Cars

Hyundai released new renderings of its upcoming IONIQ electric car, which will be offered with 3 electric powertrain options. The vehicle will be available in all-electric (BEV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and conventional hybrid without a plug (HEV).

You can see the new renderings below.
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BMW unveils a new version of its plug-in hybrid i8 with cameras instead of mirrors at CES in Las Vegas today. Back in 2012, Tesla unveiled an alpha prototype of the Model X without any side mirrors and announced that it will try to change regulation in order to make the technology legal.
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We were kind of disappointed to learn yesterday that Faraday Future’s first big reveal is a concept race car, which will act as a “test bed” for the company’s technology, and not an early prototype of FF’s first production car.

But it looks like the company released a subtle glimpse of its first production car in the release video of its FFZERO1 concept.
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A recent report suggests that Google and Ford are planning to announce a joint venture to build self-driving cars. The announcement is expected to be made at Ford’s CES presentation, which is set to start at 7:30AM PST.

You can watch a livestream below.
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The $3,000 upgrade from a 85 kWh battery pack to a 90 kWh pack is now only available with the all-wheel-drive Model S, as Tesla discontinued the option for the rear-wheel-drive version of the vehicle.
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Electric car startup Faraday Future took its biggest step out of stealth mode tonight by unveiling its first concept car at CES in Las Vegas. As much as we didn’t want it to be true, the leak we publish early in the morning turned out to be correct.

As it turns out, despite Faraday’s short timeline aiming to bring to market its first car in 2017, the company is holding on showing its mass market car, which was only briefly mentioned during the presentation, and instead shows a “test bed” concept to showcase some technology and “design DNA”: the FFZERO1.
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We didn’t want to believe it this morning, but it looks like the concept car we saw in the iOS app leak (see above) is what Faraday Future is about to unveil tonight at CES in Las Vegas.

Nonetheless, the presentation tonight should give us more information about FF’s ownership model and if the concept car is mainly for design cues and showcasing the company’s technology, or if they actually plan on bringing to market something similar.
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Due to Volkswagen’s and the Environmental Protection Agency’s incapacity to come to deal after discussions over how to fix the cars affected by the emissions tests cheating, the U.S. Department of Justice officially sued the German automaker on behalf of the EPA in federal court on Monday.
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We recently wrote about Porter Harris for our piece on SpaceX’s battery development – Tesla is not Elon Musk’s only company developing high-tech battery packs – and also when covering Faraday Future since Harris joined the company as ‘Chief Battery Architect’ in November 2014, but today we learn via his LinkedIn profile (first spotted by Bloomberg) that he left the electric car startup just as it’s about to reveal its first concept.
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GM announced a $500 million investment in car-sharing company Lyft to create an integrated network of on-demand autonomous vehicles in the U.S.
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Update: we added a video of the app below.

A Twitter user going by supererogatory claims to have leaked the concept Faraday Future plans to reveal later today in Las Vegas. He claims that Faraday accidentally released an iOS app, which was meant for the release of the concept and includes renderings as well as some information about the vehicle, but was quickly pulled from the app store last night.
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Mercedes is not just watching on the sidelines while Tesla steals market shares from its segment, and while Porsche and Audi announces upcoming electric vehicles. According to a new report from Car Magazine, the legendary German automaker recently greenlighted 4 new electric cars.
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We get our first good look at the Model X’s range while towing at near full capacity courtesy of Signature Model X owner Max Kennedy. Max is one of the 208 Model X owners who had the chance to take delivery of the all-electric SUV before the end of the year, and he decided to start an interesting Youtube channel documenting his experience with the vehicle, especially with its towing capacity.
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Tesla announced deliveries for the fourth quarter 2015 today and as we predicted earlier this month, the company hits the low-end of its ambitious goal of 17,000 to 19,000 deliveries, with 17,400 total deliveries from October to December.
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We are kicking off the new year at Electrek with extensive coverage of everything electric vehicle related at CES in Las Vegas this week.

There might be a few surprises, but we made a quick list of the main events, especially the new electric cars debuting at the show, so you can have a good idea of what’s coming in the EV industry in the next few days:
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A Tesla Model S caught fire while plugged-in at a Supercharger in Norway, and almost completely burned down to nothing. The event happened at 14.30 Friday afternoon (local time) at a Tesla fast-charging station in Gjerstad, Norway
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It’s a feature Model S owners have been asking Tesla to implement for a while now. We know it’s possible since the company displays available stalls in real-time on the “Supercharger Dashboard” located in its design studio in Hawthorne, but the feature is not available in real-time in the car itself, where it could actually be extremely useful.

A third-party app is looking to fix the problem, or at least pressure Tesla to finally release the feature.
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Panasonic is investing 50 billion yen ($412 million) in China to build a lithium-ion battery factory aimed at the electric vehicle market, according to a new report from Nikkei. The annual capacity is projected to be the equivalent of “around 200,000 electric vehicles”, but we don’t know the average capacity per vehicle.
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Faraday Future is only 5 days away from unveiling its car concept at CES in Las Vegas. Electrek will be there and we can’t wait. Faraday seems to know that because they keep teasing us with these short videos.
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The second trial period for Tesla’s referral program will end tomorrow with no word about a possible renewal, although it’s likely considering the success of the program. The top referrer currently has 188 referrals – breaking his own record of 100 during the last period from August to October.
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Do you remember when Batman turned a part of the Batmobile into a motorcycle with the touch of a button in The Dark Knight? Well this is like a lame version of that. We learn that Ford patented a concept for an electric car powered by in-wheel electric motors that can turn into a unicycle.
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