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 Electrekin 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.
Out of a field of ZERO full electrics, the 2014 Honda Accord won what can only be called the “bogus 2014 Green Car of the Year”
LOS ANGELES — It’s that time of year again, where the Green Car of the Year is announced at the LA Auto Show. This year, the honor goes to the the Honda Accord, chosen from a field of 5 finalists that included the Audi A6 TDI, BMW 328d, Mazda3, and Toyota Corolla.
The Accord was chosen for its because it offers a reasonably efficient conventional gasoline model, up to 50 mpg from its hybrid variant, and an impressive 115 mpg combined equivalent from its plug-in hybrid model. The Green Car Journal’s panel, which is responsible for choosing the Green Car of the Year, stated that the Accord’s availability to the mass market, flexibility where power-train choices are concerned, and value bumped it to the top of the list. Last year, the Ford Fusion and its Hybrid and Plug-in Energi variants were chosen for similar reasons.
What a joke.
If you want a real winner, check out the Chevy Spark Electric which costs under $20,000 after Federal credits and can be leased for under $200/month. It has an 80+ mile range, 0-60 in 7 seconds and over 400lbs of torque. A real. Green. Game. Changer.
That’s my Green car of the year and it doesn’t even run on gasoline.
Kind of a no-brainer IMO. Fortune doesn’t mention it but Musk has taken to social media and direct communication with the public unlike any CEO and certainly any Car/Aerospace CEO of our time. His honest and often overly transparent views have managed to turn media controversy into positives for the company.
Also throw in the fact that he’s CEO of two game-changing companies and the Chairman and largest stakeholder of another: Solar City….and if he wasn’t so busy, he’d be building a ultra high-speed hyperloop train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Also he doesn’t seem to be too terribly pretentious..and there you go.
FORTUNE NAMES ELON MUSK THE 2013 FORTUNE BUSINESSPERSON OF THE YEAR
FORTUNE’s 2013 List of the Top 50 People in Business Includes: The “Activist Investor” at #2; “Pony” Ma Huateng at #3; Angela Ahrendts at #4; Jeff Bewkes and Reed Hastings tie for #5
(New York, November 21, 2013) – Today, FORTUNE reveals its annual choice for Businessperson of the Year and names Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX and Chairman of SolarCity, the 2013 FORTUNE Businessperson of the Year. Chris Anderson, TED Curator, writes the cover story on Musk, comparing him to Steve Jobs. FORTUNE also reveals its list of the Top 50 People in Business for 2013, which includes Pony Ma, Angela Ahrendts, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Warren Buffett, Marissa Mayer, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. FORTUNE Editors write: “Fortune’s annual list is filled with executives who defied expectations (buying a newspaper, leaving luxury for Apple), executed big turnarounds, and delivered stellar results for their shareholders.”
It is no Secret that Elon Musk is a triple threat: The co-founder of PayPal has gone on to disrupt aeronautics with Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX; shake up the auto business with Tesla Motors; and retool the energy sector with SolarCity. (He is CEO of the first two companies and chairman and largest shareholder of the third.) But 2013 was an especially notable year for Musk, as investors and consumers wholeheartedly embraced his ideas and vision. After a rocky start a decade ago, Tesla has emerged to become the world’s most prominent maker of all-electric cars. Revenue at Tesla is up more than 12-fold for the first three quarters of the year, and the company is on track to top $2 billion in sales in 2013. The stock is up more than fourfold year to date, and that’s after giving back some gains when recent vehicle sales missed some analysts’ estimates. (A series of troubling car battery fires has not helped.) And just as SpaceX has helped reignite interest in space exploration, Musk’s plans for a “hyperloop” between San Francisco and Los Angeles got Americans buzzing about ultra-high-speed transit when Musk released his design plans in August. Musk’s creations have already made him tremendously wealthy — Bloomberg Wealth says he is worth $7.7 billion — but it is his audacity and tenacity that make him Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year.
Not terribly surprising considering the year and the press. Congrats! Expand Expanding Close
Probably not a huge surprise for anyone following the electric car industry or the auto industry in general: Tesla Model S cars are loved by their customers. In fact, Consumer Reports shows it tested better than any other automobile in a customer feedback survey.
Lots of people love their cars. But as we’ve consistently seen in our yearly owner-satisfaction ratings, the vehicles that inspire the strongest loyalty are ones that are fun to drive, deliver great fuel economy, are fashionably green, or envelop you in a high-tech, luxurious driving environment. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Tesla Model S all-electric luxury sports sedan, which provides all of those attributes in one car, topped our latest ratings with the highest satisfaction score we’ve seen in years: 99 out of 100.
While the $89,650 Model S isn’t for everyone, we did draw about 600 survey responses from owners of 2012 and 2013 models. Moreover, its owner-satisfaction score matches the near-perfect 99 overall test score that the Tesla earned in our test program, which made it our highest-rated vehicle. It stands out for its innovative design, outstanding performance, surprising practicality, long 200-mile-plus driving range for an electric car, and low driving costs.
Our annual owner-satisfaction survey, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, asks Consumer Reports magazine and Web subscribers a key, revealing question, “Considering all factors (price, performance, reliability, comfort, enjoyment, etc.), would you get this car if you had it to do all over again?” A model’s score is based on the percentage of respondents who answered “definitely yes.” This year, we received responses on about 350,000 vehicles and more than 285 models and variants spanning the 2011 through 2014 model years.
Luxury carmaker BMW has orders for nearly 10,000 of its i3 electric cars, the first of which were delivered in Germany last week, the company’s global sales chief, Ian Robertson, said at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Wednesday.
Robertson also said the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car due to be introduced in mid-2014 has sold out for its first year of availability. He did not say how many the company will sell in that first year.
Mostly just superficial but display hardware might be upgradable to better specs somewhere down the line. Also the rear drivetrain removal looks fairly easy to replace.
Nice looking Smart Car-like design from Yamaha. Better yet, a full electric option.
Engine choice is currently open–but both gasoline and electric options could be explored, Murray’s iStream process accommodating both. The concept vehicle is electric, and weighs just 1,609 lbs.
iStream itself will be the star of the show, vastly reducing the cost and time associated with building such a vehicle, while tube frame construction makes it near-endlessly adaptable. These should contribute to a lower bottom line.
As reported this weekend, Tesla has announced that it has removed the Air Suspension lowering as part of a three step plan to deal with the media attention. The whole Blog post is worth a read but here are the important bits:
First, we have rolled out an over-the-air update to the air suspension that will result in greater ground clearance at highway speeds. To be clear, this is about reducing the chances of underbody impact damage, not improving safety. The theoretical probability of a fire injury is already vanishingly small and the actual number to date is zero. Another software update expected in January will give the driver direct control of the air suspension ride height transitions.
Second, we have requested that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conduct a full investigation as soon as possible into the fire incidents. While we think it is highly unlikely, if something is discovered that would result in a material improvement in occupant fire safety, we will immediately apply that change to new cars and offer it as a free retrofit to all existing cars. Given that the incidence of fires in the Model S is far lower than combustion cars and that there have been no resulting injuries, this did not at first seem like a good use of NHTSA’s time compared to the hundreds of gasoline fire deaths per year that warrant their attention. However, there is a larger issue at stake: if a false perception about the safety of electric cars is allowed to linger, it will delay the advent of sustainable transport and increase the risk of global climate change, with potentially disastrous consequences worldwide. That cannot be allowed to happen.
Third, to reinforce how strongly we feel about the low risk of fire in our cars, we will be amending our warranty policy to cover damage due to a fire, even if due to driver error. Unless a Model S owner actively tries to destroy the car, they are covered. Our goal here is to eliminate any concern about the cost of such an event and ensure that over time the Model S has the lowest insurance cost of any car at our price point. Either our belief in the safety of our car is correct and this is a minor cost or we are wrong, in which case the right thing is for Tesla to bear the cost rather than the car buyer.
Multiple drivers are reporting that after the latest 5.8 Firmware update, their Model S with Smart Air Suspension is no longer lowering at highway speeds. It is impossible to say for sure without a statement from Tesla (requested), but it would appear that the move is in response to the recent accidents where debris from the highway catches under the Model S, puncturing the battery armor and eventually causing a fire.
Similar incidents happened in Seattle and Nashville over the past two months which have rocked Tesla’s share price. The odds of a Tesla fire still fall way below the national average for internal combustion engines but the media firestorm has been intense. At least one driver isn’t happy about the change:
AmpedRealtor
I paid money for the air suspension because it offers a more aerodynamic profile at freeway speeds as well as improved range. That is why I bought it. Now Tesla is taking that away, so I would like my money back. How can they legally remove a feature that I paid for, after I paid for it? That seems like stealing, doesn’t it?
Lowering the Model S at highway speeds was meant to lower the drag and improve speed and battery range. It isn’t certain how this will affect Model S owners of if a manual over-ride will be put in place to replace this pulled feature.
Update:Tesla has acknowledged the change noting Another software update expected in January will give the driver direct control of the air suspension ride height transitions.
We’ve long joined makers and tinkerers in warning that, as software becomes a part of more and more everyday devices, DRM and the legal restrictions on circumventing it will create hurdles to standard repairs and even operation. In the U.S., a car manufacturer who had wrapped its onboard software in technical restrictions could argue that attempts to get around those are in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—specifically section 1201, the notorious “anti-circumvention” provisions. These provisions make it illegal for users to circumvent DRM or help others do so, even if the purpose is perfectly legal otherwise. Similar laws exist around the world, and are even written into some international trade agreements—including, according to a recently leaked draft, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
Since the DMCA became law in 1998, Section 1201 has resulted in countless unintended consequences. It has chilled innovation, stifled the speech of legitimate security researchers, and interfered with consumer rights. Section 1201 came under particular fire this year because it may prevent consumers from unlocking their own phones to use with different carriers. After a broadly popular petition raised the issue, the White House acknowledged that the restriction is out of line with common sense.
* A wipers service mode. Who would’ve know? 🙂
* A reset TPMS button. Nice.
* MAC Address display in Wifi settings. Who was it again asking for this to setup their router’s MAC filter?
+ all the goodies which were already in 5.6, of course.
Also – it seems to accelerate a little smoother all of a sudden but that’s likely just me being overly sensitive.
Official statement from Tesla Motors, on what happened today:
“There was a failure in a low pressure aluminum casting press. Three employees were injured by hot metal from that press. We are making sure that they receive the best possible care.”
It isn’t certain if there was a fire at all, though there were many reports of a fire based on the fire trucks on the scene (which were likely precautionary).
One of the better interviews I’ve seen addressing much of what’s in the media today. Stay for the answer to the question of whether or not Musk would take the Microsoft CEO role.
In a recent Esquire article, environmentalist/activist/actor George Glooney relayed his bad experiences with his original Tesla Roadster which he later auctioned off for $99,000 for charity
“Hey, where’s the Tesla?” I said when I was leaving his house. I was just giving him shit; I didn’t know if he had a Tesla or not, and was trying to see if even George Clooney was susceptible to Hollywood cliché.
“I had a Tesla. I was one of the first cats with a Tesla. I think I was, like, number five on the list. But I’m telling you, I’ve been on the side of the road a while in that thing. And I said to them, ‘Look, guys, why am I always stuck on the side of the fucking road? Make it work, one way or another.’ ”
Musk, in an attempt to set the record straight, tweeted the following tonight:
An eight-year-old girl, living near a major road in the Jiangsu Province of Eastern China, has become the youngest person in China, and possibly in the world, to be diagnosed with lung cancer caused by pollution—the cause of her disease according to Chinese officials. And last month, the World Health Organization classified air pollution as a major human carcinogen.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, motor vehicles produce roughly one-half of pollutants like VOCs, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. Seventy-five percent of carbon monoxide emissions come from automobiles. In urban areas, harmful automotive emissions are responsible for anywhere between 50 and 90 percent of air pollution. All told, that’s quite a lot of air pollution coming from our vehicles. When there is more scientific evidence proving that we are all poisoning ourselves, perhaps there will be a bigger push for electric cars.
The WSJ reminds us about America’s energy illiteracy with the EPA’s cost of energy calculations. The above graph should be plastered everywhere in the world not only because of where prices now stand – it costs almost 4 times as much on average to drive with gasoline as it does with Electric – but also looking at the trend. Petroleum is getting more expensive far faster than electric.
With solar, wind, hydro and other methods of getting electricity also booming, there is no shortage of supply compared to the finite amount of petroleum we can get from shale, deepwater drilling and arctic refuges. Expand Expanding Close
As part of the 5.6 update, my Tesla reminds me quite often to set up my home Wifi (hey, I tried!). It is interesting to see what they use as bait however to keep me coming back.
I would really love to see some caching done on maps – if just the 2 miles around my house were cached, I’m not sure I’d use a quarter of the data I currently use. Downloading music would also be nice as the GSM network in Westchester NY is kind of a joke. A Google Play All Access type of model would be nice – something where I could download a library from the web (or even my home NAS!) and have it stored locally. Currently about half of my listening on Slacker is filled with skips and starts due to poor network connectivity.
As for other features, I’m assuming Tesla will stay away from video on the big screen but it would be nice if they hooked up with Audible for books on tape or other news orgs (NPR?) for audio feeds and podcasts.
I am thankful to God that I was totally uninjured in any way from this impact. Had I not been in a Tesla, that object could have punched through the floor and caused me serious harm. From the time of impact of the object until the time the car caught fire was about five minutes. During this time, the car warned me that it was damaged and instructed me to pull over. I never felt as though I was in any imminent danger. While driving after I hit the object until I pulled over, the car performed perfectly, and it was a totally controlled situation. There was never a point at which I was anywhere even close to any flames.
“I probably see a Tesla Model S every day,” said Atherton City Manager George Rodericks. “Atherton is 100 percent residential. We don’t have any public charging stations. We don’t even have a grocery store. But driving around town, you sure do see a lot of them. I’d love to see the Model S be used for Atherton’s police cars.”
Best way to catch a tesla is with another Tesla. Doesn’t sound like the town is hurting for money.
V
