The World Energy Innovation Forum (WEIF) managed to secure not only an impressive lineup of industry leaders to speak at the event, but also quite a venue for this year’s conference. The forum will take place Wednesday and Thursday at the Tesla Fremont Factory in Fremont, California.
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Last week we reported on BMW advertising its new 2017 BMW i3 as having “50% more range” and now the automaker makes its updated all-electric vehicle official and confirms a 33 kWh battery pack – making it one of the biggest non-Tesla pack currently on the market.
The automaker is now referring to the i3’s new range as “up to 114-mile”, which is not exactly a 50% increase depending on the standard.
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While Tesla has now several stores and service centers along the Bay Area (see below), the electric automaker has yet to open a location in the heart of San Francisco, but that’s about to change. Tesla is about to open a new flagship retail location on Van Ness Ave in San Francisco later this summer.
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For the second year in a row, Tesla tried to pass a bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk in Connecticut, to allow the sale of electric vehicles directly to consumers without having to go through the franchise dealerships model. Last week, the bill SB3 was in consideration and awaiting a vote in the state Senate, but it is now officially dead following an impressive lobbying campaign led by GM and the local dealership association.
The electric automaker is currently entrenched in several battles over its business model of selling directly to consumers without a third-party dealership. While it is not an issue in most of its markets, Tesla is not allowed or under restrictions to sell its cars in several states including Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Connecticut, Utah and West Virginia.
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Our little site is growing! Last autumn, Electrek.co was just a hobby and we’d see 40,000 pageviews in a month. Fast forward just 8 months and with the addition of Frederic Lambert on staff full time, we’re comfortably over 4 million monthly pageviews with over 1 million unique readers. We’re going to be adding some more writers over the next months including our resident Commercial Solar Expert John Weaver. You might have read some of his work already.
Thank you very much everyone!
And now just some quick site news: We’ve moved our commenting system from native Wordpress comments to Disqus *waits for applause*…
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Elon Musk went on another Tweetstorm last night and although it was mostly about SpaceX’s upcoming missions (not that we mind – it’s just not what we cover), he did reveal a few tidbits of information involving the Tesla Model 3.
The CEO said that the higher-end version of the Model 3 will have a ‘Ludicrous’ mode option, like the Model S and X.
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The automotive industry is a capital-intensive industry. Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne knows it and that’s why he is open to work with Google or Apple:
“Google can buy every automaker out of petty cash. And Apple — they made a net profit of $24 billion in one quarter. This is nonsense. What are we defending? What?”
In a not yet released 2-hour interview with Automobile Mag‘s Georg Kache, Marchionne discusses the recent rumors of a FCA partnership with Google for self-driving cars and how the automaker wants to position itself in an industry disrupted by the likes of Apple, Google, Tesla and Uber.
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The impact of the Model 3 is being felt in the automotive industry long before it actually hits the market in about 18 months. Since the reveal last month, GM has hinted that the range of the upcoming Bolt will be closer to Tesla’s, Ford announced that it is developing a vehicle to compete with the Model 3 and Fiat-Chrysler might even copy Tesla’s platform.
During his recent visit to Norway, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he was surprised by the number of reservations the company received for the $35,000 all-electric sedan and referred to the event as a “wake up call” for the industry.
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Tesla officially launched the Model X online design studio in Europe today. Until now, it was only available to reservation holders or people in North America. Now you can configure the all-electric SUV and get accurate pricing information and a delivery timeline based on your location in Europe.
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China has developed a new charging standard in order to more efficiently deploy a charging infrastructure capable of supporting the up to 5 million electric vehicles it hopes to get on the roads by 2020. Tesla is now fully on board and announced today the launch of the ‘Tesla Charging Partner Program’ in China to promote the national EV charging standard.
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BMW has been talking about introducing a higher capacity battery pack for a while now. At first, we were talking about a roughly 25% improvement on the EPA-rated range of 81 miles, which would have increased the range to about 100 miles.
Later, the increase was then said to be closer to about a 50% increase based on comments by BMW AG board member Ian Robertson. It looks like BMW is now sticking to that number and even used it to advertise the next generation, which should be made available this summer.
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A German publication, Captain Gadget, managed to get authorization from Tesla to film the Model X assembly line at the Fremont factory in California. The result is rare footage of Tesla’s highly automated assembly line and rarely seen sections of the factory.
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While the Ford Focus Electric may have been an interesting car during the latest generation of all-electric vehicles, along with the LEAF and BMW i3, the automaker has since been complacent about the upcoming new long-range wave of EVs. The company recently announced a $4.5 billion in investment in electric vehicles to close the gap, but it has yet to announce a competitor to the Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt or the next-gen LEAF.
During a conference call with analysts and reporters this week, Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields confirmed for the first time that Ford is “developing” something for the segment.
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I managed to come into a lease of a Ford Focus Electric starting in August 2013, and this is my review of my time with it. For a little bit more background on me, and my newest primary car, please check out my review of my Cadillac ELR here.
The Ford Focus Electric (FFE) is an excellent first all-electric car to market. Coming out starting in 2012, there was not much competition, and in my opinion it was the best all-electric on the market at the time.
The Dubai Future Foundation announced this week a new goal to convert 25% of the city’s traffic to autonomous driving by 2030. Sheikh Mohammed, the UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Emir of Dubai, announced the initiative which he hopes will “facilitate people’s lives and increase the productivity”.
To make the announcement, the city showcased a new driverless car concept featuring a Tesla Model S.
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Norwegian media are reporting that Tesla’s Norway operations have been hit with 240 payment demands from creditors over NOK 2 million (~$250,000) in unpaid bills and as a result, the company has received a ‘C’ credit rating – the worst credit rating it can get in Norway.
The reports suggest that the most recent unpaid bill claims coincide with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s visit in the country last week.
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Tesla recently confirmed that the base version of the Model 3 will be able to travel over 215 miles on a single charge with a battery pack “smaller than 60 kWh”. The relatively small battery capacity makes it clear that the vehicle’s aerodynamic performance is crucial to achieving the range, much like it is for the Model S and X, even with their higher capacity battery packs.
It became clear that Tesla knows the importance of aerodynamics after both the Model S and X achieved the lowest drag coefficient (Cd) in their respective segments. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he expects the Model 3 to achieve an incredibly low 0.21 Cd, which should be enough to make the Model 3 the most aerodynamic mass production car ever made.
Tesla is said to use Exa’s digital simulation tools to design its vehicles and Exa’s Vice President of Ground Transportation Applications, Ales Alajbegovic, shared his thoughts on the Model 3’s aero innovations.
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Tesla is currently facing strong opposition from the dealership lobby in Connecticut over a new legislation that would allow the automaker to sell directly to consumers in the state. The bill SB3 is currently in consideration and awaiting a vote in the state Senate. It would enable Tesla to open up to 3 stores in the state.
Besides the dealership monopoly, Connecticut has been very friendly to Tesla, offering up the first Supercharging stations on the East coast, hosting a service center in Milford and an upcoming Gallery multi-purpose location in Greenwich.
This week Tesla published the results of a survey showing strong support for its direct sales business model in the state, but the Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association is challenging the relevance of the survey.
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Earlier this month, Tesla confirmed that it is currently working on increasing its production plans to minimize the wait for the Model 3 following the storm of reservations it received for the $35,000 all-electric sedan – approaching 400,000 cars as of the latest update. The vehicles are set to be manufactured at Tesla’s main factory in Fremont, California.
While Tesla plans to manufacture about 90,000 vehicles in 2016, the company always refers to the Fremont plant’s total capacity to be around 500,000 cars per year once optimized, which is what Toyota and GM were producing when they owned the factory, and it also plans to add more manufacturing capacity in other regions.
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Earlier this week, we reported on German Chancellor Merkel planning to get directly involved in the negotiations with the auto industry over electric vehicle incentives though a meeting held yesterday. Apparently the meeting went fairly well since local media are already reporting that the two parties struck a deal albeit not as generous as previously expected.
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Elon Musk’s “secret master plan” for Tesla has always been to offer less expensive and higher volume vehicles – going down market with each new generation. At the moment, Tesla is undoubtedly a luxury carmaker with its less expensive model currently selling for $71,500.
The automaker’s third generation platform – starting with the Model 3 at $35,000 – is the next step in Musk’s plan and will certainly expose Tesla vehicles to more people, but it remains a luxury vehicle or at least a mid-luxury vehicle comparable to a BMW 3 Series or Audi A4.
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Google joins Uber, Ford, Volvo and Lyft in forming a Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets to promote self driving car regulations on a federal level versus state by state level. Google has been battling the California DMV who have proposed to ban Google’s Koala car that does not have a steering wheel or pedals and would not require a licensed driver.
Tesla doesn’t like to talk about its battery cost as it complicates an already complex supply chain with several suppliers, including long-time partner Panasonic, and new ones like LG and Samsung. But the company felt the need to comment this week following a new analysis of the Model 3’s cost by Jon Bereisa, CEO of Auto Lectrification and former chief engineer of the Chevy Volt program.
Colin Langan, a UBS analyst covering Tesla for the firm, hosted a call with Bereisa to gain some insights for its financial model of the company.
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