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.
After my initial pickup/intro of the Kia Soul EV, I’ve spent the last week driving the vehicle as my daily driver. I normally drive a 2012 Prius Plug-in or a 2013 Tesla Model S so I know my way around EVs but this was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to really dig deep into both a Kia branded vehicle and a 100-mile range Chademo electric vehicle. I’ll spoil it a little saying that I was pleasantly surprised …
We obviously follow the climate change ‘debate’ pretty closely here and as the cause moves into popular culture, we’re here to cheer it on. Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood will hit the National Geographic Channel on October 31st,
In the clip screenshot above and embedded below, it appears that DiCaprio is touring the Tesla Gigafactory 1 outside of Reno Nevada. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is tells him that 100 of these factories are needed to remove fossil fuels from the global energy equation and move to sustainable energy.
Also making appearances in the movie are Barack Obama, Pope Francis, Bill Clinton and John Kerry, among others.
It has been a few months since our last in depth EV review with the 2016 Chevy Volt so we’re excited to jump into another in-depth review: The 2016 Kia Soul EV.
I got the Soul EV yesterday driven from New Jersey about 52 miles away. With most other sub-100 mile commuter EVs this would mean it was pretty much useless to me upon delivery before charging. But the Kia Soul has a 115 mile city range (93 on the highway), the biggest non-Tesla range currently available in the US, so I had about 60 miles to play with.
That’s great because my first test, the nearest CHAdeMO station, is around 20 miles from my house, and I want to make sure I can get back if this is a failed mission…
For a very special someone, today on eBay is the $188,000 2016 Tesla Model X P90D Ludicrous *One Of A Kind Project TifanyX* by Tsportline
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We don’t know much about the SolarCity solar panels that are coming out of the South Buffalo plant but Chairman and likely soon CEO of the combined Tesla/Solar City entity Elon Musk told investors last month:
“It’s a solar roof, as opposed to modules on a roof.”
Musk continued:
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When you send a vehicle which can hold 7 passengers comfortably with their luggage along the road from 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds, you are turning the supercar world upside down. When you do it in an EV, you know the world has changed.
DragTimes raced a Lamborghini Huracan, a $200,000 2-seat supercar that is basically a combustion engine on wheels, along a stretch of Florida roadway this weekend. When the Tesla Model S P100D and the Huracan both took off at the same time, the production Tesla quietly jumped out in front of the exotic supercar which was belching hydrocarbons as fast as it could. It stayed there well beyond 60mph and 100mph…
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…You’ve done the first 240 miles of California highway with relative ease. But how do you do the second 240 miles? And 3rd…? In short, can you drive cross country?
I’m more than impressed with the Chevy Bolt so far – it has exceeded my expectations by at least 20 miles of range and during my test drive at CES earlier this year in Las Vegas I found it to be very roomy and sporty and frankly a lot of fun to drive. Chevy should absolutely be applauded. We covered the recent reviews here.
But as an EV buyer, I’m not yet satisfied with Chevy’s solution to cross country driving…you know: the quintessential American Road Trip…
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Chevy today teased on its Facebook Page that it would be announcing the Bolt’s EV range tomorrow but asked readers to guess the range today. I don’t think you’ll get a free Bolt or anything but it’s a fun game to play…and we have a poll below for your guesses…
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Apple’s car plans appear to have hit yet another snag. Tonight the NYTimes is reporting that Apple is again rebooting the now infamous car project.
In a retrenchment of one of its most ambitious initiatives, Apple has shuttered parts of its self-driving car project and laid off dozens of employees, according to three people briefed on the move who were not allowed to speak about it publicly.
2016 has been an abysmal year for Apple’s car project if you believe the various reports from top news agencies. A timeline of Apple Car developments this year:
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According to a report from the Information, and confirmed by Tesla, Maps/Navigation Senior Engineering Manager Bill Chen has departed from the company. The report didn’t discuss the terms of the departure nor which party instigated the termination, but Mr. Chen’s department was under increasing pressure to develop its own Maps software including its Autopilot-focussed high precision maps.
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Audi Electromechanical rotary damper
Audi might not be the leader in electrical vehicles but the company is thinking outside of the box about ways to recover energy from driving. Today, the company announced a new “Electromechanical rotary damper” that would recover energy from vertical bumps in the road and turn that into an admittedly small amount of electricity to be used later.
Nissan today in Rio unveiled its BladeGlider “working prototype” which combines electric powertrain with a futuristic design and moderate 268 horsepower split between two rear 130kW electric motors. Max speed is quoted as nearly 200km/h (125 miles/hour), with 0-100km/h (0-62) taking less than five seconds. No information was given on the battery pack size but as this is a two model exhibition car, it is likely to differ in a big way from any possible related production car.
The system features torque vectoring, controlling the torque delivered to the driven wheels, improving the handling even further. With torque vectoring, if the car starts to understeer, it automatically sends more torque to the outside wheel to restore the handling balance. Designed to add to the driving experience rather than govern it, the torque vectoring system has three settings: off, agile and drift mode. Power is supplied by a high performance, five module lithium-ion 220kW battery. Bespoke cooling systems have been developed for both the battery and the motors.
Yesterday was quite a day in Reno. While we weren’t able to fire off our livestream as we’d hoped, we were able to gather a ton of information on the “Coolest Factory in the world” I’ll break down the new info, videos and imagery below:
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The Reno, Nevada Gigafactory is a key differentiator in both the energy storage and EV space and therefore, one of the big keys to Tesla’s future and it opens officially this week.
The good news is we’ll be on hand and will be broadcasting live throughout the events this week. Stay tuned to Electrek where the first news should be coming tonight and extend to tomorrow’s press-only show.
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Tesla’s Mountain View Supercharger has always been a little different from the rest. Not only is it located at the world-famous Computer History Museum – where Tesla sometimes holds events, but until recently, it was also running an experiment utilizing propylene-glycol-cooled supercharging cables…
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Elon Musk’s highly anticipated “Master Plan Part 2” is chock full of interesting new, but vague details on Tesla’s plans but probably one of the most exciting is the new SUV and pickup consumer vehicles included…
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Screenshot via supercharge.info
I recently complained about the inability to drive a Tesla direct from New York City up the Hudson River and to Montreal directly to the EV29 show, without going around Lake Champlain into Vermont. In the month since I complained, Tesla has opened up a Supercharger in Plattsburgh, NY near the Canadian border and it looks like another is being readied (image below via sheltz32tt) north of Albany in Queensbury near affluent Sarasota Springs. Now, I can move on to complaining about lighting up route 80 from New York to Cleveland thru Pennsylvania…
Tesla is also bolstering its Superchargers north of the border, today announcing another location in the heart of Montreal (Place Vertu Shopping Centre 3131 Cote Vertu Boulevard Montréal H4R 1Y8) and another in Magog (Carrefour Sante Globale 2381 Rue Principale Ouest Magog J1X 0J4) that will help Tesla owners in the Northeast US get to and from Quebec City.
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We’ve been hearing much about the upcoming v8.0 software update coming to the Tesla’s Model S and X line. Our sources have the beta but we’re now seeing screenshots posted to forums for the 1st time.
From the above shot, you can see the new look of the icons on the top row. Gone are colors and
Compare to the original top row:
and the 7.0 update top row:
What’s more interesting is the Media player app, shown below:
It appears that after almost 4 years of sales, Tesla is finally beginning to be able to meet demand for its high-end luxury cars. Battery production is ramping up at the Gigafactory and elsewhere, the Fremont car factory is firing on all cylinders (so to speak!), and Tesla’s sales, service, and Supercharger networks are all growing at scale across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
At this point, it would make a lot of sense for Tesla to create a car rental agency subsidiary. Here’s why:
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Hyperloop may not be coming to California anytime soon but that doesn’t mean other global municipalities aren’t investigating the super-fast, vacuum tube transportation system. This week, Hyperloop-One announced that it was in talks with Moscow-based Summa Group, a Russian port, telecom and oil business headed by mysterious billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov, to explore building the transportation system that is expected to eventually surpass the speed of sound.
At EV29 in Montreal today, BMW announced a stationary battery storage system not unlike the Tesla Powerwall that can expand with older BMW i3 22 kWh or 33kWh batteries as they become available to power the home. In the press shot above, it looks like the “2nd life” batteries were literally ripped out of the bottom of an i3 as opposed to Tesla’s slightly more elegant Powerwall packaging approach. The idea is that as these i3 car batteries lose a certain percentage of their charge/discharge capability over the years, they can be pulled out and put on a garage wall and keep the average American house, which uses 15-30kWh/day, lit up for a long time and indefinitely with solar panels recharging during the day…
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NASA today unveiled plans to spend the next decade working on electric planes under the ‘X-57’ moniker. The X-Plane program has traditionally been used by NASA to further aviation so this is a big deal more than just a pet project or some 3D renders.
petrol version
The plane which is also called ‘Maxwell’ to honor James Clerk Maxwell, the 19th century Scottish physicist who did groundbreaking work in electromagnetism, will be based on the Italian Tecnam P2006T, a very efficient 4 seat light aircraft (pictured above). NASA will do away with the wing and petrol engines and replace them with a super-efficient thinner wing and 14 electric motors. The smaller 12 motors will only be used for takeoffs and what we can probably assume is regen during landings. The larger 2 engines on the end of the wings will propel the plane during cruising which is expected to be a solid 175mph. The Tecnam has retractable wheels and a 1500-foot take off distance which should make it a good base for an EV makeover.
There are a lot of things to unpack here…
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As expected, Tesla announced a new Model S 60 today with a starting price point of $66,000 before Federal Tax in the US, under $60K after the $7500 tax credit. But Tesla really didn’t release a new car today – the company released a new software configuration and pricing model. That small change will let the automaker sell a lot more cars…
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