Cars

I’ve hoped to see an electric Mini make it to market ever since BMW produced a few hundreds all-electric “MINI E” cars to test its electric drivetrain technology for what eventually became its “i” electric brand, but the vehicle never made it to a wide release.

Now although not fully electric, we should “pretty soon” see the first electric vehicle from BMW’s popular Mini brand, according to a brand representative.
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If there’s indeed a poaching chess game going on between Tesla and Apple, it would appear the automaker is winning in acquiring quality pieces. Just a few week after we exclusively reported that Tesla hired legendary chip architect Jim Keller as new “Vice-President of Autopilot Hardware Engineering”, we now learn that Keller is joined by former DEC Alpha, PA Semi and until earlier this year Apple Director Peter Bannon.

Before Keller left Apple for AMD in 2012, he and Bannon were leading Apple’s processor development since the Cupertino-based company bought their chip making firm PA Semi in 2008. The duo lead the development of Apple’s A4 and A5 processors, which powered most of the company’s mobile devices from 2010 to 2012. Keller then left to develop the Zen architecture at AMD, but Bannon stuck around and developed several other chips for Apple until leaving for Tesla to join Keller last week.
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Goldman Sachs analyst Patrick Archambault and his team recently met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Autopilot Program Director Sterling Anderson and CFO Jason Wheeler to visit Tesla’s Fremont factory. Today the team released a report of their visit (via Valuewalk) and reiterated a “Neutral” rating on the company’s stock after the share price increased by ~12% this week.

Most notably, Archambault writes in his report that they see Tesla as now being about 80% vertically integrated, which is rare in the automotive industry where companies are focusing on the assembly process and engine manufacturing.
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The electric vehicle industry had an exciting start in 2016 with a number of unveilings, notably the Chevy Bolt and Faraday Future’s FFZer01 concept at CES last month, but arguably none is creating more excitement than Tesla’s upcoming Model 3 event next month. When we asked our readers how many reservations they think Tesla will have for the Model 3 by the end of the year, a majority agreed that Tesla will have over 75,000 reservations by the end of 2016.

We have since reached out to a number Tesla retail stores and representatives have told us that they have been receiving a steady stream of calls since Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted the date of the Model 3 unveiling and a rough outline of the reservation process. According to the CEO, reservations will start in store on March 31st and then online the next day. Because of this store reps have told us they are expecting waiting lines to get a reservation in the morning.
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Just a few weeks after hiring legendary microprocessor architect Jim Keller from AMD, Tesla managed a second high-profile hire from the chip maker for its Autopilot team. Electrek has learned that the automaker recently hired machine learning expert Junli Gu to lead the Autopilot’s self-learning tech.

As we reported in our recent piece on Tesla’s Autopilot team, the company lost a lot of talent around the release of the version 7.0 of the system last year, but ever since Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to encourage engineers to join the team, it has seen several high-profile additions.
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The Indystar is reporting that the anti-Tesla bill or amendment to a bill has been shot down in Indiana.

A state Senate committee on Thursday effectively tabled a controversial proposal to prevent Tesla Motors Inc. from selling cars in Indiana under its current business model. The Senate Commerce and Technology Committee voted to send HB 1254 to a summer study committee. The House passed the same version of the bill Feb. 2. Sen. Jim Buck, R-Kokomo, the committee chairman, had supported a version of the bill that would have banned manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. That version of the bill would have caused Tesla’s dealer license to expire in 2018 and forced the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company to either adopt a franchise dealer model or stop selling cars in Indiana.

The bill was clearly aimed at Tesla and authored by GM according to Tesla and would have made it unlawful for a manufacturer to its own dealerships within the state. Tesla has been in Indiana for two years and has planned to expand operations in the state.

Buck on Thursday opened the committee hearing by saying he has been on the receiving end of “incivility” from Tesla supporters this week as the bill received national attention.

Fantastic. I hope we helped.

If I can be blunt for a few minutes here, I have to remark on how bad of a shit show the Indiana State Senate committee is. Having watched endured the hearing in full, (video below) it’s clear that these ‘representatives’ are both:
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Tesla regularly releases customer stories to highlight the Model S ownership experience. It can often be redundant, but every now and again, you can find a gem like this one about Henry Nelson from a small town in Minnesota.
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Recent pictures of Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada have been scarce since two journalists from Gannett’s Reno Gazette Journal (RGJ) were involved in an altercation with two Tesla safety managers on the property while they were trying to take pictures. Though we can’t really confirm that this incident is the cause of the recent shortage of images.

Las week we managed to find two pictures taken from the ground near the factory earlier in the month, but today we get our best look at Tesla’s battery factory in months with a new gallery of aerial pictures taken earlier today (24/02/16).
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Elon Musk, CEO of both electric automaker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX, splits his time between his two companies, which he also co-founded and financed with most of his early fortune from Paypal. Now Electrek has learned through sources that Musk will not be the only executive dividing his time between Tesla and SpaceX since the CEO hired Apple’s alloy expert Charles Kuehmann to lead materials engineering at both companies.

Kuehmann is now Vice-President of Materials Engineering at Tesla and SpaceX, where he is responsible for delivering materials innovations, something he is very familiar with after over two decades spent in materials science.
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While Tesla’s battle with GM over direct sales law in Indiana is grabbing all the attention this week, there’s been a development over the same issue in Utah.

Tesla built a $3 million store in Salt Lake City last year, but the full-fledged store was demoted to a gallery/service center two weeks before opening due to the Utah attorney general’s office ruling that it was against the state’s direct sales law.

Legislators and Tesla have since been trying to find a compromise ever since, but the latest proposal was rejected by Tesla, which now says it will focus on a lawsuit it filed before the Utah Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press.
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As we reported last week, although we have been hearing less about them lately, Rimac Automobili has been hard at work and the Crotia-based electric automaker grew from 20 to 150 employees during the past 2 year, with now plans to go on a hiring spree and double its headcount in 2016.

Now the automaker is ready to show off its hard work at the Geneva Motors Show next week, where it will debut the “production version” of the Concept_One all-electric supercar, which the company is now calling a “hypercar”.
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Tesla has been quickly expanding in Europe with only a few market left unpenetrated. In December 2015, the automaker officially launched in Scotland with its first store in Edinburgh, we now learn that Tesla is expanding to the other side of the Irish Sea, namely to Ireland.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak visited Tesla’s factory last week during an official trip in California and he had the chance to test drive the Model X, which he reportedly found to be very impressive.
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Tesla announced today that it is increasing its 24/7 roadside assistance and towing coverage from 50 to 500 miles of the nearest service center for issues covered by the warranty. Coincidently, the automaker announces the news while it is battling GM over direct sales law and the latter criticized Tesla for making customers travel long distances to get their car serviced, though to be fair, it is largely because of said direct sales law, which GM is advocating for.
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The IONIQ is Hyundai’s new car platform that will be offered with 3 electric powertrain options: all-electric (BEV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and conventional hybrid without a plug (HEV).

The Korean automaker already released all the specs of the HEV version, but we still don’t have all the details for the all-electric and PHEV versions, even though they will all look the same and only their powertrain will be different.
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Electric vehicles are often praised for reducing air pollution, although some have claimed otherwise despite numerous studies proving it, but electric cars also reduce noise pollution, which is exactly what this new fan-made Tesla Model S commercial is highlighting.

For years now, regulators have talked about adding rules for electric vehicles to emit more sound in order to let pedestrians hear their presence, but U.S. regulators have been delaying a ruling on the subject.
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As Tesla is ramping up production of the Model X, more early reservation holders are taking delivery of their all-electric SUV and a few of them are already taking it to the tracks.

Drag racing a SUV seems like an absurd idea at first, but a Model X P90D with the “Ludicrous Speed Upgrade” can accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in just 3.2 seconds, making it very competitive with a wide range of sport cars.
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Tensions between US automakers GM and Tesla are now at an all time high. GM took a few swipes at Tesla at the unveiling of the 200 mile range Chevy Bolt earlier this year. The automaker published a promotional picture of the new all-electric car in front of Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto and CEO Mary Barra made the following comment during the CES launch:

“Unlike some EV customers, Bolt EV customers never have to worry about driving to another state to buy, service or support their vehicles.”

She is clearly making reference to the fact that Tesla is somehow still blocked from selling vehicles in certain states due to laws banning direct sales from manufacturers which force them to go through third-party dealerships. These laws are often from the 1950s when the US automakers would exert monopolistic control over the dealer relationships.  Tesla General Counsel Todd Maron went before the FTC to argue against these direct sales bans and directly called out Barra for her comment (see picture above), which becomes more relevant than ever now that we learn that GM has authored a new bill to ban direct sales in Indiana.
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Update: A reddit user hopped over to the new Tesla location, and it looks like the company already has a sign up. See the bottom of the post for the image.

According to a report from New York real estate news site The Real Deal, a Tesla store will be the anchor for a new office conversion in Red Hook, New York City. Sources for the site say that the Palo Alto company signed a lease for a new space of roughly 40,000 square feet that will serve as an office, a service center, and a showroom for the company’s many EV offerings…

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Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and 38 company and environmental group leaders signed a letter proposing that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) lets VW off the hook in California for having cheated on reporting emissions in its diesel cars and in return, VW would be forced to significantly invest in electric vehicles or other zero-emission vehicles manufacturing in the state.

According to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag (via Reuters), the EPA, potentially inspired by the proposal, asked Volkswagen to manufacture electric vehicles at its Tennessee plant as part of the current negotiation over the fix of the more than 500,000 diesel vehicles in violation of pollution limits in the US.
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