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
Two weeks ago, Tesla removed the $35k Model 3 from their website, making it an “off-menu” item. When asked, they couldn’t answer how long the model would be available – causing many, including Electrek, to assume that this was an attempt to “kill” the car.
It looks like that death won’t pan out yet, as today during Tesla’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk made the promise that the 35k Model 3 “is there and will remain there” for sale for an indefinite time period.
We’ve written before about car sharing platforms being used by EV owners, particularly Tesla owners, to make a little side money with their cars. Turo is the biggest example of this, and they’ve shared some statistics with us about their platform showing that EVs are quite popular there and gaining steam much faster than the rest of the site.
Earlier this week a Model 3 was spotted filming a self-driving demo ahead of Tesla’s autonomy investor event on Monday. Curiously, we heard about this through a TSLA short-seller on twitter. As it turns out, discussion following this tweet in the TSLA short community ended up focusing on the possibility of intentionally causing collisions in order to discredit Tesla ahead of the event.
But that’s not all. According to a legal filing by Tesla in Alameda county courthouse yesterday, the individual behind the short-seller’s twitter account has engaged in a pattern of harassment and stalking of Tesla property and employees and Tesla has officially sought and been granted a temporary restraining order against him.
Instead of picking options and waiting a few weeks for delivery of a custom-configured Tesla, buyers can now browse Tesla’s inventory of new Model 3s online and find cars available for immediate delivery (within a few days).
Sono Motors, a German EV startup, announced today that it will build the crowdfunded solar-powered Sion EV at a manufacturing facility formerly owned by SAAB in Trollhättan, Sweden. The plant is owned by National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), a holding company which acquired most of SAAB’s assets after its bankruptcy.
Sono has contracted NEVS to produce 260,000 vehicles in an eight-year period, beginning in the second half of 2020, and plans to use 100% renewable energy to power its factory. The car will launch at a cost of 25,500 Euros (~$28,900).
Genesis revealed the “Mint” concept, a small electric car made for the city but focused on a luxury experience, today at the New York Auto Show. Genesis calls the Mint “a new vehicle typology” and says that it offers an “innovative user experience.”
There is no current plan to bring the car to production.
Formula E’s action continues to impress this season. In six races, we’ve had six different winners, leaving an incredibly close race for both the drivers’ and teams’ championship. This Saturday, the series returns to Rome after last year’s inaugural Rome ePrix, seeking to continue to produce exceptionally exciting races.
As Tesla moves towards more autonomous features on its vehicles, it has also been teasing a long-term goal of providing owners the opportunity to provide Uber/Lyft-like rides with their vehicles, letting owners make money in their off-time.
The system has been dubbed “Tesla Network” and last night, CEO Elon Musk announced that we’re going to hear more about it later this month.
The annual Drive Electric Week celebration, a week of events where the public can see and drive a variety of electric cars and talk to current owners about their experiences, has been expanded this year with an event that covers the whole month of April. Drive Electric Earth Day runs all the way from April 1-30 and has events scheduled throughout the US, and a few in other countries as well.
Most states have at least one event, with coastal high-population areas hosting several. You can find a map of all the events on Drive Electric Earth Day’s website.
After a couple chaotic weeks of price and option changes from Tesla, another one went into effect today. This time, it was about the recently-unveiled Model Y, which received a $1,000 price increase across the vehicle line.
CEO Elon Musk also announced on twitter that prices on inventory cars will increase ~3% after the end of this quarter, to keep them in line with the recent price increase (which was really just a partial reversal of last month’s price drop).
Tesla is continuing to improve Autopilot’s abilities in both documented and undocumented ways. Just recently the system has gained two new capabilities: detecting stop lights and detecting lane change intention from other cars.
There have been a dizzying amount of price and option changes over the course of the last few weeks, with something changing pretty much every day. And today is no different. One day after Tesla raised prices across its lineup (as expected after a change in retail strategy), Tesla has also dropped the base “Standard Range” battery pack from the Model S line.
This happens just three weeks after adding the smaller Model S battery option in the first place.
We’re back to China again after just two weeks, for a race on a brand-new track along the seaside in the resort city of Sanya, on the southernmost tip of the country.
Last night we saw our first glimpse of the upcoming Tesla Model Y at Tesla’s Design Studio in Hawthorne California.
The reveal was similar to other Tesla events in the past. Press, Tesla employees and faithful customers collected in the old Northrop hanger next to the Hawthorne airport to see a new vehicle. The lights were dim and red, the food was present but perhaps a little underwhelming, and the event didn’t quite start on time.
On Friday, March 15, thousands of protests are planned across the globe with young people skipping school to protest against environmental inaction by their governments. This event is being organized by Fridays for Future globally and by US Youth Climate Strike in the US.
While the Global Climate Strike’s main day of protest is this Friday, March 15th, many protests are scheduled to continue occurring weekly or monthly (you can find them color-coded by frequency on this map). Global youth intend to broadcast their exhortation to climate action to the people in charge of our planet’s future, until governments act in a suitably strong manner to fix this urgent problem.
In the upcoming James Bond movie, Bond will swap out his V8 for the upcoming, limited-edition, all-electric Aston Martin Rapide E, according to a report in British tabloid The Sun.
The decision was apparently pushed for by the film’s new director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, who is apparently quite the “tree-hugger.”
In a bid to save €5.9 billion and raise their operating margin to 6%, VW will cut 5,000-7,000 jobs by 2023. These job cuts will mostly be a result of offering early retirement to longtime employees, rather than layoffs. The comments on this change in strategy were made at VW’s annual media conference in Wolfsburg.
As part of this announcement, VW laid out a plan for its future. The company will boost their software engineering department significantly in the coming years, hiring 2,000 new employees in software and electronics.
After a chaotic week of decisions on the future of their retail sales model, Tesla seems to have come to a final decision about their Tesla stores. The company just posted an update to their blog stating that they will seek a much less disruptive version of their change in strategy, instead closing about 10-30% of locations.
As a result, the price drops associated with these store closures will be partially reversed. Vehicle prices across the line will increase by a few percent, except for the newly-released $35,000 Model 3, which will remain at that same price. These price increases will happen on March 18th, so current prices are valid for anyone who orders in the next week.
The next Formula E race is this Sunday, along the Hong Kong waterline at the Hong Kong Central Harbourfront Circuit.
This is the first of two race weekends in China this year, the next being scheduled two weekends from now on March 23rd in Sanya, the southernmost point in the country.
Along with several other changes in the last few days, one thing Tesla has done is completely reworked how “Enhanced Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” are differentiated. Features for both of the systems have been shifted around, and FSD, which for a few months wasn’t even available on the cars, is back and available for purchase.
But one of the changes is that Tesla is offering Model 3 owners who already bought the car, but who didn’t previously purchase Enhanced Autopilot or Full Self-driving, a discount to purchase the software unlock for either of those systems.
The problem with this is that these systems were originally billed as increasing in price if ordered after delivery, rather than decreasing. Now, early buyers who took Tesla at their word, and paid full price for these systems, are being left out of the price drops, and will end up having paid more than people who buy it now.
Nissan has just announced pricing for their upcoming 62kWh Leaf Plus model, which will be available in the US starting later this month.
The starting price comes in just around the expected level, at $36,550. The Leaf SV Plus will be $38,510, and the top trim, the Leaf SL Plus, is priced at $42,550.
In addition to today’s announcement of the standard $35,000 Model 3, Tesla has also described a significant shift in their sales strategy. Tesla will now focus primarily on online sales, with only a few physical locations in high-traffic areas, functioning as “Tesla information centers.”
This will be accompanied by the closing of “many” stores and a “reduction in retail headcount” (layoffs), though Tesla did not specify how many as a percent or in real numbers.
Last week we were invited to San Diego to drive the new Nissan Leaf Plus, the updated version of the Leaf with a new 62kWh battery pack, which will start sales in March. We spent the day driving it all through the county on a variety of roads, and came away impressed if not surprised by this iteration on an already-solid package.
Rivian has filed for a patent to expand the energy capacity of its upcoming R1T electric pickup truck through a novel auxiliary battery which can be added to the truck’s bed after manufacture.
The patent was filed last year, published last month and today is marked as “pending” by the US patent office.