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
Tesla’s business in shrinking in every way except for one: Supercharging revenue, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said would never become a profit center for the company.
Rivian has started adding Tesla/NACS cables to its Rivian Adventure Network, now allowing Tesla vehicles and other brands with NACS ports to charge on Rivian’s charging network.
The California Senate dropped a controversial provision of an upcoming solar law which would have broken long-standing solar contracts with California homeowners after significant public backlash over the state’s plans to do so.
Transport Canada has finished its investigation into Tesla’s questionable filing of $43 million worth of EV incentives in a single day, finding that the claims did indeed represent cars sold before the deadline to file for incentives – still raising questions about disorganization within Tesla.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed happened this weekend, and Ford’s electric SuperTruck managed to beat every other vehicle, gas or electric, to the top of the hill.
Congressional republicans have passed the republican tax bill that kills a slew of tax credits to help working families become more energy efficient, improve US air quality, and boost US manufacturing – instead channeling that money to wealthy elites, increasing the deficit by $3.3 trillion dollars along the way.
(Update, July 3 – this article has been updated to reflect the House passage of the reconciliation bill)
The Tesla Model Y was dethroned as the world’s best selling car last year, according to data from JATO dynamics. It was beaten by the Toyota RAV4, by a margin of just 0.16%.
Over 500 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have published a “Declaration of Dissent” opposing the actions of the current EPA head, Lee Zeldin, who is working to politicize the agency, ignore science, and spread misinformation.
For the better part of a year, Tesla has been promising “more affordable models” to replace the cancelled “Model 2.” The new models were supposed to go into production in the next 2 days, but it sure feels like that might not happen, because nobody’s heard anything at all about them.
The time is finally here: there are actual driverless Tesla Robotaxis on the road, at least in a portion of Austin, Texas, as of this weekend. And thanks to their ridership of exclusively Tesla influencers, almost all of the miles they’ve put under their belt has been filmed or livestreamed, which gives us plenty of footage to discover what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong.
The French Ministry of the Economy has found that Tesla violated the law in several ways related to “deceptive business practices,” and has ordered the company to comply in 4 months or face a fine for every day it does not.
The Senate version of the repubilcans’ tax bill won’t just add trillions of dollars to the deficit through a massive giveaway to wealthy elites, it will also take the US Postal Service’s awesome new EVs and sell them off for pennies on the dollar, wasting money simply out of spite for vehicles that were already cleaning your air and making your community safer.
Update: The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the body can’t force USPS to scrap these EVs, at least not without a 60-vote supermajority.
After plenty of delays (even as recently as this very morning), the first videos of Tesla’s Robotaxi rides are coming in and the Tesla fans that have been invited as early access users seem to have positive reviews already.
Tesla spent years selling its Full Self-Driving software, for as much as $15,000, with the promise that owners would be able to use that software to send their cars out as robotaxis to earn money when they’re not being used otherwise.
Just today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla will be charging a flat fee of $4.20 for rides in its highly-supervised “robotaxi”. But that brings up the question: if Tesla spent so many years promising that you could use your car to earn money, and it’s using its cars to earn money, then why can’t you?
At the 103rd running of the Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb, electric cars once again impressed as Ford’s Super Mustang Mach-E won its class on a difficult race day where running was limited due to inclement weather.
In January, New York City added a toll to all vehicles entering the city, the first in the US to do so. It was controversial at first, but now that it’s been around for months, residents support it and are seeing the positive effects – less traffic, less noise, more revenue, and more walkable spaces.
Groups of US city mayors and representatives from state governments announced a delegation of officials who will attend climate talks for the US today, as the lack of a real US federal government with any interest in solving problems for Americans has led to lower, subnational representatives having to step up and do their job for them.
Rove, a company founded to improve the EV charging experience by building “full service” EV charging centers with access to amenities you can use while charging, has just broken ground on its 2nd charging center, to be open in October/November of this year.
Waymo is once again expanding its driverless taxi service areas in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, adding over 80 square miles total between the three areas.
The move comes less than a week before the tentative, much-anticipated launch of Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin, another market that Waymo operates in.