Tesla, Inc.
Hackers have tapped into 150,000 US company surveillance cameras in hospitals, prisons, schools and police stations, among other places, according to a media report. Companies such as the electric car manufacturer Tesla and the IT security firm Cloudflare were also affected, as the financial service Bloomberg reported on Wednesday night. For example, the hackers would have shown footage from Tesla's Shanghai site. The Californian start-up Verkada, from which the cameras originated, told Bloomberg in an initial reaction that it was investigating "the extent of the potential problem".
The electric car manufacturer Tesla has sued the United States government and wants to legally enforce an exemption from US punitive tariffs on imports from China.
With Tesla being one of several hundreds of companies starting such proceedings on the import tariffs, the company is seeking to avert existing import tariffs as well as compensation for tariffs that have already been paid.
Already in June 2019 the German biotech company Curevac and Tesla subsidiary Grohmann have applied for a patent for a newly developed vaccination printer.
A newly developed mobile "RNA Printer" is able to produce over a hundred thousand vaccination dosages in a few weeks. Originally developed to combat diseases like rabies and yellow fever it could potentially be used to produce a future Covid-19 vaccine given the approval for medical use of the printer and a vaccine.
During the WAIC (World Artificial Intelligence Conference) in Shanghai Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, announced by video message that the automobile manufacturer could probably update their partly autonomous self-driving vehicles from Level 2 to Level 5 by end of the year.
Autonomous self-driving is divided into 5 levels. Currently, the most autonomous self-driving vehicles are shipped with Level 2 - 3.
Level 1 - Driver Assistance: for example using cruise control.
Level 2 - Partly Automated Driving: for example, the car can keep track, brake and accelerate on the freeway at the same time.
Level 3 - Highly Automated Driving: The vehicles can handle certain driving tasks independently and without human intervention, but only for a limited period and under suitable conditions.
Level 4 - Fully Automated Driving: The vehicles can drive independently, for example, the driver could take a nap but generally only in select conditions and on certain roads.
Level 5 - Full Automation/completely autonomous: no human driver is required. The people in the car become passengers.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk entered an performance-based payout plan back in early 2018. In this payout plan, Tesla shareholders determined 12 market capitalization milestones and revenue milestones for which the CEO will be awarded each trench of his multi-billion dollar package.
By keeping the company market capitalization at $100 billion for roughly around a month and a trailing average of six months, Musk earned his first chunk of stock options, measuring roughly 1.7 million Tesla shares or an estimated $775 million after Thursday's Tesla share value closed at $805.81.
In a lawsuit against Elon Musk and members of the Tesla board, shareholder Richard Tornetta is accusing the board of awarding the CEO excessive compensation trough the payout plan, despite the CEO having given up his salary and only being awarded as part of the performance-based compensation package.
The next market capitalization target is set at $150 billion which together with other revenue based milestones will award the ceo his next tranche of his compensation package.