Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla was planning to start pushing its software update to start bringing Autopilot 2.0 cars to parity with the first generation Autopilot today and he sort of stayed true to the commitment. Tesla started pushing the update to the first 1,000 cars in its fleet, but it’s not exactly to parity with Tesla’s first generation Autopilot.
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In this week’s top stories: Tesla’s Autopilot predicts an accident, Solar power at 1¢/kWh by 2025, Elon Musk teases new ‘Tesla Supercharger V3’, and much more.
nice Bolt parking job Woz
In the comment section of a long winded Facebook rant on the trials and tribulations of driving through Arizona’s pothole-laden roads and staying at pet-friendly hotels in Vegas, Apple’s Co-Founder and flip flopping EV enthusiast Steve Wozniak noted that he is now expecting his Chevy Bolt to become his main car. It will arrive next week as Chevy slowly ramps up deliveries in compliance car states – currently California and Oregon only.
We’ve, for some reason, documented Woz’s plight from Swarming his Supercharger station odysseys and his on again off again love affair with the Chevy Bolt…
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Solar Panels now so cheap, manufacturers probably selling at a loss – I personally have seen the price of solar panels fall from $.55/W to $.35/W starting in about June of 2016 through today. That’s a 36% fall in price for the formerly most expensive component of a solar panel. The Chinese believe in Swanson’s Law and see this as a sound investment still – so don’t expect it to stop just yet.
Russian malware found on laptop of Vermont power company – The details are still fuzzy (and as I read about it this morning it seems a lot less interesting), so I’ll stay away from international intrigue just yet. However, let us be honest to ourselves and recognize that with digitization (making the grid smarter) we are going to open the machine to broader systemic risks. We need to be smarter than how we let our desktop computers be abused.
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We covered claims of sudden acceleration in Tesla’s vehicles quite extensively at Electrek this year, which is why we are not surprised to see that the issue being taken to court after a new accident. In September, we published a report based on several reported events of sudden acceleration, especially in the Model X (like the one pictured above), and we concluded that all concrete evidence, including a third-party review of the vehicle logs in one case, points to user mistakes – pressing the accelerator instead of the brake pedal to be precise.
Now a Model X owner has filed a lawsuit against Tesla in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California and he is seeking class action status based on other previously reported cases of alleged autonomous acceleration events in Tesla’s vehicles.
Tesla responded to the suit quite strongly in a statement claiming that not only the vehicle was not at fault, but also that the owner, a famous actor and singer in South Korea, “threatened to use his celebrity status in Korea to hurt Tesla unless [the company] agreed to make a financial payment and acknowledge that the vehicle accelerated on its own.”
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Tesla has been aiming to release a software update to bring its new vehicles with Autopilot 2.0 hardware to feature parity with its last generation Autopilot in “December 2016”. Tesla owners with the new Autopilot hardware are anxious to get the features they were promised and CEO Elon Musk has been emphasizing that the company has been pushing to respect the deadline.
With a day left in December, Musk now says that it could come out tomorrow if Tesla can just fix a bug. Unfortunately, Musk also confirmed that its software update v8.1 will be pushed to “late January”.
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Amazon offers the Earthwise 11-inch 8.5A Corded Electric Tiller for $89.78 shipped. Also at Walmart. This tiller has a list price of $130 but it usually sells for around $110. It’s bounced back and forth between this all-time low price and the regular going rate a few times during the holiday season.
This is the best-selling power tiller at Amazon, collecting a 4.6/5 star rating from over 2,700 reviewers. Features include four steel tines that cut up to 11-inches into the ground. Built-in cord management is helpful for keeping your workspace clear. You’ll want to pick up an extension cord to provide electricity to your new tiller. Give this 100-foot long option that is designed for outdoor jobs a try at $27 Prime shipped.
Tesla’s long ongoing state-by-state battle to sell its electric cars directly to consumers without having to go through third-party dealers just received a significant setback. In Missouri, where Tesla already managed to get a dealer license and has been selling its vehicles online and through stores in St-Louis and Kansas City, a judge rejected the company’s license renewal after the Missouri Auto Dealers Association (MADA) sued the revenue department, which first issued Tesla’s license in 2015.
In consequence, the automaker will lose its right to sell cars in the state tomorrow as its current license expires.
Previously, Tesla mainly had to worry about states where laws are currently preventing them from getting dealership licenses, like Michigan or Texas, but now it looks like Tesla’s direct to consumer business model is not safe even where it already had a license.
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About a year and a half ago, the island state of Hawaii proclaimed a goal of getting to 100% renewable electricity by 2045 – the first US State to make such a proclamation. In the past week, the Hawaiian Electric Companies (HECO) delivered plans showing a progression to 100% renewable electricity before 2040. In a maximum projected model – 100% was possible by 2030 when considering the excess energy generation of residential solar customers. The plan suggests that electricity rates will rise through the mid-2020s due to upgrade requirements, before they fall as the benefit of no fuel electricity pays itself off. Sometime in late 2017, HECO believes they will meet the 2020 goal of 30% renewables – and sets an agressive goal to maximize installations before the Federal Solar ITC phases out. Bravo Hawaii.
After delivering the first few Chevy Bolt EVs two weeks ago, only a handful more units have been making their way to customers in California, but GM has now reportedly shipped the all-electric car in volume for the first time with a ‘trainload’.
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Baird analyst Ben Kallo is closing the year on a very positive note for Tesla. The analyst, who has been covering Tesla for the past 3 years, named the company’s stock his”top pick” for the next year. He believes ‘Tesla Energy’ is not currently priced into the stock and he sees potential for Tesla to beat expectations for the Model 3 in 2017.
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Since the resurgence of the electric car in the current decade, the used electric car market has been mostly weak aside from the occasional deal. Of course, that’s because it’s still a very small market, but it’s now about to be significantly more active primarily because of leases ending.
You are going to want to keep an eye on the used electric car market in 2017.
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Tesla ran into troubles with some regulators and consumer watchdog groups this year over the use of the word ‘Autopilot’ to describe its advanced driver assist system. They expressed concerns that users would think it could mean the vehicles are autonomous. Tesla managed to successfully defend its position so far and always reiterated that the ‘Autopilot’ is named after the system used in aircraft and it doesn’t make them autonomous.
Now it seems Tesla is already having troubles with its new “full self-driving capability” feature which is not available yet, but Tesla is currently selling it anyway.
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Consumer Reports’ recently released 2016 Owner Satisfaction survey was, as usual, a big win for Tesla. The electric automaker came in as the top brand once again, as they have every year they have been included in the survey.
The Model S also earned the top spot in the car-by-car ratings, with 94% satisfaction. This is down from the 99% and 98% the car earned in its early years, which is understandable as the car reaches a wider audience beyond the most faithful early adopters. The Model X wasn’t too far behind, with 88% satisfaction. See a partial table below the jump.
There’s some confusion around the relationship between Faraday Future and LeEco’s LeSee electric car division beyond the fact that they were both founded by Jia Yueting. They are both separate companies – FF is based in the US and LeSee in China, but the technology behind LeSee’s electric sedan has been developed by Faraday.
It’s a similar arrangement as the joint-ventures US automakers have with Chinese companies in order to produce vehicles in the country. There have been doubts about Faraday Future or LeSee’s ability to bring any vehicle to market after financial issues.
Faraday Future had to delay work at its own factory in Nevada, but now LeEco announced this week that it broke ground at its $3 billion electric car factory in China.
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The official WORX eBay store offers its WG770 19-inch 36V 2-in-1 Electric Mower (open-box) for $189.99 shipped. Today’s deal is $110 off the regular price, down $96 from Walmart and the best offer available.
Owning an electric lawn mower reduces many of the headaches that come with traditional gas and oil setups. All you need to do is simply charge the battery and you’re ready to go. This model can cut up to 10,500 square feet of grass per charge. It has multiple depth settings plus it mulches, bags and can discharge out the back. Rated 3.9/5 stars.
Back in October, we reported that Tesla invited investors to a special event at the Gigafactory on January 4th. This week, Tesla sent out the official invites and confirmed that CEO Elon Musk will be there for a talk with management, including CTO JB Straubel. Our understanding is the focus will be on touring the factory, which recently doubled in size, and not on access to management.
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As the deadline for production parts for the Tesla Model 3 is just 6 months away, analyst Jennifer Liang of KGI, a respected Chinese research firm, did a supply chain check and found that Tesla is going “all out” to race the Model 3 to production. The analyst said that Tesla is working with “system integrators (SI) in the supply chain and strengthening automation.”
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[Editor’s note: We’re trying a new morning green energy briefing which should deliver every day by 9am ET. Please comment below]
South Korea offers a very generous electric vehicle incentive of up to 22 million won ($18,328), but the program has a ridiculous rule that the electric car has to be able to fully charge in under 10 hours using a standard outlet. We are talking about a regular 220-volt outlet so of course, it unfairly disqualifies electric vehicles with larger battery packs and longer range, which on the market today primarily consists of Tesla’s vehicles.
But now that Tesla is entering the South Korean market, the government is reportedly looking into removing the requirement in order to accelerate electric vehicle adoption and address its worsening smog problem.
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Lamborghini’s Urus SUV concept has been long in the making. The Italian automaker first unveiled it in 2012 and it has since displayed several iterations at motor shows. The company says that it plans to bring it to market in 2018 as its first SUV and surprisingly, company officials have now confirmed that an electric plug-in version will be offered.
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After recent snow storms in North America, some Tesla owners are experiencing the Autopilot in the snow for the first time and they are surprised that the Autosteer is able to keep steering despite not detecting any lane marking or even a lead vehicle.
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Suaoki (100% positive feedback from 3,600+) via Amazon offers its 60W Portable Solar Mono-Crystaline Solar Panel w/ DC and USB ports for $138.59 shipped when promo code 2YN9U2BX is applied during checkout. That’s a $61 savings off the original price, down $41 from the regular going rate and the best offer available.
This solar panel kit has a USB port and DC output for charging mobile devices and vehicles (up to 18V). The 60W panel is able to convert up to 25% of the sun’s energy into usable power. It has a foldable design that is also waterproof for outdoor use. Rated 3.9/5 stars by 101 Amazon customers.
