Jameson is based in Southern California and has been driving electric vehicles since 2009 and writing about EVs, sustainability and policy for Electrek since 2016.
You can contact him at jamie@electrek.co, or on his bluesky account that he just set up and maybe will never use at https://blskyl.ink/jamesondow
Sony surprised the CES audience today with a new concept electric car, the VISION-S prototype.
Sony shared a few details of the prototype, which is meant as a showcase for Sony’s technologies for the automotive industry.
Fisker is publicly showing their upcoming Ocean for the first time at CES, but held a private unveiling event today in LA.
At the event, they went over various details of the car and announced its starting price. The car will start at $37,499, which after the federal tax credit means it will be under $30,000 in the US, and even lower in some areas with state or local incentives.
Previously Fisker announced they will offer the car with a “flexible lease” for $379/month, which includes all maintenance. Cars ordered today are expected to ship in 2022.
Electric cars continue to dominate in Norway, as 2019 saw EV sales rise to 42.4%, up from 31.2% in 2018, according to OFV. This represents almost a 1/3 increase in EV sales from year to year.
Adding in plug-in hybrid sales, about 56% of Norway’s new car sales in 2019 had a plug.
Sales numbers were buoyed by a record year for Tesla, whose Model 3 was the most popular car in Norway in 2019.
The Porsche Taycan has just hit the roads in the US, and Porsche Club of America had a chance to do a video walkaround of Porsche’s new electric sports car. The video features Vu Nguyen, Executive Director of the Porsche Club of America interviewing Lukas Kraemer, Porsche’s Complete Vehicle Manager for Taycan.
The video covers a lot of topics and has some interesting insights and specs about the car, which we’ll get to point by point.
Rivian gave us a little Christmas present today by releasing real video of an awesome feature they’re calling “tank turn.”
This feature allows the Rivian to turn literally on a dime – it can do a full 360º turn without moving at all.
Porsche has started deliveries of the Taycan in the US, just in time for Christmas. And the first US Taycan owner has given his first “drive report,” and it’s pretty much all positive.
Of particular note, he states that the car’s 201-mile estimated EPA range, and commensurate low efficiency, is “conservative.”
Tesla has been working on a Trans-Canada Supercharger route for more than a year now, and today it finally went live, all at the same time.
Even better, most of the locations have Tesla’s new 250 kW V3 Supercharger. These allow a Model 3 to add about 100 miles in seven minutes.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted tonight that Tesla has a “holiday update” with a few special gifts in store. The update includes a Tesla full self-driving “sneak preview” and popular indie video game Stardew Valley, among other things.
The update should be out to Tesla’s early access system in “a few more days.”
Tesla’s “Acceleration Boost” upgrade for Dual Motor Model 3s went live yesterday, and we’ve already seen the results of one test showing that Tesla’s promised half-second improvement to 0-60 times seems roughly accurate.
The results of this first test were posted to Reddit by user Wugz. Wugz also previously tested Tesla’s “5% performance boost” that went live in November.
Lucid Motors, an EV startup headed by former Tesla engineer Peter Rawlinson, has reduced the reservation price of its upcoming Lucid Air to $1,000. Lucid had previously started taking $2,500 deposits for the Air in 2017. Lucid also reiterated that production of the Air is on track for “late 2020.”
Pre-orders are currently available in the US and Canada, and the reservation fee is fully refundable. Customers from elsewhere in the world can join Lucid’s “international interest” list.
NVIDIA has unveiled what they call the “world’s most advanced processor” for use in autonomous vehicles and robots. The new NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin chip can perform 200 trillion operations per second, which is almost seven times as many as NVIDIA’s previous Xavier chip (30 trillion operations) and more than Tesla’s FSD Computer (144 trillion).
While his company spiraled into bankruptcy, Robert Murray spent tens of millions from the company coffers to pay himself, his successor, and several anti-science and anti-environment lobby groups, according to new court filings.
This money was spent at the same time as Murray is asking courts to excuse his debts to his workers, in the form of pensions and healthcare plans.
The US spending bill just agreed to last night includes extension of tax credits for home EV charger installations, electric motorcycles, and fuel-cell vehicles.
These credits were previously extended through the end of 2017, though that time the extension was retroactive, as taxpayers didn’t know about the incentive during the incentive period. Now, those credits have been extended retroactively again — covering the last two years, since 2017. They’ve also been extended forward through the end of 2020.
We’ve learned a lot about the Tesla Cybertruck, but there are still a number of open questions. Tesla CEO Elon Musk went to Twitter to answer a few tonight, showing several ways that the Cybertruck could become an ultimate camping machine.
In response to a fan, Musk stated that the Cybertruck’s heating and air conditioning system will work in the truck’s bed area when the cover is closed, that the bed should be accessible from second-row seating, and that the Cybertruck will likely have Tesla’s “bioweapon defense mode” air filtering system.
One of the standout features of the Porsche Taycan is its incredible promised 350kW charge rate. Tesla has updated its Model 3 to have a 250kW charge rate, which is available on Tesla’s V3 superchargers.
At first glance, this looks like a loss for Tesla. But it’s not. Because of Porsche’s low efficiency, it turns out that almost every Tesla adds more range per minute at peak charge rate than the Taycan does – and some by a significant margin.
Mercedes-Benz has once again delayed EQC deliveries, pushing them back by another year in the US, as a “strategic decision to first support the growing customer demand for the EQC in Europe.”
Mercedes last delayed the EQC this February. It has just started deliveries in Europe in the last couple months.
Insurance runs on data, and electric cars have a lot of it. One firm in the UK is giving Tesla drivers cheaper insurance by tapping into the car’s systems to track driver mileage.
This could expand into other telematics, offering drivers better rates in exchange for more snooping.
The recently revealed Tesla Cybertruck is running neck-and-neck in popularity with upcoming electric offerings from big-name truck brands GM and Ford, according to a survey from Autolist.
The survey also included Rivian, which is similarly popular. Among people who have never owned a truck, all four brands fared roughly equally. Among current and former truck owners, GM and Ford had an advantage, with Rivian trailing closely and Tesla quite far behind.
A hacker has found assets within Tesla’s operating system suggesting that there are a slew of new streaming apps coming to Tesla’s in-car entertainment system.
The list includes heavy hitters like HBO and Twitch. There are also assets for Comedy Central, Chinese video hosting service YouKu, and several more.
Germany has taken the lead over Norway in annual EV sales for the first time, edging out Norway for total sales since the start of this year, as reported by Bloomberg. Currently, Germany’s 2019 total is 57,533 EVs, while Norway has sold 56,893.
This would be good news for Germany — if it weren’t so embarrassing for them and the rest of Europe. Norway is a tiny country with a population of 5.3 million, where the main industry is oil, and where the whole country is cold. Germany’s population is roughly 16 times larger than Norway’s. And yet, Norway has still had higher EV sales than every country in Europe until now.
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), co-architect of the Green New Deal, is expanding his attacks on Tesla Autopilot. He previously only took issue with drivers intentionally defeating Autopilot’s “nag,” but today he criticized the entire system, saying it “causes harm” and is “flawed.”
Tesla’s Cybertruck has been getting a lot of press and a lot of pre-orders — over a quarter million as of the last update. But until now, nobody quite knew if the monolithic piece of machinery would fit in their garage.
Today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk went to Twitter to give us a little insight on the actual size of the thing, which should help fans figure out where they’re going to keep it.
McLaren plans to hybridize its next-generation supercar with an electrically driven front axle, allowing it to hit 0-60 times of 2.3 seconds, down from 2.7 for its current model, according to CEO Mike Flewitt, as reported by Car and Driver. The car is planned for a 2021 release.
While an improvement, this will roughly match the 0-60 performance of Tesla’s P100DL, which was first released five years earlier, in 2016.
McLaren also plans to hybridize its entire lineup in the next three or four years. They will use a plug-in hybrid system with 15-20 miles of all-electric range.
Porsche Engineering has developed a torque control system for a 4-motor electric vehicle drivetrain that lets electric SUVs handle “with the agility of a sports car” in even the most difficult conditions.
Porsche hasn’t committed to putting this drivetrain into any specific cars, but by announcing the project on their newsroom, we can speculate that there might be something on the horizon. We learned earlier this year that the next Macan will be electric, and this would pair nicely with that.