines, and stop lights, thanks to improvements in the company’s neural network. Tesla’s neural net is crucial to Elon Musk’s vision of achieving regulator-approved full self-driving. This growing network of driving data, collected from Tesla’s large fleet of electric vehicles, will become smarter over time as it learns to recognize objects on the road and the best ways to respond to them.

In November last year, MIT researcher Lex Friedman estimated that Tesla cars on Autopilot have gathered around 2 billion miles of driving data for Tesla’s neural net. With sales of Tesla cars on the rise, neural net will become smarter at faster rate since more vehicles on the road would be contributing real-world driving data to refine Autopilot and help achieve Tesla’s goal of autonomous driving.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk estimated a feature-complete version of FSD could be available by the end of 2020 . While he did not elaborate on the subject, it’s clear that Tesla is getting closer to this vision. However, Tesla says a feature-complete version of FSD will still need the driver’s full attention.

“Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment,” Tesla says on its website. “While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

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Tesla Autopilot takes on multiple twists and turns through Hollywood Hills

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