Jameson Dow

The Porsche Taycan is out and we’ve already declared it the best Porsche ever, but questions still remain about the Taycan’s low efficiency and how that affects its charging rate.  Early owners and reviews have found that the Taycan is more efficient than ratings suggest, so how does that affect its actual charge rate?

Nextmove, a German YouTube channel, put the car to the test against the most efficient EV, the Tesla Model 3, to see which one would win: Tesla’s lower peak kW rate and higher efficiency, or Taycan’s higher rate and lower efficiency.

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Arcimoto has finally started deliveries of their three-wheeled “Fun Utility Vehicle,” and we caught Arcimoto CEO Mark Frohnmayer on the tail end of a cross-country tour for a short ride through Los Angeles.

We’ve driven the Arcimoto before, but those were earlier versions and shorter rides. Now that we’ve had a chance to try this fun little thing out on real roads (and in real traffic), here’s how it was.

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Shell has announced a plan to increase their EV fast-charging presence in Germany, up to 200 total charging points from their currently announced 100.

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The Model Y is shipping just next month, but for many prospective orderers, it’s still been tough to get an idea of exactly how big the car is going to be.

Thanks to some of Tesla’s product photos and Reddit user gundarx, we’re getting a clearer view than ever on just how much bigger the Model Y is than the Model 3.

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Tesla has been on a tear lately, and it looks like CEO Elon Musk is trying to think of new ways to spend some money. Tonight he dropped a hint that, in addition to current gigafactory projects in China and Germany, Tesla is considering one in Texas.

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One of the largest battery suppliers in the world, CATL, has signed an agreement with Tesla, as reported by Reuters.

The agreement lasts for two years from July 2020 to June 2022 and has no specified capacity restrictions.

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Over the last few days, there have been a lot of reports of Tesla owners activating “dyno mode,” a mode that disables safety systems for the purpose of testing the car on a dynamometer.

Some videos and comments have surfaced of owners irresponsibly using this mode on public roads which endangers public safety.  Do not do this.  This article will be an attempt to explain the relevant safety features of your Tesla, why they’re there, and why you shouldn’t turn them off by activating dyno mode.
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A Ford engineer hosted an “ask me anything” (AMA) thread on Reddit over the weekend.  In it, they let us in on a few new bits of information about the car (including battery and charging specs), and talked about his opinion of it, particularly in comparison to the Tesla Model Y, which will target a similar market as the Mach-E.

The thread has since been deleted, but many of the questions and answers were archived by the folks over at Mach E forum.

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Tesla has updated their warranty coverage for Model S and X cars, and it’s a mixed bag for owners. The warranty now explicitly covers battery degradation and capacity loss, guaranteeing that the battery will retain 70% capacity through the warranty period. But Tesla also removed their famous “infinite mile warranty” for battery and drive unit and replaced it with a limit of 150,000 miles — still plenty high for most (but not all) scenarios, but not “infinite.”

More controversially, Tesla explicitly stated that “changes to the performance of the battery due to software updates are NOT covered” under warranty, likely due to a situation last year where some owners saw sudden range drops after an update.

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In Tesla’s Q4 update on Wednesday, it shared some information on 2020 production plans. One tidbit from these plans is that the company expects to no longer be production-constrained at the end of the year.

If this happens, it could finally mean an end to parts shortages and logistical constraints that have affected Tesla’s service departments for quite some time now. Things have certainly been getting better, but it would be nice to see that stigma of the Tesla experience disappear.

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Los Angeles has committed to electrifying their entire garbage truck fleet, and they’re doing it with a pretty aggressive goal.

Los Angeles Board of Sanitation director Enrique Zaldivar made the announcement last week that not only will the city stop buying gas-powered garbage trucks in 2022, but they will have a fully electric fleet by 2035.

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Along with Tesla’s Q4 2019 results letter, the company has updated us on their current production capacity and 2020 production plans.

Tesla currently has capacity to build 90k Model S/X and 400k Model 3/Y in Fremont, California, with an additional 150k capacity for Model 3s in Shanghai. By the end of the year, they expect to have 500k capacity for Model 3/Y in Fremont, and are in the process of installing additional capacity in Shanghai for Model 3 and Model Y.

Tesla’s 2020 construction plans also include “limited volumes” of Tesla Semi deliveries.

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Extreme E has released an onboard video showing their Odyssey 21 electric rally car racing on an actual Dakar Rally stage.

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The new fully electric Mini, the Mini Cooper SE, hits US showrooms in March. BMW flew us down to Miami last week to drive it up and down the Florida coast, and Electrek is here to tell you whether it lives up to expectations.

The Mini Cooper SE is Mini’s first entry into the electric vehicle market…sort of. Mini made a limited-run vehicle in 2009, the Mini E, and I was one of the lucky 450 drivers in the US to have one. I drove it for two years and loved it, and it’s what got me into electric vehicles in the first place. Will the 2020 Mini Cooper SE inspire other drivers the same way the original Mini E inspired me? Let’s find out.

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Tesla China is notifying customers that, due to the coronavirus outbreak currently happening in that country, all Tesla vehicles will have free supercharging to facilitate travel until the outbreak is resolved.

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The upcoming Rivian R1T pickup and R1S SUV will be cheaper than previously expected. The R1T was originally announced with a $69,000 base price (and the R1S SUV at $72,000).

Rivian now says that $69,000 will be the price for a “well-equipped vehicle,” and that base model pricing will actually be lower than that.

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An 83-minute-long video of a dinner attended by Donald Trump in April 2018 was released today by Lev Parnas.

The video touches on many subjects, many of which been covered elsewhere. But here on Electrek, we are particularly interested in the part starting around minute 57, where there is approximately 15 minutes’ worth of discussion about electric vehicles, alternative fuels, shipping, and autonomous driving.

And almost all of it is nonsense.

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Tesla announced the Cybertruck to much fanfare two months ago, and the internet was immediately flooded with reactions. The news about the truck reached far and wide, but people were polarized over its looks. It even disrupted the holiday season with these ugly sweaters.

The Cybertruck’s strange appearance hasn’t stopped the do-it-yourself crowd, though, as it seems to have inspired a lot of knockoffs, likely in part thanks to its easy-to-replicate angular form. We’ve collected some of the best ones from around the world below.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that Tesla intends to open a product design center in Europe. The design center would likely be built at the same site as Tesla’s Gigafactory 4 project outside Berlin.

Earlier this month, Musk also announced that Tesla wants to open a design center in China to design cars for the global market.

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Tesla is gearing up to build their next factory, Gigafactory 4, on the outskirts of Berlin.  Here’s a rundown of the latest news on the company’s next big project.

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Model Y sightings are picking up ahead of the car’s seemingly imminent launch, but one question remains: What do the third-row seats look like?  Previously we’ve seen just a glimpse of the third row through the side windows, but couldn’t really get a feel for the legroom available.

Now we have well-lit photos from the inside of the car, showing what kind of legroom third-row passengers might expect.

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Tesla has responded to local protests at the site of their next factory near Berlin by opening a community office to hear local concerns, according to Der Spiegel.  The office opens Thursday, just a few days after site protests began.

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The EPA rating for the new Porsche Taycan Turbo S has been posted to fueleconomy.gov, and the results aren’t all that pretty. The Taycan is rated at just 68 MPGe with 192 miles of range, despite the car’s large 93 kWh battery.

While not a big drop from the Taycan Turbo, the Taycan Turbo S and its higher power delivery resulted in 1 less MPGe, and 9 miles less range than the Turbo’s 69 MPGe and 201 miles.

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Exactly a year after breaking ground on Gigafactory 3 in China, Tesla has just held its first public delivery event for Model 3s made in China.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was in the country for the event, and gave some short comments.  Among those comments, he stated that Tesla is thinking about hiring a team of designers to build an original model in China, which Tesla would then sell worldwide.

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