Today
Depending on where you are located, it can already be difficult to understand the electric vehicle charging infrastructure in your own country – now imagine abroad and possibly in a foreign language.
It’s less of a problem in North America, but in Europe, where one could easily drive through 2 or more countries during a summer road trip vacation, it can become a hassle.
With summer vacations coming up, Tesla updated a useful tool that can make it a lot easier. expand full story
Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial and political review/analysis of important green energy news.
Research offers new hope for gender equity in Green STEM fields – In a study of nine million degree recipients in the United States between 2009 and 2014, Dafna Gelbgiser and Kyle Albert, M.A. ’11, Ph.D. ’16, found that the student population of green fields of study is systematically more gender-equal than other fields of study, both in STEM and non-STEM disciplines. – In my sales meeting though, its still all men. Time may fix that as experts rise through the ranks in this young field.
Middle East’s renewable energy boom to require $200bn investment – 67 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy projects are currently at the design and study stage within the region – These countries have the money to pay for it, the sunlight to make the investment sound, and the driver – saving oil to sell globally – to really do it.
Toyota has long been one of the most reticent large automakers when it comes to producing all-electric vehicles. It had no problems with hybrids, e.g. the Prius, but the Japanese automaker would only produce the bare minimum when it came to zero-emission mandates, e.g. the Rav4 EV in California, and they quickly lobbied to change those mandates.
They are now doing the same in China, where the government is about to ramp up its electric car mandate, and while Toyota, like almost all other automakers, tried to stop the mandate, it looks like it’s going to happen and it might finally force the automaker to mass produce EVs. expand full story
Nissan is about to launch its next generation all-electric Leaf and aside from a design refresh, a longer range is expected to be the biggest upgrade.
The range was expected to be over 200 miles in order to compete with the Tesla Model 3 and Chevy Bolt EV, but the sighting of a next-gen prototype is now casting some doubts. expand full story
Yesterday
One of the biggest concerns for Tesla Model 3 reservation holders is the fact that the vehicle doesn’t have an instrument cluster in front of the driver.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk insists that drivers “will not care”, but that’s going to be a new experience for most of them nonetheless.
Ahead of the launch this week, we get some rare insights into the experience from someone who actually drove the Model 3. expand full story
Just a few days before the launch of the Model 3, Tesla has slipped an interesting update into the onboard instruction manuals of Model S and Model X.
After the most recent software update, the new gear selector seen on Model 3 prototypes is now part of the manuals. expand full story
July 22
Overnight, Tesla made some changes to their available options, making some options standard, and notably eliminating one thing: leather seats. As of now, Tesla only sells vegan seats.
While this lack of leather is not made explicit on the Tesla configuration page, any mention of leather has been removed, and all upgraded interiors are now referred to with Tesla’s “premium” designation which they applied to the original rollout of vegan seats made of a new synthetic material.
However, not every component in a Tesla is vegan – cars still come with a leather-wrapped steering wheel standard, but Tesla has offered to provide a non-leather steering wheel upon request in the past for customers who make a point of avoiding all leather.
Tesla has been making a lot of changes to the options and configurations of its current flagship vehicles, Model S and Model X, in preparation for the launch of the less expensive Model 3.
The changes appear to have been mainly geared toward better differentiating the base version of Model S with the new Model 3 in order for the latter not to cannibalize the sales of the former.
As part of this strategy, Tesla is now about to discontinue the cheapest version of Model S, the 75 kWh battery pack with the rear-wheel-drive powertrain. expand full story
In this week’s top stories: The latest Model 3 sightings and production news, Autopilot 2.0 improvements, Bolt EV inventory woes, next-gen Leaf and BMW i3 reports, solar news, and much more.
Since he announced a planned hyperloop route from New York to Washington DC yesterday, Elon Musk has been talking about other possible routes for his new Boring Company.
Now a Hyperloop route all the way up to Tesla Gigafactory 1 in Nevada is apparently being considered for cargo. expand full story
