San Francisco Chronicle Business & Technology News - Spoken Edition

The tent and other new buildings are part of CEO Elon Musk’s push to boost production. Permits do not reveal how much Tesla spent on its new tent facility. For the past two weeks, Tesla fans and foes alike have obsessed over a tent. Struggling to ramp up production of its critical Model 3 electric sedan, Tesla put up a cavernous tent behind its Fremont factory to house a new production line.

Marriott said it had “longstanding and productive relationships” with the union. People have drinks in the View Lounge at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco in 2015. Workers are facing an expiring five-year contract with this and other Marriott hotels. Hotel workers protested on Wednesday in San Francisco and seven other U.S. cities to demand higher wages and better protections from sexual harrassment from Marriott, the world’s largest hotel operator.

It took a tent to do it, but production of Tesla’s new Model 3 sedan has finally hit a level the electric automaker has been promising it would reach since last year. CEO Elon Musk sent staff a congratulatory email Sunday, saying the company had produced 5,000 Model 3s in the past seven days — a milestone he initially predicted Tesla would reach in December.

The Internal Revenue Service has just released a draft of a new federal tax return, which is roughly half the size of the old Form 1040, but not necessarily simpler. The U.S. Treasury Department is calling it “postcard” size, but it’s really half the size of a standard piece of paper, front and back. Previous 1040 forms were two full sides of a page. The new version is 23 lines. Last year’s version was 79 lines.

Above: An older version of a prototype is displayed at Ekso’s Richmond headquarters. Top: Service technician Oliese Stewart tests an Ekso Bionics device used for people with spinal cord injuries. Ekso Bionics makes industrial exoskeletons, but it’s looking to expand the devices’ medical uses, too. For stroke survivor Jess McNair, each step remains slow and laborious.

Huge tech companies have long carved out their turf in Silicon Valley. Apple has Cupertino. Google has Mountain View. Facebook has Menlo Park. But as those behemoths keep expanding, their offices are spilling into other parts of the region. One of the most desirable new spots is Sunnyvale, a once-sleepy orchard turned suburban city that abuts Mountain View and Cupertino.

Facebook is expected to sign a lease at the 43-story Park Tower at 250 Howard St., greatly expanding its San Francisco real estate, according to a person familiar with the deal. The company will take up 750,000 square feet — the tower’s entire office space, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak about the deal publicly.

A relatively unknown visa program often used as a path to an H-1B visa — one which may see changes under the Trump administration — experienced a surge in usage between 2004 and 2016, a new report found. The Optional Practical Training program grants foreign students a period of time to work in the U.S. after they graduate. Nearly 1.5 million foreign graduates of U.S.

California regulators on Wednesday unanimously approved requiring solar arrays on virtually all new single-family homes built in the state starting in 2020, saying the move would fight climate change, reduce air pollution and cut monthly bills for home buyers. The California Energy Commission, which since the 1970s has set energy-efficiency standards for buildings, took the historic step even as the state faces a deepening housing affordability crisis.

In a room where Pacific Gas and Electric Co. personnel used to monitor the electricity grid, analysts now watch day and night for fire. Maps glowing on a wall before them show fire threat levels for a broad swath of Northern and Central California, using a computer model fed by weather stations. The color-coded maps stretch out days in advance, with estimates for how conditions will change. Green equals low danger; red, high; glaring purple, extreme.

Mountain View’s mayor, Lenny Siegel, says it has “too many good jobs” and not enough transit. The solution: Slapping a multimillion-dollar tax on Google, by far the city’s largest employer. The tax, which may end up on the November ballot, could charge Google as much as $5.4 million annually, according to one option under discussion.

Facebook says it hopes to connect more people together — in a romantic way. Already, 200 million people list themselves as single on Facebook. “Clearly, there is something to do here,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a keynote address Tuesday at his company’s F8 developers conference in San Jose. Facebook has long been used informally for dating.

Zynga co-founder Mark Pincus said Wednesday he is reducing his controlling power in the video game company because he is confident the current executive team finally has the long-struggling San Francisco firm headed in the right direction. Pincus has converted two types of Zynga stock he owned into common shares, meaning his control of 70 percent of the company’s voting stock shrinks to about 10 percent.

Tesla reported Wednesday that its loss in the first quarter nearly doubled from the same period last year, topping $784.6 million, even as the Palo Alto automaker predicted it would become profitable for the second half of 2018. In a letter to shareholders, Tesla also reported that production of its latest electric car, the Model 3 sedan, surpassed 2,000 per week for three straight weeks in March and April, before the company shut down the production line to make improvements.

California and 16 other states on Tuesday sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its efforts to weaken or freeze fuel economy improvements in cars, with Gov. Brown casting the move as essential to fighting climate change.