Camila Domonoske

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has always had ambitious goals. Make electric cars cool, save the world, all while making money as a brand new car manufacturer.

And from the start some people have been confident that he would fail. So they shorted Tesla stock — placing a bet that the company's stock value would collapse.

So far, that has been a phenomenally bad bet.

In the first two weeks of 2020 alone, short sellers were down some $2.6 billion, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, the head of predictive analytics at S3 Partners.

Microsoft has announced an ambitious plan to not just reduce its carbon emissions, but to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere — going "carbon negative" by 2030.

And by 2050, the tech giant pledges it will "remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975."

Maersk — the world's largest container shipping company — has an astonishing goal. By 2050, the company vows to send goods — everything from electronics to soybeans to sneakers — around the world with zero carbon emissions.

The environmental logic behind such a promise is straightforward: Shipping contributes substantially to global climate change.

But the business case is not as obvious.

Updated at 1:49 p.m. ET

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by billionaire Richard Branson, is preparing to enter the stock market by the end of 2019, through a merger with an existing company.

It would be the first spaceflight company to be publicly owned; Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are both privately held.

Lee Iacocca, one of the best known auto executives, died Tuesday. He was 94.

Iacocca was a top executive at two of America's largest car companies — Ford and Chrysler. His career spanned decades and several generations. He was known for developing the Mustang and bringing the minivan to scores of American family garages, as well as orchestrating a remarkable turnaround at Chrysler.

His daughter Lia Iacocca Assad confirmed his death to NPR in a phone call.

OPEC used to shift world oil markets with a single announcement. These days, the Saudi-led organization needs help from some key partners — most significantly Russia — to exert that kind of influence.

The expanded alliance, which also includes Kazakhstan, Mexico and other nations, is known as "OPEC+." And on Monday and Tuesday, OPEC+ made its unofficial expansion a little more official.

Member and non-member states have agreed on a "Charter of Cooperation" to formalize their relationship, pending approval from individual governments.

Updated at 5:10 p.m. ET

OPEC and other allied major oil producers have agreed to extend crude oil production cuts for nine months, a move designed to keep oil prices from falling as U.S. production increases and concerns grow about global demand.

Crude oil prices rose after early reports of OPEC's decision. However, prices are not expected to rise dramatically, as countries that don't cooperate with OPEC — like the United States — have enough capacity to meet projected growth in demand.

Alex Schefer loves his Teslas — the Model S he and his wife use to tote their kids around, the Roadster that's part of their premium car-sharing club.

But he's been waiting not-so-patiently to have some other options for luxury electric vehicles.

"This car came out in 2012," he says, from behind the wheel of his Model S. "In 2015, Porsche said, 'Hey, we're gonna make this Mission E.' And that's great. I love Porsches, but now it's 2019 and I still can't buy one."

Many new cars sold today can take preemptive action to help prevent crashes — hitting the brakes before a collision, steering around obstacles or alerting drivers to hazards in their blind spots.

Those safety features — collectively known as advanced driver-assistance systems, or ADAS — reduce the risk of crashes. It might seem logical to assume that as a result, they'd reduce the cost of car insurance.

Updated at 9:13 p.m. ET

Seventeen of the world's largest automakers have asked the White House and the state of California to restart talks and come up with one set of greenhouse gas standards for cars.

The Trump administration has been pushing to roll back regulations, while California has been holding tight to its tougher rules for auto emissions. The carmakers, meanwhile, call for "common sense compromise."

President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, starting next week, if Mexico doesn't take action to reduce the flood of Central American migrants across the Southern border of the U.S.

The proposed tariffs — which would start at 5% on goods crossing the border and could ramp up to 25% over time — would play havoc with supply chains in the auto industry.

To understand why, consider a vehicle's wiring harness — the car's nervous system, consisting of a complex network of wires that connect electronic components throughout the car body.

For most companies, losing $1 billion in a quarter would be a big disappointment. But Uber's first report as a publicly traded company was actually better than it had warned investors to expect.

The ride-hailing and food-delivery giant brought in more than $3 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2019 — a 20% jump from the same quarter a year earlier.

The U.S. Postal Service is experimenting with self-driving trucks to move mail across state lines.

The USPS has partnered with San Diego-based TuSimple on a two-week pilot program focusing solely on a 1,000-mile route between Dallas and Phoenix.