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
SpaceX held a Hyperloop Pod Competition this weekend at their facility in Hawthorne, CA, and earlier today Elon gave the crowd a short speech talking about transportation innovation, efficiency, and his new “boring” company focused on building tunnels to alleviate traffic, showing that his recent focus on tunnels is probably related to how he sees hyperloop developing as underground, rather than overground, transport.
Pew Research Center has released the most recent results of their yearly survey asking Americans their opinions on energy development. In it, a large majority of Americans – 65% – give priority to developing alternative energy over fossil fuels. Less than half as many – 27% – think that we should be expanding production of oil, coal and natural gas. The number of Americans supporting alternative energy in the survey has been consistently high since Pew started asking this question, and has been increasing since 2013.
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Indiana recently became the latest state to suggest the idea of an “EV tax.” As we’ve covered before, several states have implemented additional yearly fees for electric vehicles. Even California floated the idea at one point.
At first glance, it seems almost reasonable – revenue from gas taxes is falling because cars across the board are using less (or no) gas; infrastructure spending is sorely needed but is only getting more costly thus squeezing budgets even more; more efficient cars, particularly electric cars, are getting by without paying their “fair share” because even though they use the same roads they don’t pay as much (or at all) to maintain them.
So why shouldn’t those “freeloading” EVs also be forced to pay a road use tax? Well, there are several reasons…
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Faraday Future has just announced in a post on the company’s facebook page that they’ve received a total of 64,124 reservations globally for their FF 91 within the first 36 hours. They did not specify the proportion of “standard” free reservations to $5,000 “priority” reservations, but we can assume that a vast majority of these reservations are of the free variety.
Faraday Future announced their impressive-but-expensive-seeming 2018 production-intent FF 91 concept car two nights ago at CES. You can see our writeup of the reveal here. See how Faraday’s reservation numbers compare against some other EVs below the jump.
Faraday Future has just finished revealing their first car, the “FF 91”, in a livestreamed demonstration from CES 2017, and boy was the demonstration a doozy.
The FF 91’s specs are incredibly impressive. With a 130kWh battery, it will have 1050 horsepower, which Faraday Future claims is the most of any electric car (but actually falls short of the Rimac Concept_One by 38hp) and 378 miles of EPA range. The 200kW DC charging system purportedly charges the car at a rate of 500 miles of range per hour (and a 15kW AC home charging system for 50% charge in 4.5 hours), and the car will include self-driving capability courtesy of a 3D LIDAR system embedded in the center of the hood.
See more about the specs and presentation, and some photos, below the jump.
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Faraday Future’s unveiling livestream hasn’t even started yet, and already the link to reserve a car has gone live on their website (edit: post updated with the first image available of the car, from the livestream). The website mentions “priority reservations” which require a fully refundable deposit of $5,000, which then makes you eligible to upgrade your reservation to an “Alliance Edition” spot when that is announced in the spring.
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Today Ford announced a big strategic expansion into electric and electrified vehicles, announcing 7 coming “electrified” vehicle models with 6 more to be announced in the near future. Among the announced vehicles are a hybrid Mustang and F-150, a hybrid autonomous rideshare vehicle, a plug-in hybrid Transit, and a fully electric SUV.
These are welcome steps from Ford and signal a pretty significant strategic shift towards “electrified vehicles,” which they see overtaking gas vehicles within 15 years, but I, as usual, think they fall short in terms of aggressiveness. Check beneath the jump for some analysis of today’s announcements.
Tesla has announced their delivery numbers for Q4 and all of 2016. They delivered 22,200 vehicles last quarter, with 12,700 Model S and 9,500 Model X. This leads to a full-year total of 76,230 vehicles, slightly below Tesla’s 80,000 target, but representing a 50.7% increase over last year’s total of 50,580 cars delivered.
Tesla blames short-term production challenges related to the new autopilot hardware for the miss. While they were able to meet their production goal and produced 24,882 cars in Q4, production challenges meant that production was shifted more towards the end of the quarter, which means some produced cars – about 2,750 – could not be delivered before the end of the year. For the last few weeks Tesla was pushing hard to deliver as many cars as possible, but ended the quarter with about 6,450 vehicles in transit to customers.
Tesla states that vehicle demand was particularly strong in Q4, with net orders being 52% higher than last year and 24% higher than in Q3, which was their previous record for orders.
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.
The Chevy Bolt EV is finally about to hit the road, and it seems to be a great car. It’s already winning lots of awards, including Motor Trend’s Car of the Year and the Green Car of the Year award. But GM, via their European subsidiary Opel, is already showing signs of the same tone-deaf sales strategy that has relegated their Volt to second-or-third place in sales behind much more expensive (Model S) or range-limited (Leaf) models.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_juEthb-8
Their new ad for the Ampera-e, the European version of the Bolt EV, depicts some cockroaches trying to cross a road in the countryside, thinking that they will be safe because they’ll hear any cars coming and that they’re far enough from the city that they won’t have to worry about a quiet EV sneaking up on them, as no EV has the range to get that far. Then one of the cockroaches is squished by a fast-moving Bolt EV’s tire.
So the idea was to highlight the Bolt’s class-leading range and smooth, quiet operation. But the problem is that, in doing so, they put a negative light on both aspects of the car, rather than a positive one.
Some car enthusiasts worry that EVs represent the death of something in the automotive spirit. Let me try to convince you why that won’t happen.
My father is a “car guy.” He has a ’56 Ford Thunderbird which he personally restored and modified himself. It has the original 292 engine – not the 312 from the ’57s – but he bored out the cylinders to make it a 327 and slapped three 2-barrel Stromberg 97 carburetors on it. All the chrome is blacked out, the continental kit is missing (because the rear end was donated from a ’55 after the original ’56 has a rear collision), and it has a bitchin’ paint job with dark maroon ghost racing stripes, which never fail to surprise people and attract comments at the many car shows he attends.
He also had a MINI E – one of about 500 made, the predecessor to the BMW ActiveE that was then the predecessor to the BMW i3. The car was a prototype for a prototype, not ready for primetime, but still a great little car – his favorite car of any he’s ever had. If he could have kept it he would have, but unfortunately the program was lease-only and BMW only wanted to use the car as a pilot program for their “i” division.
Back in 2009-2011, he would take the MINI E to car shows, and encountered a fair amount of skepticism from assorted gearheads, even here in Southern California, the land of EVs. Now in 2016, among his group of six Ferrari, Mercedes and Porsche-owning friends who meet every weekend at the local Cars & Coffee, three of them have Fiat 500Es which they love, and my father has two Model 3 reservations.
What am I getting at with all this? It’s possible to be an old-timey, fume-sniffing, roaring exhaust “car guy” and still appreciate the performance, comfort, convenience, and environmental aspects of electric vehicles.
Manufacturers love to bring their electric concepts to California, and this year was no different. Most manufacturers had at least one plug-in model of some sort, either for sale or as a concept. There were a lot of impressive displays…and some a little less so.
Impressive: Chevy, Tesla, Hyundai, Jaguar, Zelectric, the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid and the Cadillac CT6.
Conflicted: MINI’s Countryman Plug-In Hybrid.
Disappointing: Ford, VW/Audi, and of course every manufacturer with no plug-in models on display (Land Rover, GMC, Dodge, SRT, Jeep, Ram, Mazda, Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and Buick).
Check under the break for the gallery and some short impressions.
(Missing from the gallery – “Porsche Panamera 4 E-Hybrid Executive” Plug-In Hybrid, and any others they may have been showing (the 918 perhaps?), because Porsche’s booth was in a separate area which I missed, and a full-body photo of the Prius Prime Plug-In Hybrid because the photo I took of it was unfortunately out-of-focus)
Update: Tesla confirmed to Electrek that the station is back online – sooner than previously anticipated.
Someone has sabotaged Tesla’s Barstow supercharger, just before the big holiday travel weekend. Whoever it was, they seem to have acted deliberately.
The supercharger seems to have been down since at least Saturday, per a post on Tesla Motors Club in the Barstow supercharger thread, but was working as of Thursday around noon per PlugShare checkins. Tesla is aware of the outage, but will likely not have the station up until the end of the month – after the big holiday travel weekend.
Tony Williams, longtime EV driver and owner of EV charging adapter provider Quick Charge Power, went and checked the damage. He has posted some pictures of the damage, which is quite extensive, and suggests that the job seems to be a deliberate act by knowledgeable people with access to “commercial grade” tools – certainly more than just a “smash ‘n grab”.
There is currently no solid information as to the motivation behind the sabotage. We don’t want to speculate as to that motivation, though we’re sure there will be plenty of speculation in the comments below.
France will shut down all of their coal power plants by 2023, French President Francois Hollande has announced. The announcement took place at COP22, the UN’s annual climate change conference happening now in Marrakech.
France has been a leader in non-polluting electricity sources for a long time, with 95% low-carbon sources and 77% nuclear power (page 4, data from 2014), but they still use some fossil fuels for electricity, getting 3% of their power from coal through the month of November so far. Given that their share of coal for electricity generation has been dropping since the 60s and is now a fairly small amount, it seems likely that France will easily meet their goal of eliminating the power source by 2023.
Tesla recently put the brakes on free supercharging for life for new Model S orders, limiting Teslas ordered after January 1 or delivered after April 1 of 2017. Most owners will still get plenty of free electricity, though, with a 400kWh yearly credit, and with electricity past that point still costing less than gasoline would.
The change of the program was presented only for the Model S and X, and Tesla didn’t want to elaborate on the Model 3.
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After some misadventures with the ELR, Cadillac has stepped back into the Plug-In Hybrid game with their new CT6 PHEV. The car is expected to ship in the spring of 2017 and start at $76,090 before incentives are taken into account.
The CT6 compares well to its gas counterpart, offering much higher efficiency (65 MPGe), better performance (335hp, 0-60 in 5.2s, compared to 5.3-6.1s depending on engine configuration) and 30 miles of all-electric range. This is less electric range than the Volt offers, and even less than the ELR did, which is an unfortunate step backwards by GM. That said, 30 miles fits almost exactly the average daily mileage driven by American drivers (29.2 miles), so this should still allow many drivers to avoid using gasoline on most days, especially if they have a short commute or can charge at work.
The gas-powered CT6 costs $69,585 for the “Premium Luxury” trim level and twin-turbo engine, which is the most comparable to the PHEV version, which means the PHEV version comes with a $6,505 premium. However, it includes some extra options, and various government incentives will be available, including the $7,500 federal tax credit and possibly state incentives as well. This should mean that the CT6 Plug-In Hybrid will be cheaper than a similarly-equipped gas version after incentives, in addition to the performance and efficiency benefits – which means even more savings on gasoline in the long term. At this price, if you’re thinking about getting a CT6, there’s no reason I can imagine not to get the plug-in version.
We’ve covered reports that Jaguar was working on an electric SUV before, and today Jaguar officially revealed their SUV concept, along with their name for it: the “I-PACE.” It’s largely modeled off of their recent “F-PACE” SUV, only Jaguar has taken the step of “electrifying” the design by giving it some future-y touches which are sure not to age well, but seems to be irresistible to automakers when jumping into the EV market.
While this design is still labeled as a “concept” – and as such, maybe Jaguar will tone down the “Tron lightcycle” looks a bit before release – Jaguar states that the car will hit the roads in 2018. This seems exceedingly quick for an electric concept to make it to the roads, especially for a company with no other electric models yet. But Jaguar has been signaling some seriousness about electric cars, particularly with their entry into this year’s Formula E championship. There are no timelines yet for regional availability.
The reviews are in, and the 2017 Chevy Bolt EV has topped all competition to become Motor Trend’s 2017 Car of the Year. This is GM’s second electrified car to win the award, and the third electrified car and second pure EV overall (2011 Volt, 2013 Tesla Model S). Among other electric cars considered by Motor Trend were the Model S and X, both of which became finalists in their categories. More on them below.
Motor Trend praised the Bolt’s performance, packaging and roominess, ground-up engineering as an EV, efficiency and value at $37,495 or $29,950 after $7500 US Federal Tax rebate.
Of particular interest are the Bolt’s performance numbers, which time the Bolt EV at a 0-60 of 6.3 seconds. With performance like that, Motor Trend said the Bolt could make “a helluva hot hatch” and that in “fun per mile” it competes against the Mazda3 or Golf, with similar performance and price range as a Golf GTI. It’s no P100D, but for a small front-wheel-drive EV, the car has a lot of power.
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Just a few days after confirmation of the “Tesla Glass” tech group within the company, Tesla has quietly changed the Model S design studio, adding an all-glass roof option for the Model S. The option is available for the same price as the sunroof previously was, $1,500, and the panoramic sunroof option is now $2,000.
The new option notes that it is “Tesla Recommended for an open, expansive cabin feel.” The option removes the crossbar over the car’s B-pillar, and should make the Model S interior feel even more airy than with the panoramic sunroof.
The change to the design studio also removes the P90D option. In addition, the “ludicrous” upgrade seems to no longer be an individual option on any car – if you order a “P” model car, of which the only one available is now the P100D, ludicrous speed is included.
This leaves a rather significant gulf in pricing between the 90D and P100D models, a $45,000 difference in price between the two trim levels for the Model S and a $40,000 difference for the Model X. A future non-performance “100D” model seems inevitable to fill that gap.
UPDATE: Tesla has updated us about availability, they say the all-glass roof is entering production right now and will be in showrooms in the next few weeks.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Kim Reynolds from Motor Trend brought a Chevy Bolt to a Tesla meetup in Orange County, California, to see what a group of local Tesla owners thought about Chevy’s new entry into the market.
This longtime EV driver was fortunate enough to be at the meetup, and I must say I was quite impressed. I’m predisposed to being impressed by any serious EV, but Chevy really does seem to have done a good job with this one.
Tesla is at Universal Studios in Los Angeles to unveil its new solar roof product, Powerwall 2.0, and potentially a new Tesla charger. The event will be live-streamed on Tesla’s website starting at 5:30pm PDT (UTC-7) and we will be live from the venue to bring you as much information as possible.
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Considered part of the “Triple Crown of Motorsport” alongside the Indianapolis 500 and Monaco Grand Prix, the Le Mans 24 Hours race, started in 1923, is one of the oldest and most prestigious races in the world. Teams are allowed three drivers and must race to complete the most laps over a 24 hour period, which means that winning cars must show exceptional performance, reliability and efficiency.
As a result of this, the race has been used as a proving ground for many technological advancements, most recently the appearance of hybrid electric vehicles which first raced in 2009 and have won the race every year since 2012.
Audi has absolutely dominated the 24 Hours of Le Mans ever since they returned to the race 18 years ago. With 13 wins in those 18 years, they have been the manufacturer to beat at the race. In particular, they are credited with heralding the “diesel era” of the race, leading to diesel-engined winners from ’06-’11, and diesel-electric hybrids from ’12-’14.
So today’s announcement that they would quit the World Endurance Championship and the Le Mans race comes as a bit of a shock. Or does it?
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Earlier this week, Consumer Reports came out with their annual car reliability survey, which included an update on Model S reliability in which they re-recommended the car due to improved reliability, and also a warning on reliability of initial Model X vehicles due to many issues, particularly with the falcon wing doors.
But as we reported two days ago, since Model S reliability is improving, we should probably expect a similar story to play out with the Model X. Today, Tesla gave confirmation that this is indeed the case, with a sentence in their shareholder letter:
“Reliability of our vehicles continues to improve and our warranty accrual rates on new and used vehicles declined from Q2 to Q3. The amount of issues that we have addressed with ModelX have fallen by 92% in the last 12 months, a reflection of the improvements we have made in Model X due to our ability and commitment to react quickly to issues.”
Consumer Reports really likes the Model S. Last year, it somehow managed to place both first and second in their “best cars of 2015” list, and the P85D broke their rating system by scoring 103 out of 100 points – beating the previous 85kWh model which had previously been described as the “best car ever” when it scored 99 out of 100 on the same scale. That’s right, not the best EV ever, but the best car ever. It has also topped their list with the highest owner satisfaction ratings ever seen in multiple surveys of their subscribers, as well as the highest satisfaction for repairs and service.
So last year, when Consumer Reports rescinded their recommendation, it was big news. But today, Consumer Reports has reversed that decision based on new reliability ratings, and now that the Model S is back in “average” reliability range, it means that Consumer Reports can once again recommend that consumers buy it.