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.
I was on hand yesterday for the ribbon-cutting of EVolve NY’s first operable electric vehicle fast charging station in LaGrangeville, New York. The location, at a Tops supermarket adjacent to the Taconic Parkway, is about halfway between New York City and the state capital in Albany. NYPA plans to blanket the state in these DC fast charging stations which will allow New Yorkers to travel within the state on electricity without excuses.
Not everyone has a few thousand bucks to drop on an electric bike so today I wanted to take a look at two of the least expensive, full-sized ebikes from Ancheer in both mountain bike and foldable formats. At around $600+ at Amazon, what compromises were needed to get to this price, and are they still a good fit?
If you are an EV owner with a dryer in your garage, you’ve probably dreamed up the NeoCharge product already. And if you have a second EV, you’ve surely needed one rather than calling an electrician to run a second 240V line. What is this black magic device, exactly?
Last year, I reviewed the Gazelle CityZen T9 ebike and thought it was a fantastic offering for those people content with 20mph assist speeds on smoother roads. But as someone who commutes on rougher backcountry roads, I much prefer getting close to 30mph before the electric assist cuts off. That not only means a Class 3 capable motor but some other improvements are necessary to the bike.
Today we are looking at the answer to most of my concerns with the T9: Gazelle’s Medeo T10+
This is an ongoing journal of my first few weeks with Model Y. Check out Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3, too.
One of the most important jobs for our Model Y is getting the whole family up to our summer/ski condo in Vermont from our home outside of NYC. The trip is around 180 miles. Our Model X 90D would get such poor range that we’d almost always have to make a Supercharger stop along the way in order to make it with confidence. I should note that the route is quite curvy and hilly, and the last leg is climbing a mountain, so it isn’t a straight shot by any means.
So one of the things I’m hoping to get from the Model Y is the ability to make it the whole way comfortably, without charging. To make it more interesting, we added bikes to the back, using our freshly installed tow hitch. Would the Model Y be able to make it?
This is an ongoing journal of my first week with Model Y. See Day 1 here.
Getting the Model Y was super easy, and you could tell this was a well thought out process on Tesla’s part. All of the money had been taken care of beforehand, and I even had a pretty significant credit since Tesla dropped the price by $3,000 between payment and pickup. Like I said before, I tried to get FSD for $7,000, but Tesla charged me $8,000, so I’ll decide later if I want that.
Compare that to my Chevy experience where it took two full days to get the Bolt sold to me at MSRP, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never visit a traditional dealership again. Oh, and don’t get me started on the local Toyota dealer.
With COVID-19, there are some nuances to the delivery experience, but here’s how it went down:
Over the next week or so, I’ll be documenting my Tesla Model Y buying experience along with first impressions of the car.
The end of my 2017 Model X three-year lease would have been August 11, and I tried to line up my Model Y delivery time as close as possible. However, Tesla representatives said my Model Y would arrive on July 19, and if I didn’t pick it up then (or within a three-day window), I’d have to jump to the back of the queue and wait until September or later. I agreed to take delivery on Sunday, July 19.
Tesla called me on the 17th to tell me my Model Y was a week late…
When BMW’s Mini announced that it would finally bring back the Mini Electric a full decade after the car had been previewed in limited release for potential EV owners, there was some excitement in the air. The Mini has always represented a fun, exciting, and compact car that could be quite popular in an EV form.
The record scratch moment came when it announced a range of barely 110 EPA miles and that its 32.6 kWh battery size was actually smaller than the Mini E demonstration car that people loved a decade ago.
Fast forward to this week when I finally got to drive, and to my surprise, really enjoy, the Mini SE…
VanMoof, the Dutch company that specializes in very futuristic Dutch-style electric bikes has a new $2,000 S3 model that we’ve had a few weeks to take for a spin. While we marveled at a lot of the design and technology of this prototype bike, I can conclude that it isn’t for everyone, particularly if you’ve got long steep hills to conquer or want to travel above 20mph. Expand Expanding Close
Porsche today in China announced the Taycan RWD base model and was surprisingly tight-lipped about whether the car would ever make it to the US or even Europe. The car is Porsche’s longest-range electric vehicle with 489 km of NEDC range, which is equivalent to just over 303 miles, but NEDC is notoriously lenient on miles compared to EPA, so we’d expect closer to 250 miles here… if it actually comes to the US market(!!)
Like a lot (2) of early Chevy Bolt owners, I gave up my three-year lease recently and surrendered the 238-mile compact EV to my local Chevy dealer. It is the first time I’ve been back to the dealer since I picked up the car and nothing had changed. Mine was, again, the only EV on the lot.
I got an extra month because NY car dealers were closed for the pandemic, but I didn’t do much extra driving, and GM Financial has been wishy-washy on whether they are going to bill me extra for not being able to turn it in. I asked both GM Financial and the dealer if I could buy the car out at a reasonable price months ago. Both only offered me the sticker price, which was a non-starter at more than a new 2020 Bolt.
And that’s a theme I encountered with GM and the Bolt. I really loved the car, but the company behind it was a whole lot harder to love.
Both of these products come from established EV charging product makers and have Wifi connectivity for updates and monitoring your charge. Spoiler alert, I can easily recommend either but they do have some significant differences so prepare for a deep dive. And if you are a Tesla owner, a Tesla wall adapter might make more sense but these can save you money…
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been quite vocal both on Twitter and at last night’s earnings call about the COVID-19 shutdown. Musk is in favor of reopening the US immediately and thinks the positives in doing so outweigh the negatives. There has been both positive and negative reaction to this, but we wanted to see how our readers felt. Please vote and comment below.
If you’ve somehow missed the Tweets or commentary from last night’s earnings call, we’ve summed up below.
Tesla cleaned house in the 2020 Kelley Blue Book Luxury Brand Image awards announced today. In fact, if it weren’t for an aberration in the “Most Trusted” category, Tesla would have gotten the full 6 category sweep.
In the latestset of Tesla Model Y teardowns, we see that there is a significant amount of potential human room in the rear area. This is particularly true due to the large cutout underneath the trunk floor, which could offer plenty of legroom to seat adults in the third row… if it were backwards. But will Tesla make its Model Y third row rear-facing like the Model S, or the more traditional forward-facing variety like the Model X? Let’s discuss…
Hi folks, I’m currently flying back from Detroit after the electric car event. We did a bunch of posts about the EV news coming out of the event, but there are tons of nuances to be covered. I had a firsthand look at a dozen unreleased electric vehicles from GM, but we couldn’t take any pictures or videos. GM said they would provide images and video afterward, but nothing they provided really shows off these vehicles and technology in a way that we saw in person.
GM didn’t just show off the new 2021 Chevy Bolt EV today, they unleashed the long-rumored more crossover version of the Bolt called the EUV…and it came with some surprises along the way.
Fresh off our GM electrification media and analyst tour, where we weren’t allowed to take pictures or video, I had some time to sit in the redesigned 2021 Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV. Below, I’ll discuss changes to the Bolt and will post a second article to cover the new, longer Chevy Bolt EUV.
We got to spend 400 miles’ worth of Interstate time in the Porsche Taycan a few weeks ago. But as more people are getting their hands on the Taycan (find local dealer test drive), we’re starting to see some new scenarios developing, and comparisons are obviously being made to Tesla’s current flagship vehicle, the Model S P100D.
Porsche (finally!) invited us out on a drive of their flagship EV, the Taycan Turbo and Turbo S this week (find local dealer test drive). The ride was from the Daytona motor speedway to the Porsche Experience Center in South Atlanta, a distance of 450 or so Interstate miles. The car I was driving was still a pre-production model destined to be sent back to Germany and scrapped (the horror!). Almost all of the hardware was final version however and the model I was driving was a Taycan Turbo with Turbo S wheels. Let’s take a closer look at this bad boy…
Nissan flew us out to Las Vegas during CES 2020 and put us up, allowing us to get a first-hand drive of the new e-4ORCE AWD technology going into their upcoming Ariya platform vehicles. We got to drive the new technology around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway – a place where exotic supercars are rented out the to wealthy with a backdrop of the Strip and F-35s flying overhead out of Nellis Air Force Base. It was quite the scene.
