California Governor Jerry Brown sent a letter to Republican Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson last week over comments Carson made about climate change while recently visiting California.
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and climate science denier, complained that environmentalists don’t present “overwhelming science” when talking about climate change being man-made. Brown’s letter suggests that Carson should review the Synthesis Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which he attached to the letter in a flash drive.
You can access the report and support materials here.
In a letter sent to the California Attorney General and US Attorneys, Consumer Watchdog, a consumer and taxpayer protection organization, is asking for an investigation in the oil industry’s mail scheme campaign against the fuel reduction provision in California’s Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act.
Last week we reported on California state Democrats dropping the fuel reduction part of the bill, which would have call for a 50% reduction in fuel consumption in the state by 2030 through increase fuel efficiency and more electric vehicles, for which Senate Democratic Leader Kevin De Leon directly blamed the lobbying effort. But Consumer Watchdog is going further by saying that the oil industry’s campaign used “mail fraud”. Expand Expanding Close
When Google originally showcased the newer low-speed “cute-mobile” self-driving car, it mentioned a goal of having about 100 of them on the road for testing within a couple years. Now, as the company is bringing its low-speed electric prototypes to Austin a year later, Sarah Hunter, head of policy for Google [X], has revealed that the company is expanding production of the cars (via The Guardian). Hunter says that Google is now producing at least a “few hundred” and hints at a potential future of mass-production… Expand Expanding Close
During a press conference late Wednesday night, Governor Jerry Brown announced that California Democratic lawmakers abandoned the drastic fuel economy provision from the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act, which is currently being discussed in the State Assembly.
The provision in question was a requirement for a reduction of 50 percent of fuel used in cars and trucks in the state by 2030, which would have forced automakers to improve fuel efficiency and offer more electric vehicles in the state of California. Expand Expanding Close
Over the weekend we reported that GM pushed the nationwide release of the 2016 Volt to next year and would only sell the car in CARB states in the meantime. Yesterday the company confirmed to Auto News that they simply don’t plan on releasing the 2016 model outside of their top EV markets, which coincidentally are mainly CARB states. Instead the company will release the 2017 version early for a nationwide launch. Expand Expanding Close
This is a great listen if you want to know the history behind the NUMMI plant in Fremont California where Tesla currently builds its cars. But this is about its past life, the only mention of Tesla is literally the last word.
Tesla is going to make a home battery announcement on April 30th. It will be a big deal. But it isn’t hard to find some of the details on the batteries Tesla is going to offer. Analysts, like above^ are claiming to have “secret info” on the announcement: Tesla secretly tested its battery solution with 300 customers.
But that info and much more is available on Solar City’s website. In fact, Tesla’s Home Batteries including pictures and lots of details are all hidden in plain sight:
Tesla will announce a consumer battery pack for running a house in the coming months
Yes, we’re going to do — we’re going to unveil some of the Tesla home battery consumer battery that will be for you using and people’s houses or businesses, fairly soon. We have to design and it should start going into production probably about six months or so. We’ll probably got to wait to have sort of product availing it’s probably in the next month or two. It’s really great. I’m really excited about it.
If you’ve talked to Solar City, they may have provided you with the specs of Tesla’s prototype battery:
Tesla will certainly announce some new innovations that perhaps differentiate them from other batteries. Being able to Supercharge your Model S at home would be nice. Perhaps a Webb/App controller with some novel uses would be good.
I’d like to see it compared against home generators which cost a lot more, even before considering the savings against time of use metering in power. We’ll be on hand on the 30th to see what is on offer.
In June, we broke ground just outside Reno, Nevada on a site that could potentially be the location for the Gigafactory. Consistent with our strategy to identify and break ground on multiple sites, we continue to evaluate other locations in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. The final site for the first Gigafactory will be determined in the next few months, once we have full visibility and agreement on the relevant incentives and processes for enabling the Gigafactory to be fully operational to meet the timing for Model 3. We see these concurrent efforts as prudent. This vehicle will be
our third-generation product and will substantially broaden the addressable market for Tesla, helping to accelerate the transition towards sustainable transportation. Any potentially duplicative investments are minor compared to the revenue that could be lost if the launch of Model 3 were affected by any delays at our primary Gigafactory site.
Conference call will be at 5:30 here. Stock is down in after hours on unit shipment numbers.
Oh lordy. The press has gotten ahold of a lunker with its latest TESLA RECALL! meme. Unfortunately for the sensational, Tesla has already announced (last week) that it would be replacing the NEMA 14-50 adapters on its built-in charging cables (pictured above, circled). It also issued a software update that would step down charging if it had detected thermal resistance. Here’s the official letter (PDF).
The charger connectors, which tether Tesla-issued cables to wall outlets, will be mailed out in the next two weeks, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in an interview today.
“These are very rare events, but occasionally the wiring isn’t done right,” Musk said. “We want people to have absolute comfort, so we’re going to be providing them with an upgraded adapter.”
Tesla fell 2.6 percent to $143.72 at 12:20 p.m.
Tesla also upgraded the Model S firmware last month to prevent cars from drawing too much power from inadequate wiring.
At first blush, you might be thinking (as I had) that this is silly. My house is wired properly so I shouldn’t ever have issues like the person in California whose garage caught on fire after a short in the wiring in November.
But what if you go to a vacation rental or visit the family/relatives for a weekend. Can you be sure that the electrician that did their wiring was competent?
Good on Tesla for covering this; ‘Short sighted’ on investors for seeing this as a sign of weakness and not strength.
What you are looking at above is the state of the Tesla Supercharger network on The last day of 2013/first day of 2014. Tesla counts 50 Superchargers in the US (1 per state!) and another 14 in Europe. While Elon Musk originally planned to take his family on a Christmas holiday across the country, there are still some rather big holes to fill.
Those holes all fall in the “coming soon” category and if you take a look at this helpful 3rd party map, you can see a lot of the country is still being built.
Tesla rejiggered its Supercharger map today moving Fall and Winter 2013 into a “Coming Soon” category. Fall is a few weeks from being over and it was clear Tesla wouldn’t be able to make the deadline on many of its stations, especially in the east coast where things have all but stalled in the Supercharger front. Expand Expanding Close
Tesla today officially announced the Springfield Oregon Supercharger had opened thereby allowing Tesla owners to travel the whole West Coast of the US without spending a penny.
In an effort to spur lackluster sales of electric cars, California, New York and six other states said on Thursday that they would work jointly to adopt a range of measures, including encouraging more charging stations and changing building codes, to make it easier to own an electric car.
The goal, they said, was to achieve sales of at least 3.3 million vehicles that did not have any emissions by 2025.
The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.
Great find from @mgillet onTwitter. This appears to be a Tesla dashboard at the headquarters showing significant growth in charging over the past few months. More importantly, we some highly anticipated charging stations ‘coming soon’. Probably most exciting for Tesla is the Oregon and northern California stations that will close the I5 corridor meaning the West Coast will be covered. Also two stations on the California/Arizona border will allow trips to/from Phoenix and LA/San Diego.
You’ll notice that two stations, one in Colorado and one in Texas, are lit up even though Tesla hasn’t pushed to the Supercharger Station website Map, below.
Texans will get two more Supercharger stations in Eastern Texas linking them to Arkansas and Louisiana. East coasters will get a couple in Northern New Jersey as well as Virginia and North Carolina allowing folks in Vermont/New Hampshire to travel to the Carolinas and vice versa.
Some fun facts:
Fremont (Tesla Factory) and Hawthorn in SoCal seem to be far and away the busiest Superchargers with Gilroy coming in third over the last 30 days.
Unsurprisingly, most people put 20-40kWh into their Teslas during a stop.
1576 cars visited superchargers in the last week
Almost 4 million miles have been charged at Supercharging stations…
That equates to 14,000 MWh…
Which has saved nearly 160,000 gallons of gas.
Compare with the current map as of today, 10/21/2013:
Not much not to like here. How does $27,500 go for a $199/month lease? Add in the $7500 tax credit. I’ll be interested to see how low that 82 mile range gets in the winter – oh you can only get on in California and Oregon which have mild winters so we’ll have to wait awhile and see. Expand Expanding Close
California Governor Jerry Brown sent a letter to Republican Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson last week over comments Carson made about climate change while recently visiting California.
