Founder, Publisher, and Editorial Director of the 925, LLC publications.
Seth Weintraub is an award-winning engineer, journalist, and publisher who won back-to-back Neal Awards from 2007–2010 during his three-plus years covering Apple and Google at IDG’s Computerworld.
From 2010-2011, Weintraub covered all things Google for Fortune Magazine, amassing an impressive rolodex of Google contacts and a love for Silicon Valley tech culture.
It turns out that his hobby – the 9to5Mac news site – was always his favorite, and in 2011, he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google, in addition to adding the style and commerce component of 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of Tesla’s first Model S EVs off of the assembly line, which began his love affair with electric vehicles and green energy — this, in turn, became Electrek in 2014. To cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAVs led by China’s DJI, DroneDJ was born in 2018, and then more recently, Connectthewatts and SpaceExplored were launched to cover connected fitness and space.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies, with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid, and London before becoming a publisher/writer.
Seth received a bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Master’s from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Weintraub is a licensed single-engine private pilot and a certified open-water scuba diver, and he spent over a year backpacking to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his wonderful girlfriend, Alana, and two amazing sons.
More: About.me. BI 2014 profile.
Tips: seth@925.co, or llsethj on Threads/BlueSky or link at top of page.
TSLA stock is down again market trading this morning with the market. We’re wrapping up the morning stock price news with another bull analyst turning bearish on delivery numbers, China tariff risk and trade war backlash and a floor number.
Update: And there’s the delivery numbers email.
This week on the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy, including Tesla launching CCS adapter and tow hitch in Europe, Autopilot and summon videos, its AI lead in Autopilot, Kia Niro review and more.
Ever since it was announced, Kia’s Niro EV has been an interesting proposition. Fred did a fantastic one day first look at the Niro earlier this year, but I wanted to spend some more quality time with it and throw in my family for “extreme” testing.
Our Tesla Model X lease is ending soon and my wife is looking for a replacement that rides high, has good range, and is all-electric. Obviously the Model Y makes a lot of sense for us, but it won’t be ready until late next year and figuring “Elon Time”, ramp up, and first dibs to Californians, it will probably be well into 2021 before these are rolling out en masse.
A recent trip to the Bay Area to visit relatives provided a good week-plus opportunity to test the Kia Niro EV with the whole family and without a 240V home charger…
Tesla this morning filed a registration statement to raise capital through the issuance of convertible notes worth up to $1.55B and a TSLA share sale of up to $739M.
The amount of the bond new capital is very close to the loss in cash position over the first quarter which saw the auto and energy products maker’s cash holdings drop to $2.2B.
Vintage Electric Bikes out of San Jose California is a boutique e-bike firm that specializes in great looking retro e-bikes that go surprisingly fast. This week I got to demo their whole lineup from their Cafe 750W pedal assist commuter to their Tracker which looks and feels like a small 3kW motorcycle and took me up a mountain at over 30 mph.
There’s so much to like about these bikes…
One of the most important categories of ebikes is the low-cost, entry-level sector. What I call the eBigBox models. Obviously, not everyone can’t afford a $7500 Riese and Muller and frankly a lot of people are skeptical on how much they will use and enjoy an ebike. So even if they can afford a few thousand dollars for an ebike, they might not want to put it all down on a category they aren’t sure about.
Last year we found a very low-priced (under $600 at Amazon) bike made by Ancheer. Overall, it made some good compromises to get down to the $600 price point but I had some issues with the build quality, the power of the motor, lack of display on the controller and size of the battery. This year a new low-cost Amazon ebike from Rattan seems to have answered many of my concerns.
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In a conference call with journalists and analysts today after the $35,000 car and store closure announcement, Elon Musk gave a quick rundown on Tesla’s current financial situation. It wasn’t great news, but it was mostly expected.
Tesla today, along with the $35,000 Model 3 and other goodies, announced it would be taking Autopilot to the next level, this year…
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It turns out Honda Urban EV that was revealed at the Geneva Motor Show two years ago to our loving eyes was a prototype of a prototype. Today we’re graced with the next stage in Honda’s retro urban EV prototype evolution, the Honda E prototype, which will be displayed at the Geneva Auto Show…
Electric pickup truck startup Rivian is reportedly attracting interest from GM and Amazon for a massive round of funding to help bring its vehicles to market.
US fast charging network EVgo has again decided to switch up its charging prices. The DC fast charger network that operates in 34 states charges its users on two tiers: Pay-as-you-go and Membership. EVgo charges based on time rather than electricity transfer and as of next week, prices are about to change…
Tesla ended its Q4 2018 earnings call with a bit of a surprise, albeit one we’ve heard before: CFO Deepak Ahuja will be retiring. In his place, Zach Kirkhorn, previously the company’s vice president of finance is taking over.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk dropped an email to employees last night at 1am PT, which was also released publicly and filed with the SEC, to announce important job cuts to control costs. It also served to temper profit expectations for TSLA stock holders.
[Update: TSLA stock down nearly 10% in early morning trading]
In it, he details the challenges ahead for Tesla as it tries to reduce the price of its Model 3 to the $35,000 price point and make its other products more competitive to fossil fuel equivalents.
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Fresh off its CES LEAF 62kWh unveil, Nissan today at the 2019 North American International Auto Show in Detroit took the wraps off its IMS concept car based heavily on its similarly named IMx concept. Have Nissan reached Concept-ception?
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CES is overwhelming to say the least, but we’ve crowned two products with our “Best of CES 2019” awards for their unique contribution to green transportation. Both are 2-wheeled vehicles but they couldn’t be more different.
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Nissan’s new 62kWh LEAF powertrain was announced today at CES 2019 in Las Vegas and we are on hand to get all of the details.
The new LEAF is now entering a more crowded EV market than when the LEAF debuted almost a decade ago, but Nissan’s long pedigree with EV buyers will certainly help it win customers. But is this the EV that Nissan should have created a long time ago?
Anthony Levandowski has had quite the run recently. The autonomous driving prodigy worked at Google for almost a decade and was an integral part of its autonomous driving efforts that spun from Google (X) into Waymo. In 2016, he exited from Google’s Waymo to found a startup called Otto which was snapped up by Uber that is partially owned by Google Ventures. Unfortunately for all involved, Levandowski left the GooglePlex with more than just his belongings and ended up the main defendant in a rare Waymo vs. Uber civil case which was settled where Google got an even bigger chunk of Uber and a promise from Uber not to use its tech.
In the meantime, Levandowski established a religious organization called ‘Way of the Future’ to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence. It reads like a “I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords”.
Now he’s back with an interesting startup called Pronto.ai that promises to change autonomous driving with a new product and what appears to be a new world record for autonomous driving…
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Watch out Chevy Bolt!? Hyundai dropped a bomb on us today with the announcement of the US price of the Kona Electric with 64kWh battery and 258 mile range. Are you sitting down?
If you’ve ever seen a shipping container, there’s a good chance it has said “Maersk” on the side. That’s because the Danish group AP Moller Maersk is the world’s largest container shipping company and ships one out of every five containers worldwide. Those many football field sized, mini cities on water also run on bunker fuel, which is the leftover hot dog parts of the oil world, making its transportation significantly dirtier than even typical hydrocarbons like gas or even diesel.
But that’s set to change as the line pledges to go carbon neutral by 2050. And while that initially may sound like too little, too late there is a lot of good news to unpack here…
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As Tesla moves its Model 3 output to Western Europe, it has alerted its first customers there to configure their Model 3s. We’ve got reports from France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Netherlands. Spain and a few others. Only the performance long-range AWD and the long-range AWD models can be ordered at the moment for delivery in February.
While we were disappointed that Nissan decided to cancel their unveiling of the new 60kWh LEAF at the Los Angeles Motor Show last week as its now former CEO was being brought up on charges, we were content to learn all about the very interesting Nissan Energy group.
Fast forward to this week and we’re hearing that the expected 60kWh Nissan LEAF will be coming at CES with some possible surprises in tow.
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Well folks, November is almost over and with it comes the last day to order a Tesla Model 3 and be guaranteed delivery in 2018 with the full $7500 federal tax credit. If you were considering ordering one, today is a good time.
I would of course be appreciative if you used my referral code which nets you 6 months of free supercharging.
If you are waiting for the $35,000 model or your current lease to run out, let me do some explaining why it might make sense to order ahead of time as well…
I’d be hard pressed to find a more exciting car here at the LA Auto Show than Audi’s announcement of its sport-back e-tron GT. Although the teasers and camo version drip released over the previous 2 days made it out to be a S7 sportback body plopped onto a 2019 Porsche Taycan powertrain, we were pumped to see more.
Seeing the real thing in person at an Audi event this week, which we were brought to on Audi’s generous dime, was an experience unto itself.
When looking for the perfect ebike, there are a lot of things to consider. There’s price, weight, capabilities, performance and something that’s hard to quantify: feel. That’s a combination of factors that is affected by the geometry of the bike, its materials, components and other nuances. I took a ride on the crowd-funded Carbo folding bike this week and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt as comfortable on a folding bike in the city as I did on this extremely light, yet powerful ebike.