Here's Everything We Know About The New Tesla Model X

FREMONT, Calif. -- Amid great fanfare and expectations, Tesla Motors unveiled the Model X, its all-electric SUV, at an event Tuesday night at its Bay Area factory. 

The Model X is the second car available for sale from the electric automaker, which introduced the Model S sedan three years ago. The high-speed Roadster, its first car, was discontinued in 2012.

The all-wheel-drive, seven-passenger X could help Tesla crack into the SUV market. The vehicles experienced a surge in sales over the past year and are popular with female drivers. 

Shoppers can put down $5,000 on Tesla's website to reserve an X when they start rolling out. The base price actually runs up to $132,000 for the Signature Series, which includes add-ons like an autopilot mode and heated steering wheel and seats. 

A less expensive version, the $35,000 Model 3 sedan, is expected to come out in 2017. 

The X boasts a lot of power. It goes from o to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, and has a range of about 250 miles before the battery needs a recharge.  

Plus, it's stylish. A new feature, the "falcon wing doors," swoop out and up. (It's easy to picture "Silicon Valley" character Russ Hanneman approving of the design.) There are three rows of seats, but the second row holds just two passengers.

The X features a windshield that extends above the driver's head, offering panoramic views and the feel of a helicopter cockpit, Musk said.

Most importantly, though, Musk said that the Model X is safe.

"We've made the safest SUV ever," he said. Sensors can automatically apply the brakes or steer away from cars and dangerous objects, he said during the debut, which was webcast from Tesla's Fremont, California, factory. "There's really nothing that's more important" than safety.

Eyes might be fixed on those back seats, because CEO Elon Musk said in August that they had become a problem during production.  

Tesla experienced success in the luxury market with the Model S, which was the second-highest selling luxury model last year. With the Model X, Tesla is introducing an electric SUV at least a few years before competitors like Mercedes, Porsche and General Motors crack into the field. 

For now, Tesla is niche player. It is forecast to sell almost 29,000 cars this year, according to LMC Automotive. Ford, in contrast, is predicted to move almost 2.5 million vehicles. Analysts see the Model X as a step toward somewhat wider appeal. 

 

“Tesla wants to be a mainstream automaker,” said Doug Gilman, an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan. “To be a competitive automaker you have to have a whole host of vehicles. You can’t just have one super.”

An SUVs safety and size might attract female drivers with families, analysts said. If the X outsells the S, experts will probably deem the new line a success. 

“The big potential for the Model X is that it’s going to open up a whole new market that they had to fight a little harder for with the Model S. That’s the female market,” said Karl Brauer, a senior director at Kelley Blue Book. “There’s a huge market out there.”

The Fremont factory looked more like a nightclub on Tuesday night as thousands of attendees who had paid at least $5,000 to reserve a Model X sipped wine while listening to remixed versions of hits from Dolly Parton and the Rolling Stones.

Though attendees had yet to see the Model X in person, some people said they had faith in Tesla based on the quality of the Model S.

"I love my Range Rover, but I can't stand going to the gas station," Dana Cappiello, 55, a realtor from San Francisco, told The Huffington Post."It was as simple as that." 

She was peeved by the late start. CEO Elon Musk took the stage in a dark jacket and jeans just before 9 p.m. PST, nearly an hour behind schedule.

The audience erupted with laughter as he touted the environmental benefits of his all-electric vehicles while alluding to Volkswagen's ongoing scandal over software that helped its cars outrageously cheat on diesel emissions tests. Volkswagen is the biggest automaker in the world by sales.

"We designed this car well before recent events," Musk said.

Long lines formed for test rides in the factory parking lot after the presentation ended. 

For the company to become profitable, Tesla needs to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of cars per year, according to John Humphrey, a senior vice president at J.D. Power and Associates. 

“These customers are evangelical about the brand,” Humphrey said. “Going downmarket and not losing the allure of the brand is the challenge. Each rung you go down, you lose a little shine on it.”

Tesla stock was up nearly 2 percent in pre-market trading on Wednesday morning. 

This story has been updated to include additional comments from analysts.

A previous version of this article stated that the Model X is Tesla's second car. It's actually the second model currently available, because the company had discontinued the Roadster in 2012.

Technology Might Kill The Idea Of Car Ownership -- And That's A Good Thing

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The American dream used to mean a good job, house in the suburbs and two-car garage.  But for kids born in the 21st century, a very different reality awaits: More people will live in big cities, vehicles will drive themselves and car-sharing, not car-ownership, will be the norm.

If everything goes according to plan, anyway.

A new report released Monday by the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment declares that transportation is at a tipping point. "Megacities" such as London, Shanghai and New York City are already glutted with automobiles, but car ownership could double worldwide by 2030 if something doesn't change. And something has to change: Cars already contribute an enormous amount of pollution to our atmosphere, and that pollution is a factor in millions of early deaths every single year. Forget the American dream: Solving this problem is a global imperative. 

Thankfully, we're en route.

"If you already have congestion and pollution, that's not going to get better if we continue to move in the same way," Stefan Knupfer, a senior partner at McKinsey, told The Huffington Post in a recent interview. "The good thing is, a lot of new technology trends are coming in."

Knupfer describes a basic problem: In the next couple of decades, many more people worldwide will enter the middle class, those people will want to buy cars and those cars will make cities more congested and polluted. In his mind, the solutions stem from four major pillars: car-sharing, autonomous driving, electrification and in-vehicle connectivity. Summed up, technology will make it less necessary to own a car because it'll be easier to get hooked up with someone else's ride (think Uber and Zipcar), and new vehicles will be "smarter" and less damaging to the environment. 

Cars already represent a lot of dead weight on this planet. They spend the vast majority of their time parked uselessly. The idea is to have fewer cars on the road and ones that are more efficient -- imagine a hybrid bus that can access real-time travel data to avoid traffic and pick up passengers on demand. What if you could own a car but have the ability to "Airbnb" it to a trusted stranger while you're at work? What if taxis were replaced by self-driving cars that could buzz around to anyone who needed them?

Of course, none of this means anything if the options aren't appealing to the average person. Some people will simply want to purchase and own cars. They're status symbols. But McKinsey's new urban mobility report illustrates how these advances might cost the average person less than financing a new or used vehicle of their own.

The firm used data from the U.S. National Household Travel Survey "to calculate the time and costs associated with walking, bicycling, driving, public transit, e-hailing, and car sharing, based on annual miles traveled." Then, it estimated how much money an individual would spend traveling around San Francisco every year. 

Take a look:

This is a little complicated but, bottom-line, the graph shows that a person in San Francisco traveling 5,000 miles each year would spend thousands of dollars less on transportation if they used alternate means -- any of those described above -- rather than driving a privately owned car, as long as they're willing to spend 30 percent more time traveling. (An individual who wouldn't accept spending more time in transit -- a "0 percent time premium" -- would still save money compared to financing a new car, though they'd spend slightly more than if they bought a used car for $15,000.)

What's really interesting is that red line. That represents the estimated cost to a person traveling around San Francisco who has access to driverless vehicles. Obviously these numbers are theoretical, but no matter the amount traveled -- 10,000 or 5,000 miles -- autonomous cars are predicted to drastically reduce the cost to the consumer annually in McKinsey's analysis.

Of course, McKinsey is careful to note that widespread adoption of driverless cars is still a ways off. 

"In aviation, for example, many planes could theoretically be operated without a pilot," the report reads. "The universal preference, however, has been to require pilots, so that human judgment is available. For similar reasons, and also because of legal issues related to liability, this might be the case with autonomous cars."

And other quirks could pop up when driverless cars hit the road. It's almost silly to say, but self-driving cars will only take up fewer resources if we use them responsibly.

"All of this can go in the wrong direction. If you have a car that drives itself, it can drive around instead of finding a parking space. It can shop while you work. That wouldn't be great," Knupfer told HuffPost.

In any case, a lot has to happen before these solutions can be implemented in a world-changing way. City dwellers can barely agree on bike lanes, let alone an entire system of robotic public transport vehicles specifically designed to upend the status quo. But much of this is happening organically.

"Cities have the opportunity to build something like this, but the reality is more that they emerge in large cities more than there being city planning and a process," Knupfer told HuffPost.

Think about it: No one planned for Uber, but here it is. Whether we continue to embrace changes like this -- changes that could make life better on this planet -- is up to us.

This article has been updated to include a link to McKinsey's report.

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Damon Beres covers consumer technology, video games and the many ways humans interact with their devices. He is based in New York. You can contact him at damon.beres@huffingtonpost.com or on Twitter: @dlberes.

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Elon Musk Says Climate Change Refugees Will Dwarf Current Crisis

Elon Musk, co-founder of electric carmaker Tesla Motors, warned on Thursday that climate change will spark a refugee crisis of catastrophic proportions if no action is taken.

In a speech in Berlin, the Tesla chief executive said Europe's current wave of people seeking asylum, prompted mostly by political violence, will be dwarfed as fresh water becomes scarce, food supplies become insecure and weather changes in the coming decades. 

"Today's refugee problem is perhaps a small indication of what the future will be like if we do not take action with respect to climate change," Musk told an audience at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. "Today, the challenge is in terms of millions of people, but in the future, based on what the scientific consensus is, the problem will be in the hundreds of millions and much more severe."

Volkswagen's ongoing scandal over cheating on nitrogen oxide emissions tests on its diesel vehicles is a troubling, Musk said, but it's a small issue compared with the problem of overall carbon dioxide emissions.

The billionaire has devoted much of his career to reducing the use of fossil fuels. Besides running an electric car company, he serves as the chairman of SolarCity, a solar panel manufacturer. Earlier this year, both missions merged, when Tesla announced a battery pack that would allow buildings to store excess solar energy generated throughout the day for use at night.

"I think it's very important that we take action today to recognize that we are making a very significant change to the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans," Musk said. "One that is almost impossible to reverse."

Climate change remains a contentious issue in the United States as some lobby groups, often acting on behalf of companies that benefit from the carbon economy, sow doubt with the scientific consensus of humankind's role in warming the planet. But in Germany, a country Musk called "the best in the world when it comes to solar power," facts about the climate are much more widely accepted.

Still, Musk said even Germany has a long way to go. Despite the country's aggressive transition to renewable energy, a program called Energiewende, Germany remains dependent on vehicles fueled by gasoline and diesel. The scandal engulfing Volkswagen -- the world's largest automaker by sales and, until now, the pride of Germany manufacturing and exports -- only serves to highlight the problem. 

"If you go 20, 30, 50 years in the future, what do you say to your kids or your grandkids? It's almost, like, scientists have all said that these bad things are going to happen, it's, like 97 percent," Musk said. "So, to say to your kids or grandkids, like, 'Did nobody tell you?' No, everyone was telling us. 'So why didn't you do anything?' What's the answer? I think it's very important that we do something."

Watch the full speech below. Musk begins talking at 9:03:

Here's The Joke Of A Sustainability Report That VW Put Out Last Year

Now that we know Volkswagen purposefully rigged 11 million vehicles to circumvent environmental rules, releasing an enormous amount of pollutants into the atmosphere, the company’s Sustainability Report from 2014 comes off as a horrible joke.

"It's a jaw-dropper. So unbelievable," Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council told The Huffington Post.

In the report, which was reviewed by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the automaker details its commitment to the customer, its employees and, of course, to the environment. “Environment” is mentioned 335 times over 156-pages -- an average of twice per page. 

“The Volkswagen Group has a long tradition of resolute commitment to environmental protection.” -- page 86.

“We intend to put our creative powers to good use for the benefit of people and the environment." -- page 14.

As we now know, Volkswagen put its creative powers to use in a far less noble way, devising software to purposefully cheat on emissions tests and secretly installing it its diesel vehicles. On Wednesday, chief executive Martin Winterkorn was forced to quit his job at the world’s largest automaker in the wake of the growing scandal and in anticipation of billions in fines, lawsuits and increasing customer rage. More firings are on deck.

VW’s report follows a long tradition of companies using self-reported data -- sometimes certified by well-paid consulting firms -- to make broad declarations of ethical commitment, used to reassure the public that companies aren't just profit-seeking monsters. These are called “corporate social responsibility” reports, "CSR" is the biz lingo. This is a huge movement; most corporations produce these things. Here’s Coca-Cola’s. And Ikea’s. And Exxon-Mobil’s.

And, of course, not all of these efforts are mere publicity ploys. Some companies take this stuff very seriously, even tying environmental goals to executive pay -- an extremely sigficant matter. But in the wake of the VW scandal, it’s going to be harder for anyone to believe a word in these reports.

“[Volkswagen] will probably severely tarnish this entire movement,” writes Greer in a blog post. She’s written before about the key danger of CSR programs: that they end up as merely shiny promotional efforts that allow businesses to sidestep true responsibility for their endeavors.

"There are some companies doing good things," Greer told HuffPost. "Oftentimes they're just doing it and not necessarily putting it in a report."

Yet many efforts are sideshows. Companies give money to philanthropies, for example, but fail to examine the core parts of their businesses that need attention.

Volkswagen will probably severely tarnish this entire movement. Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Greer is working with Target now on cleaning up environmental issues in the retailer's supply chain. She also commends Apple for dealing with pollution issues overseas. "They have a CSR report, but I think they are walking the walk more than just talking the talk," she said of Apple.

VW’s absurd document follows a long tradition. BP is also notorious for the false promise of its environmental slogans. The oil company won plaudits for acknowledging the reality of global warming and for the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” back in 2000. Then, in 2010, BP caused one of the worst oil spills in history. 

By contrast, Exxon Mobil after the Exxon Valdez disaster became “religious about safety standards,” writes Chrystia Freeland for the Washington Post in 2010. Getting the oil out of the ground and moving it around the world without killing anyone or destroying the ocean is a core social responsibility.

So is adhering to environmental regulations, which VW brazenly decided to forgo.

Companies need to start with those simple goals before moving on to marketing materials.

Unlikely Coalition Forms To Back Renewable Energy

Nine of the country's biggest companies just helped set a new standard for corporate sustainability.

Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Salesforce, Starbucks and Walmart are among the handful of hugely recognizable names that on Wednesday committed to using 100 percent renewable energy, with several expecting to reach their goals within the next decade.

Goldman Sachs set a target of 100 percent renewable energy by 2020, while Nike aims to hit that by 2025, and Johnson & Johnson by 2050. Procter and Gamble set its sights on a short-term goal for 30 percent renewable energy by 2020, while some companies, like financial services firm Voya International and furniture maker Steelcase, are closing in or have already reached a full reliance on renewable energy.

That these Fortune 500 firms have thrown their significant weight behind RE100, a global campaign to cut down on CO2 emissions by turning to renewable sources of energy, suggests a major shift in corporations' awareness of their responsibility to lead their respective industries away from carbon. 

And companies are realizing the business boost gained by placing financial incentives on themselves to use renewable sources. A recent report by the environmental nonprofit CDP, which organizes RE100 in partnership with The Climate Group, found that the number of companies putting a price on their carbon emissions has tripled since last year.

"Lowering risk, protecting against price rises, saving millions and boosting brand is what shaping a low carbon economy is all about," Climate Group CEO Mark Kenber said in a statement.

The corporate sustainability movement is gaining speed: RE100 launched last year with 13 members, including Ikea, H&M, Nestle, Unilever and Mars. That number has since grown to nearly 40, with groups joining from across various industries. Recent members include financial services provider UBS and Dutch sciences company Royal DSM. Ikea, everyone's favorite furniture go-to, has installed 700,000 solar panels on its buildings and last year generated renewal energy to match 42 percent of its total energy consumption. H&M, among the many retail outlets facing pressure for contributing to wasteful fast fashion, plans to cut its electricity usage by 20 percent by 2020. 

Companies are finding various ways to harness efforts to reduce their carbon footprint as an economic opportunity. Under The B Team, a nonprofit led by top business leaders, companies like Unilever and Virgin are seeking to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

And as part of a coalition to promote sustainable business practices, HP expects to hit its emissions target early after partnering with SunEdison to rely on wind power, while L'Oreal is expanding its use of solar panels at various facilities across the globe. Kellogg will implement water reuse projects at one-fourth of its sites and has committed to zero net deforestation. 

Volkswagen Just Nuked The Public's Trust In Companies Trying To Save The Planet

The world’s largest automaker has just given more ammunition to those who don’t trust that businesses are serious about preventing runaway climate change.

How ironic that Volkswagen, which has publicly signed a pledge to be a leader in “consistent, positive business engagement with policymakers on climate issues,” should be caught by the Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly cheating on emission-control standards. 

Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen's CEO, apologized on Sunday after the EPA accused the company of installing software in its diesel-powered vehicles specifically designed to allow the cars to evade regulators and emit 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide. The chemical adds to the buildup of smog, which is tied to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; but its effects are different from compounds that directly cause warming of the atmosphere. 

In a statement, Winterkorn said that “I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public,” and ordered an external investigation.

This was equivalent to putting his finger in a bursting dam, given that the German company could face penalties of up to $18 billion for allegedly installing the illegal “defeat devices” to falsify emissions tests. Volkswagen shares plummeted on the Frankfurt DAX index in response to the news.

Apart from saving the reputation of his company, Winterkorn should also think about the damage he has done to the corporate sustainability movement. Volkswagen’s actions will fuel the cynics who believe businesses are just paying lip service when it comes to issues like climate change and resource scarcity.

This is a particularly poignant moment for such reflection, given scores of companies are converging on New York over the next few days to join Volkswagen in making commitments during Climate Week to creating a low-carbon economy.

What the Volkswagen scandal illustrates is that profit maximization is so deeply embedded in corporate culture that when push comes to shove, the vast majority of companies will put the bottom line above any moral case for change, and sometimes even cheat to keep the short-term profits coming in.

The only way this is going to change is if companies create a revolution in the way that staff are incentivized. If businesses really believe climate change is a serious issue, they need to stop paying their staff purely on the basis of meeting their quarterly targets.

It is true that a small but growing number of companies are starting to incorporate sustainability performance into their executive compensation packages, but these often represent a tiny percentage of overall pay and therefore are unlikely to change behavior.

Research by Wayne Guay, professor of accounting at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, found that for those companies that do incorporate sustainability targets, this normally makes up less than 1 percent of overall pay.

A study by Ceres, a nonprofit focused on sustainable business and climate action, found that in 613 of the nation's largest publicly traded companies, fewer than a third had boards of directors formally overseeing sustainability performance. And just 19 companies, or 3 percent, related compensation directly to voluntary sustainability performance targets such as greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Ceres points to Alcoa, one of the world's largest producers of aluminum, as a leader in the field. A fifth of Alcoa's executive cash compensation is tied to safety, diversity goals and environmental stewardship, including greenhouse gas reductions and energy efficiency.

Our current form of capitalism has been around long enough for us to know the simple truth that people will act in accordance with how you assess their performance. If Volkswagen had spent the necessary time and energy to drive sustainability deep into the corporate culture, and linked this in a significant way to executive performance, it may have avoided the disaster it now faces.

Other companies looking on would also do well to note that as we move into a more carbon-constrained era, they ignore climate change at their peril.

Do you work for VW or own a VW? We'd like to hear from you. Email emily.peck@huffingtonpost.com.

Correction: An earlier version of this post attempted to compare the warming impact of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon dioxide on the atmosphere. However, our comparison used measurements for nitrous oxide (N2O) and not for NOx . The error has been removed.

Europe's Refugee Crisis Spawns A Billion-Dollar Industry

Europe's refugee crisis is not only an urgent humanitarian disaster, but has also spawned an incredibly lucrative industry. Refugees and migrants are spending immense sums of money in attempts to reach Europe, siphoning more than billion dollars a year into an underground economy of traffickers. Likewise, EU member states are increasing funds for border control programs and deportations to stop people from entering their nations.  

Between 2000 and June 2015, migrants and refugees have paid traffickers over 16 billion euros to reach Europe, according to The Migrants' Files, a data journalism organization that has analyzed thousands of payments to smugglers to estimate the size of the trafficking market.

While that figure may seem astronomical, The Migrants' Files says it's a conservative number that doesn't include recent months of record migration.

More than 381,000 people have attempted to enter Europe by sea so far in 2015, dwarfing the number of journeys made in previous years. There were nearly 130,000 sea arrivals in the Mediterranean this August alone, up from around 33,000 arrivals during the same month in 2014. Given the exponential increase, the money traffickers receive likely far exceeds The Migrants' Files' estimate. 

Syrians make up the largest group of migrants and refugees -- accounting for just over half of the people making the trip -- while Afghans and Eritreans are the next most-represented nationalities.  

Traffickers have charged many people thousands of euros for the trip to Europe. Smuggling routes vary depending on the region, and can consist of thousands of miles of travel to get to the Mediterranean. African migrants and refugees often pass through trafficking hubs in cities like Agadez in Niger or Sabha in Libya. Once they arrive, smugglers take them in truck convoys to the Libyan coast.

One of the more popular routes this year runs through the Balkans. Many people travel from Turkey toward Greece and beyond, passing through Hungary to more hospitable countries like Germany and Austria. 

It can cost around 2,500 euros per person to travel from Syria to Germany, according to Der Spiegel, but prices vary according to a person's country of origin. A Libyan smuggler told the Guardian in April that people from sub-Saharan African usually paid less than 1,000 euros, while Moroccans paid no more than 1,500 euros.  

Smugglers often operate within a network, rather than as lone actors. Trafficking organizations have hierarchies for everyone from recruiters and drivers to financiers and organizers, who all carry out specific functions within the group. They're paid through an informal money exchange system that uses banking offices and ticketed receipts, according to Der Spiegel.

Meanwhile, migrants' experiences on their journeys to Europe can be vastly different from what traffickers have promised them. Traffickers often replace proper transport with overloaded, rickety boats that frequently capsize or leave people stranded, or with cramped trucks in which they can suffocate to death. Some travelers face violent armed robberies while at sea.

While there is still no comprehensive policy for addressing smuggling networks and the refugee crisis, European leaders have noticed the growing human trafficking industry.

This year, the EU has ramped up anti-trafficking measures, which included launching a new naval operation this summer in the Mediterranean. But while the deepening crisis has highlighted the importance of Europe's response to smuggling, European nations have already spent billions over the past decade and a half to secure their borders in a policy informally known as "fortress Europe."

The Migrants' Files report finds that the EU and European states allocated more than a billion euros for walls, guard equipment and coordinated border security efforts between 2000 and 2014. This doesn't include more recent projects, like Hungary's 109-mile border fence.

During this period, the EU also publicly funded 39 research and development projects to enhance border security, at a cost of 230 million euros. 

Finmeccanica, a company that handled 16 of these projects, came under fire in 2012 for delivering a shipment of radio equipment to the Bashar Assad government in Syria while the country's revolution was underway.

European countries spent an additional 11.3 billion since 2000 on deportations alone, although The Migrants' Files notes that this is an estimate, because only Belgium keeps a full record of its spending on deportations.

Europe is spending money to combat a trafficking industry it actually helped create, rights groups and migration experts say. They argue that European countries' restrictive border policies have forced refugees and migrants to turn to dangerous trafficking routes.

"Such policies only serve to open a new and lucrative market for smuggling rings, a market which could not exist without this prohibition,” François Crépeau,a U.N. expert on migration, stated in June.

While countries such as Germany and Austria expect to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees this year, other countries and EU officials have balked at the suggestion that they have a humanitarian responsibility to accept asylum claims.

EU ministers are set to meet on Sept. 14 to discuss how to address the crisis, with nations calling for a unified asylum policy.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, called on Wednesday for sweeping reforms that could open up legal channels for migration and overhaul border control policy.

Also on HuffPost:

Obama To Unveil Plan To Bring Overtime Pay To 5 Million More Workers

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama this week will propose a plan to extend overtime pay to 5 million American workers who are currently excluded under federal law, according to sources.

The president will recommend updating overtime rules so that salaried workers who earn less than roughly $50,400 per year would be guaranteed time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Under the current rules implemented by former President George W. Bush, salaried workers must earn less than $23,660 per year in order to be automatically eligible for overtime pay.

The president announced his intention to make overtime reforms last year, but the details of the plan have been kept secret until this week. The president is expected to discuss the proposal later this week during a visit to Wisconsin. Details of the proposal were first reported by Bloomberg.

In a blog post on The Huffington Post Monday night, Obama said that "too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve," and that his proposal would help assure that "hard work is rewarded."

"That’s how America should do business," the president wrote. "In this country, a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. That’s at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America."

With heavy lobbying by business groups, many progressives feared the White House would recommend only modest changes, thereby impacting relatively few workers and employers. Instead, the White House has proposed a substantial reform that has the potential to change pay and scheduling for millions of people.

Employers whose workers become newly eligible for overtime will now face a choice: Either pay a premium for those extra hours worked, or get the employee's hours below 40 per week, likely by shifting the labor to other workers. The proposal would be robust enough to cut across industries, bringing many workers either more pay or more time off, and forcing many employers to grapple with overtime costs that they never had to before.

The proposal must still undergo a public-comment period before it can be finalized and go into effect, but the release of a concrete proposal will mark a major step in what's likely to be one of the president's most far-reaching reforms undertaken without congressional approval. The changes are expected to go into effect in 2016.

Last year, Obama signed an executive order directing the Labor Department to overhaul the overtime rules, setting off a lobbying campaign in Washington. On one side were labor groups, progressive economists and Democratic lawmakers who pressed for an ambitious reform that would reach a large share of the U.S. workforce. On the other side were employers and business lobbies that wanted to limit the rule's effects as much as possible, given the new labor costs they would face.

Under wage laws established during the Great Depression, employers must pay overtime to hourly wage earners and salaried workers who aren't considered white-collar. But the current rules give employers a lot of leeway to classify workers as managerial and therefore ineligible for time-and-a-half pay. As HuffPost reported in 2013, this phenomenon is especially prevalent in the retail industry, where store managers can work 80-hour weeks without any pay beyond their base salary, even though they may be doing mostly manual labor.

Obama pointed expressly to these workers in an interview with HuffPost in March.

"What we’ve seen is, increasingly, companies skirting basic overtime laws, calling somebody a manager when they’re stocking groceries and getting paid $30,000 a year," Obama said. "Those folks are being cheated."

Workers whose salaries fall beneath the threshold are guaranteed overtime pay regardless of what their bosses call them. Although the reforms are expected to hit industries like retail the most, the impact will be felt in any field where the hours are relatively long and the pay relatively low.

Since the threshold hasn't risen alongside American salaries, overtime pay has become something of a foreign concept for most Americans -- something that could now change. According to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute, just 11 percent of salaried workers in the U.S. are covered by overtime law under the current rules. That share would be closer to half of salaried workers under the new proposal, by EPI's estimates.

Read Obama's blog post here.