Cars

38 company and environmental group leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, signed an open 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.
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It’s no secret that Uber wants to develop its own self-driving car technology, but much like Google, it isn’t clear if the company only wants to develop the technology to be implemented in existing vehicles or go all the way and develop its own car. The ride-sharing company’s latest hire suggest it could be the latter.

We learned that earlier this month, Uber hired veteran automotive designer Richard Donnelly for the role of “Senior Designer” at the company’s Advanced Technology Center.
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Tesla released its ‘Emergency Response Guide’ for the Model X and oddly enough, the literature intended for use by trained and certified rescuers and first responders give us one of the first good look at the Model X’s inner workings with schematics.
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A new Tesla Model X was spotted at the Syosset service center in Long Island yesterday. A Tesla forum member posted some pictures to PlugShare and claims the VIN number was for a Signature Series #664, which would indicate that Tesla started deliveries of the Model X beyond the initial few “Founders Series”.
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Following the coverage of George Hotz’s new self-driving car project yesterday, the stock price of Tesla’s partner for the Autopilot, Mobileye, took a 7% hit during the day. Citron Research called the company “the short of 2016“.

[tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/677403793651175424 align=’center’]

But early this morning, Musk took to Twitter to say that Bloomberg’s article on the project was inaccurate and he shared a blog post from Tesla explaining why.
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Earlier this month, Hyundai announced that it will unveil a new car with 3 electric powertrain options called IONIQ. The vehicle will be available in all-electric (BEV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and conventional hybrid without a plug (HEV).

Today, the automaker released two new teaser pictures revealing some design details of the vehicle. 
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Tesla is currently using a hardware suite of sensors from Mobileye to get the input needed for its Autopilot system to control the Model S on highways and under some specific road conditions. But as it is often the case with Tesla (like for its seats), the company is looking to discontinue Mobileye’s system in favor of bringing it in-house, according to an email exchange between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and George Hotz, a software engineer mainly known for being the first person to jailbreak the iPhone.
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Last week, Tesla released a new update with ‘Launch Mode’ to Performance Model S owners. The new feature assists the driver to accelerate “as quickly as possible” from a standing start.

DragTimes installed the update on its Model S P90D with Ludicrous mode and did some tests with mixed results.
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In his latest letter to the Lit Motors community, CEO Daniel Kim, who recently suffered from a severe motorcycle accident and is now recovering from a hip replacement, says the company is making progress on its electric self-balancing motorcycle, but they are still not ready to offer a timeline to production.
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Rinspeed announced that it will debut a plug-in hybrid sport car at CES next month. The company says the car, called “Ʃtos”, is based on the BMW i8 and comes with drone.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was at the AGU Fall Meeting today for the Presidential Forum and made some comments about Tesla’s battery factory under construction in Nevada.

Musk said that the battery cells the company will produce at the Gigafactory in partnership with Panasonic will feature some “moderate improvements” in technology over those in production today. 
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Nissan announced a partnership with Enel, Europe’s second largest power company for installed capacity, to develop a new “Vehicle-to-Grid” initiative to use, store and return to the grid electricity in excess from Nissan’s electric vehicles.

The initiative appears to be a revival of Nissan’s “LEAF to Home” program, which appears to have been abandoned years ago. Although the new program seems to be more focused on providing a service to the grid rather than backup power, which was the focus of “LEAF to Home”.
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Today Jaguar officially announced that it will join the third season of the Formula E championship. The company also unveiled the design of its all-electric race car. The company says it will use the Formula E platform as a “test bed” for its electric powertrain technology.
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Nissan announced that it will unveil the “Fuel Station of the Future” in partnership with Foster + Partners, a British architecture and design firm. Interestingly, Nissan features the all-electric LEAF in a short preview video for the station.
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Navigant Research recently named LG Chem the #1 leading supplier of batteries for electric vehicles. The company has been a longtime partner of GM for the production of the Chevy Volt and it recently attracted interest from other electric vehicle makers such as Nissan and Tesla.

Those manufacturers plan to introduce several mass market electric vehicles in the coming years and if LG wants to keep its lead, it will need to significantly increase its battery production output. And the Korea-based electronic giant is counting on its Michigan battery plant to keep up with the auto market. 
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It’s the first time we hear about a Tesla Model S in Kazakhstan and as you can see, they are not making a great effort to distance themselves from Borat’s portrayal of the country. Indeed the first evidence we have of a Model S in Kazakhstan is from this video posted to Youtube yesterday of people trying to fit a sheep in the frunk of the car.
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Stanford recently released the video of a talk between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and investor Steve Jurvetson. The discussion focused on Musk’s vision of the future and if you are an avid watcher of Musk’s interviews, you probably will not learn much from the hour-long video, but we still found a few interesting moments worth sharing.
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Another automotive designer, Rain Prisk Designs, released renderings of a wagon version of the Tesla Model S. To be clear, the design is from an independent artist unaffiliated with Tesla and as far as we know, Tesla has no plan to make a station wagon any time soon.
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