A couple of kids wrote a science book about Tesla & EVs, by kids and for kids
A new children’s science book about Tesla and EVs, Everything Tesla: From How They Work To How Fast They Go And All The Fun In Between!, launches today, written by twin 9th graders Aiden and Eliana Miao, and targeted at kids between the ages of 8 and 13.
Aiden and Eliana are from Palo Alto, California and spent the last 4 years assembling the impressive tome, which was originally going to be 20 pages long but swelled to over 200 pages as they researched and wanted to add more to the book.
The authors say that they wanted to inspire kids to learn about science and electric cars and to care about the environment. They say that their parents’ Model 3 inspired them to think about climate change, along with wildfires and smoke days that have increasingly become a feature of California summers and autumns as climate change continues to worsen.
For their research, they read and watched a number of EV news sites and Youtube channels, including us here at Electrek (hi kids!). They pitched us over email and frankly, it was one of the more professional pitches we’ve gotten, and the book really impressed us when they sent us a copy.
Eliana says they also held meetings with professors and engineers to fact-check their writing over the course of the 4 years of work they put into this book (more than a quarter of their lives working on one book? they’re veritable George R.R. Martins).
After years of writing the book and being met with a significant amount of rejection from adults, Aiden and Eliana found an editor, Alexander Cox, and a designer, Sadie Thomas of LS Design, who helped them turn their idea into a real book.
The book is exceedingly well-realized (way beyond what we expected when we read their initial pitch email – Stanford, keep an eye out for these kids’ college application when it comes in), with full-page graphics on every page and quite a lot of information.
Everything Tesla largely focuses on Tesla and Tesla-related topics, though a lot of these points are generalizable to other electric cars, like how electric motors work or dispelling battery-related myths, or to related topics, like sections on solar panels and climate change.
The book as a whole is written in language that is accessible to young audiences, but still has a wealth of information that could probably teach some adults the basics about electric cars. The authors think this might be the first kids’ science book written by kids and for kids. Or at least, they couldn’t find any others in their own search.
While the book is not endorsed by Tesla, it does adopt a very positive view of everything related to the company. We here at Electrek also appreciate Tesla’s leadership in the EV industry, but our praise for the company and particularly its leader might have been a little more moderated than what you’ll read in the book.
Nevertheless, this is a much more impressive effort than, uh, anything I’ve ever seen a 9th grader do. Kids these days, am I right?
Everything Tesla releases today, is self-published and is available on Amazon in Kindle or hardcover versions, and at Books Inc in Palo Alto. The authors will have a book launch event at Books Inc on March 23rd at 2pm, and are excited to give an author talk next week at their old elementary school, where they attended when they started writing the book. Find out more about the book on its website at https://everythingteslabook.com.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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