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
Mazda has revealed their MX-30 EV, the first fully electric car in the company’s stable, earlier today at Tokyo Motor Show.
Earlier this week, we saw the first photo of the car, and most of its specs were known already. The only things left were pricing and availability, and more photos of the car from other angles.
Mazda’s first production EV is set to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show on October 23. In advance of that event, a photo has started to circulate on the internet that purports to show the vehicle in all its unveiled glory.
The photo seems to be taken from Japan Car Top magazine. It labels the car as a “concept,” but the design is one we haven’t seen before and shows significant changes from prototypes that have been spotted testing.
Update: The MX-30 has been officially revealed, click through and take a look.
There’s been no shortage of crazy occurrences captured by Tesla’s dashcam and sentry mode features lately, many of which have gone viral. Lots of these videos have involved Tesla crashes, random incidents of vandalism, or just fun stuff like a car stopping for some bears crossing the road.
But TMC forum user “rajetta” may be the most relieved owner of all the stories we’ve heard yet. He posted Tesla dashcam video of an incident he had with a motorcycle on the highway, which could have cost him potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills were it not for this video footage.
In a series of tweets today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk talked about future plans for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving capability. Notably, three weeks from now on November 1, Tesla will go through with a planned price increase for Full Self Driving software, increasing the price by $1,000.
The software currently costs $6,000 as an option on any Tesla vehicle. This cost will rise to $7,000 at the end of this month.
Volvo has confirmed the Polestar 2 price in Europe for their upcoming Tesla Model 3 competitor. The markets announced were Norway, Sweden, Germany, UK, Netherlands and Belgium.
Pricing in each market hovered around €59k Euro or equivalent. Norway gets a better deal with a price of 469k NOK, which converts to €46k, as does the UK, at £49.9k which converts to €56k.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry, a fossil-friendly climate science denier who once pledged to eliminate the Department of Energy entirely, is going to quit his job next month, according to Politico.
Perry will likely be replaced by Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, who has previously worked for Ford as a VP of their policy team.
The Tesla Model Y is scheduled for release in about a year from now, and we just got a glimpse of one “in the wild” near Tesla headquarters yesterday. Tesla Motors Club forum user Cstreet managed to grab a clip of the Model Y in black driving around in Portola Valley, just a few miles from Tesla’s Palo Alto, California, headquarters.
The video is short but doesn’t show significant changes from the Tesla Model Y unveiling, other than a new color we’ve not seen before: black.
Uber and EVgo announced today that they have signed a Memorandum of Agreement to cooperate on electrifying rideshare programs. The announcement came as part of a Climate Week event in San Francisco.
After last week’s moves to force more pollution and lower clean air standards on California, the Environmental “Protection” Agency threatened this week to pull California’s federal highway funding if California doesn’t bow to their pressure and allow more pollution in their state.
We’ve now learned that two states – Minnesota and New Mexico – will join California’s efforts to reduce tailpipe emissions in response to the EPA’s actions. Both states plan to adopt both California’s Zero Emission Vehicle mandate and its tailpipe emissions standards.
On Thursday, the Environmental “Protection” Agency moved to revoke California’s authority to set higher emissions standards, established more than 50 years ago under the federal Clean Air Act, after signaling the move earlier in the week.
The EPA’s announcement stated that their main focus was to set a unified, national rule for fuel efficiency standards. However, there was already a unified, national rule for fuel efficiency standards in place under President Barack Obama until the EPA repealed that rule earlier this year, causing regulatory uncertainty for automakers who opposed the repeal.
California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) reacted to this news by voting 12-0 to accept an agreement made between the state and automakers to voluntarily exceed federal emissions standards, roughly meeting the previous national standard in defiance of the federal rollback.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has announced that the Tesla Model 3 has won its highest safety award, Top Safety Pick+, after achieving “good” ratings across the board in all of their test categories. The Model 3 is the second battery electric vehicle to win the award, after the Audi e-tron won it last month.
The Model 3 has won several other safety plaudits, including 5-star ratings in all categories and the lowest probability of injury ever tested from NHTSA, 5 stars from from Euro NCAP, while being hailed as setting a “new safety technology benchmark,” and 5 stars from the Australiasian NCAP.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is attempting to revoke California’s authority to set its own emissions rules, a right enshrined in federal law that California has had for over 50 years. We recently covered why the EPA will have a hard time winning this fight.
In a move that seems to come straight out of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, the administration has applied the acronym “SAFE” to their effort. This stands for, if you can believe it, “Safe and Affordable Fuel Efficient vehicles.”
The problem is that this rule is neither about safety, affordability, or fuel efficiency. And we need look no further than the EPA’s own analysis, and statements from its former career scientists, to show this.
Six months after youth took to the streets around the world demanding climate action, more climate strikes are scheduled this coming week. The strike events are mostly planned for Friday, September 20 and 27, but several more will take place in the interim.
There are a total of over 3,500 events happening in 117 countries, with 800 events planned in the US alone. The events are largely organized and led by youth, but anyone who desires climate action is welcome and encouraged to walk out and attend your local demonstration.
In the latest step in the Environmental “Protection” Agency’s (EPA) losing battle against clean air and clean cars, the agency plans to announce a revocation of California’s well-established authority to regulate vehicle emissions tomorrow, reports Automotive News.
This move is no surprise, as ever since oil industry pawn Scott Pruitt was nominated as head of the EPA (later replaced by coal stooge Andrew Wheeler), the agency has been signaling its intent to revoke California’s ability to set its own emissions standards.
Today, Mazda confirmed that they’ll be unveiling a new EV at the Tokyo Motor Show next month, according to Automotive News.
Mazda has been prepping a new EV, with prototypes recently spotted testing in a “CX”-style crossover body. But Mazda says that this new EV will be a “brand new model,” rather than using the CX-30 body that has been spotted on prototypes.
The heavily anticipated Porsche Taycan was fully unveiled two weeks ago, with exciting performance and charging specs and quite a high price to boot. The car has been touted as the first real electric “sport sedan” challenger to Tesla from an established manufacturer, and has attracted a lot of attention and comparisons as a result.
The Taycan is a big departure for Porsche in that it’s their first EV, but there are definitely some ways it really feels like a Porsche. For example, the Taycan offers an insane amount of options — something Porsche is famous for. One of those options is Porsche’s “Electric Sport Sound,” a $500 option that adds fake, electric-like engine noises to the car.
Tesla has been having some issues with service lately, with long waits for some simpler fixes. These issues have been magnified by the internet, and by Tesla’s natural press/social media draw, making the situation seem quite dire when individual service horror stories are magnified by Tesla’s popularity.
But according to British magazine What Car?‘s annual reliability survey, Tesla is doing quite well when compared to other manufacturers. In a survey of 31 manufacturers, Tesla ranked 4th, with a score of 96.9%.
Plug In America hosts its 9th annual Drive Electric Week next week at events all around the US and the globe. There are currently over 300 events registered in the US, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan and Slovakia.
These events are often attended by manufacturers and local dealers who host test drives, and the bigger events include booths from companies in green industries, food, and activities for the family that makes for a fun weekend event. Most of all, all events are attended by local EV owners, and it’s a great way to talk to people about their real experiences of owning an EV.
The Tesla referral program received a tweak tonight, doubling the number of free supercharging miles given for using a referral code. Previously, both the current and new owner would get 1,000 miles of free supercharging, but Tesla has doubled that to 2,000 miles for cars delivered before the end of this month.
Are you looking for information on the Tesla Pickup Truck release date? It will most likely be unveiled in November, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
We’ve been covering the developments in the fuel economy/emissions fight between the Environmental “Protection” Agency (previously run by an oil stooge, now run by a coal lobbyist, and staffed by commissioners who wrongly think air pollution isn’t harmful) and the environment they claim to protect, and today we’ve heard another doozy from the federal government.
After automakers made an agreement with California to voluntarily have higher standards than required by the EPA and thus save consumers money and improve health, the Department of Justice is now investigating those automakers under antitrust laws, seemingly with no legal justification other than anger over the embarrassment this has caused to their boss who considers himself a “dealmaker” and yet has failed to make a deal.
Porsche is launching the Taycan tomorrow, which has led to a lot of excitement and anticipation among EV fans. Finally, another performance-oriented EV is hitting the market. This excitement has translated to 30,000 preorders for Porsche even before Taycan’s “official” reveal (which Fred Lambert will be covering tomorrow).
But according to a survey out today from Autolist, average consumers are still more excited about the veteran in the market: the Tesla Model S.
The highly-anticipated Rivian R1T electric truck has been spotted undergoing winter testing in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, according to a post a rivianforums.com.
The truck is still a preproduction model, but has some changes from the concept we saw last year at its LA Auto Show unveiling. Among these are a new color, new charge port placement, interior changes and a slightly redesigned rear end.
*Update: Rivian has clarified that these vehicles have a lot of “non-production representative content.” In particular, the production interior is going to look much more like the concept car than the test vehicles seen in this post.
Autolist has released a new survey showing consumer attitudes on electric cars. Among other questions, consumers were asked what their biggest reasons were for not buying an EV, and the answers were pretty much what you’d expect.
The top reasons given were range, price, and charging. But the problem is that these concerns are, by and large, out of date.