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.
If you weren’t already excited enough for the Tesla Model 3 delivery event later this month, Tesla referral program members may have got an additional reason to be excited this evening.
Inside the Tesla App, folks who’ve filled up their referrals got a “Secret Level: Next Gen Roadster” announcement badge…
A lot of folks have a big problem with the $30,000 base price (after $7500 incentive) of the Chevy Bolt when compared to ICE cars of the same class. I’d argue that comparing a Chevy Bolt to $20,000 Honda Fit or Ford Fiesta or Volkswagon Golf or even Chevy’s own Cruze hatchback isn’t fair. After all, the Bolt has 200 electrified horses under the hood with torque to match and at the very least, the Bolt should be compared with more expensive “hot hatch” versions of those cars which usually run about $10,000 over their base counterparts.
In a drag race this week, the Chevy Bolt was pitted against the reigning king of the Hot Hatch genre, the Volkswagon Golf GTI…
I’ve now had my Chevy Bolt for about 3 months and I’m still love with the car with every new day. However, there are some things that either have irked me from day one or that I’ve found bother me over time. In a lot of ways, the Chevy Bolt EV just works exactly like it should. Plug it in at night, you have 238 miles of range every morning. But like everything else, there are a list of areas that could use some improvement.
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Hello! It is time to reward our readers again with another contest. We’ve got our hands on a code for a free Radio Flyer Model S for kids (BTW there’s a new Pearl White Model) and want to give it away to one of our US readers. The contest is simple: Share this post on Twitter, Facebook or subscribe to our newsletter (or triple your chances and do all 3!). Remember you need to be following us on Twitter/Facebook for us to contact the winner.
We’ll pick the winner by Friday and will update this post at that time. Thanks again for reading Electrek!
Update: Congrats to Mark N from Nevada who shared on Facebook
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I’ve had my 2017 Chevy Bolt for over a month now and have been pleasantly surprised about how much it has to offer. Like I really, really love this car even months after our review. While I still prefer my twice as expensive 2013 Tesla Model S overall, there are a number of areas where the Bolt beats the Tesla – and I mean the 2013 Model S but also in many cases Tesla’s new/upcoming models as well. Some of these things Tesla could choose to fix, but most are inherent design decisions.
Also I should note before y’all head to the comments that we love all EVs here at Electrek and before a Tesla vs. Bolt fight breaks out remember that we’re all on the same “Team EV” here.
And with that, let’s look at some advantages of a 2017 Chevy Bolt EV…
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SmartCar announced a novel new way to connect to your Tesla today called TeslaBot. In a nutshell, it is a Facebook Chatbot that connects to your Tesla Model S or X via Tesla’s open APIs and can do much of what Tesla’s own app can do, often faster…
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I had the pleasure of joining the Trek team in New York City this morning for a small briefing and a ride over the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn on the new Trek Super Commuter 8S which due for consumers in the US later this Spring. What got us interested in this event wasn’t so much the Bosch 350W motor/500Wh battery technology but the marketing Trek was using in its campaign to sell this $5000 bike…
We all know the direct benefits of owning an electric vehicle – cleaner, cheaper, smoother travel, getting to drive in carpool lanes, tax rebates, not being a douchebag to the environment, etc.
But after owning EVs for 5 years now, I’ve run into some 10 benefits that people probably don’t think of when deciding between purchasing and EV, hybrid or internal combustion engine. Drumroll please:
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BMW of North America and the US National Parks Services had a lovely event at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, site of Edison’s West Orange, N.J., laboratory and home yesterday and Electrek was on the scene. The event was the announcement that BMW would be partnering with the National Park Foundation, National Park Service and Department of Energy to bring 100 EV charging stations to National Parks like this one. BMW will also be footing the electric bill for the first 6 months of use, making it free for customers. I have just one little complaint…
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Last month I had the opportunity to travel to beautiful Durham, North Carolina on Hyundai’s dime to check out the new IONIQ EV and hybrids. The IONIQ, you’ll recall, is a 3 car strategy from Hyundai aimed at the high-efficiency vehicle market traditionally dominated by Toyota’s Prius line.
Though the Prius-beating 58 mpg and nifty new 12V battery replacement technology in the IONIQ Hybrid was impressive, it’s the IONIQ Electric we’re all here to talk about. I spent the bulk of my time driving the EV – and boy was I pleasantly surprised…
Solar viability at Google’s Googleplex HQ
Today Google updated its Project Sunroof with some pretty striking data on approximately 60 million buildings and the viability for Solar Panels to power them. According to the search giant, almost 4 in 5 US homes are viable for solar panels with over 90% of homes in sunny states like Florida and California being viable. But even for houses in “not so sunny states” like Maine and Minnesota, over 60% of the homes surveyed were eligible to benefit from solar panels.
That’s a huge, untapped market for solar companies like Tesla’s SolarCity subsidiary…
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It’s not all bad news for US state governments in their dealing with electric vehicles. Today New York State, headed by Democrat Andrew Cuomo announced a new up to $2,000 rebate program for all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle buyers. That means the Model 3 New Yorkers reserved just got significantly cheaper.
The rebate will help make EVs more cost competitive with gas-powered cars at purchase (they are often already much cheaper to own when accounting for gas savings) and will go into effect on April 1st…
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TL;DR – The 2017 Prius Prime doesn’t deserve coverage on Electrek. While a significant improvement over its predecessor the Prius Plug-in, the Prime’s internal combustion engine continues to turn on unpredictably and it cannot function as a complete car without gasoline.
I’ve been a Toyota Prius owner for almost 8 years. I loved my 2008 Prius so much that I decided to step up my game and get a 2012 Prius Plug-in. I regret that now because we had also looked at the Chevy Volt but the rear seat room vs. the Volt’s 4 seat option won out.
The local Toyota dealership sold me on the Plug-in version of the Prius getting 12 miles of range before the ICE motor kicked in. For me, that would have taken care of my commute and my wife could have gotten to work, charged up and gotten home without ever using a drop of gasoline. For long trips we’d use the gasoline and still get the great 50+mpg mileage of a Prius. Perfect! I don’t need the 2012 Volt’s 43 miles of range. Except one thing: The Prius Plug-in doesn’t go 12 miles on electricity or, in my case, often even get out of the driveway on electricity…
And I found out this week that Toyota’s new Prius Prime, while certainly an improvement in many areas over the Plug-in it replaces, still doesn’t function like the EV it pretends to be…
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Even we were surprised when we heard the news that the Chevy Bolt EV would get 238 miles on a charge according to the EPA on a 60kWh battery. The “SubCompact Crossover”, as Chevy likes to call it, gets about 30 more miles of EPA range than Tesla’s huge, 7 seat Model S on the same battery capacity but without the low drag coefficient that the Tesla enjoys.
But some new Bolt EV drivers are finding they can really stretch out that mileage, especially in California where the weather is in the 60s or higher year round.
Earlier today, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick dropped off of US President Donald Trump’s advisory council. The reasons cited were because of immigration reform but Kalanick was also targeted for his previous support for Trump, Uber continuing to serve JFK airport during the recent taxi strike and the subsequent #DeleteUber campaign which caused 200,000 people to flee the service and boosted its competitor Lyft to the top of the app charts.
On Thursday, Mr. Kalanick gave his answer, stepping down from Mr. Trump’s economic advisory council. “There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration, but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that,” Mr. Kalanick wrote in an email to employees obtained by The New York Times.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also on that economic advisory council which has similarly hurt his reputation among some– I’d wager far fewer– and has also caused some Tesla Model 3 reservation holders to refund their deposits.
GM invited us to come to San Francisco for a new round of test drives of their new flagship all-electric vehicle: the Chevy Bolt EV. Note: The lovely folks at Chevy paid for our travel, hotel and fed us quite nicely. You can find significant discounts on the Chevy Bolt here.
I had mixed feelings when I first got inside the 2017 Chevy Bolt EV more than a year ago at CES 2016 and those mixed feelings persist today. My concerns aren’t about the engineering, technology or even the implementation of the vehicle. The Bolt is unequivocally the best $30,000 EV you can buy today (in some states + Canada) and for my money, the best car of any kind on the roads right now at its price point. GM/Chevrolet deserve a mountain of praise for delivering the first affordable EV with more range than anyone could hope to use on a daily basis.
But there are still some concerns…
Chris Lattner isn’t the only high profile Apple executive who departed for Tesla over the past month, rather than sticking around to work on Titan. Electrek has learned that Matt Casebolt, a high-profile Senior Director of Design for Apple’s Mac lineup left the company last month for a role at Tesla as Sr. Director Engineering, Closures & Mechanisms. A job meant for a man named Casebolt…
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We’ve already laid out our thoughts concerns with Faraday Future and its just announced FF91. The company’s got an uphill battle getting to production and it is hard to imagine how much this will car cost if/when it comes to market.
On one side, you’ve got tons of goodies and crazy styling with will add tons of cost. But the actual test car that can be driven actually looks kind of tame and the differences from the Model X are a lot more muted. That same Model X has been on sale for a year and the production model is only a hair slower than this Faraday FF91 prototype.
The ‘fastest electric car’ moniker that Faraday keeps throwing around is also a bit of a facepalm. If these were in production or even anywhere close, they might be able to say that but as prototype concepts, this thing is in the same class as the faster Rimac Concept one which is actually shipping. Heck, someone threw a beast of an electric engine in a rear wheel drive ’68 Mustang and got a sub-2 second 0-60 – so let’s lay off that talk.
But for now let’s just admire what this company has put together and maybe the bigger picture of what can be accomplished with an electric powertrain. Here’s a good look at that from YouTuber Marques Brownlee:
Earlier today, Chargepoint announced that they would have a new liquid-cooled 400kW charging station available this summer. In a subsequent video, Chargepoint also showed a Tesla charging handle in one of their stations which was quite a surprise, to us, anyway.
We went straight to the source and got an interview at CES with CEO Pasquale Romano to get all of the details…
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Update: We got to the bottom of the mystery with an interview with Chargepoint’s CEO
Today, Chargepoint announced a new 400kW charging capabilities that they say would add 100 miles of range per 15 minutes of charge. While high-end Tesla’s can get that kind of mileage gains (and more) with current 145kW chargers, this could be a big boon for the industry if it were applied to trucks and busses, for instance where the 400kW = 100 miles in 15 minutes math works.
Charging the Model S at a rate if 440miles of range per hour. God bless the @TeslaMotors Supercharger! pic.twitter.com/YKa4Iw5TWa
— Mat Watson (@matwatsoncars) October 28, 2014
However, this morning Chargepoint published a YouTube video with something far more interesting for Tesla owners and prospective owners.
We’re here, for better or worse, this is Faradays put up or shut up moment. We’ll be doing the play by play.
The Venue is pretty swank, it looks like people flew overnight to get here:
I am here at the faraday future event. Everyone is PUMPED pic.twitter.com/Gavk5W8UAD
— Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) January 4, 2017
The countdown has stopped and the music just got louder so something, anything has to happen…soon, right?
There’s a “reserve now” link which is live on the website
5k deposit, refundable, upgradeable to an “FF 91 alliance edition” which is limited to 300 units or you can do a ‘standard reservation’ with no money down and non-priority spot. The standard preorder literally just takes a button click and an email account on the site
Show begins in 1 minute (6:12PM PT)
6:15: Nick Samson recap time. very dramatic. 1400 Employees from 36 countries. MAke life better for the generations to come.
Some big words no cars yet tho…
1st look at the car:
Some charging specs:
200kw* DC charging (vs. Tesla’s current 145kW)
peak charge rate is 500 miles per hour
130kWh of battery life
370 miles of EPA range (LA to Silicon Valley with miles to spare) 400 miles at 55mph
1050 horsepower
0-60- 2.44 secs.
(livestream is up, embedded below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y8hUf0Np6k
(refresh for the latest)
nice Bolt parking job Woz
In the comment section of a long winded Facebook rant on the trials and tribulations of driving through Arizona’s pothole-laden roads and staying at pet-friendly hotels in Vegas, Apple’s Co-Founder and flip flopping EV enthusiast Steve Wozniak noted that he is now expecting his Chevy Bolt to become his main car. It will arrive next week as Chevy slowly ramps up deliveries in compliance car states – currently California and Oregon only.
We’ve, for some reason, documented Woz’s plight from Swarming his Supercharger station odysseys and his on again off again love affair with the Chevy Bolt…
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Volkswagen today is teasing some images of a new version of its electric minibus platform that it will reveal at the N. American Car Show in Detroit next month (if not sooner at CES). I know these are just a renderings of a preproduction model, but I have to say this gets me way more excited than last year’s EV Bus concept, the BUDD-E, which is apparently going to get built in 2020.
In the images above and 2 more below, you’ll see some iconic VW bus lines and logo mixed with some of those gaudy BUDD-E accents.
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US President-elect and environmental foil Donald Trump set up a Strategic and Policy Team on December 2nd made up of business leaders and chaired by Stephen Schwarzman Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone Financial Services. Most of the people on the original board were folks from traditional American “Blue Chip” companies including Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors.
Today, Along with Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, untraditional transportation leaders were added to the list: Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick, CEO and Co-Founder of Uber were announced via press release.
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