DragTimes took delivery of its Tesla Model S P90D with Ludicrous mode just a few days ago and it already posted its first race. They raced the 5,000 lbs electric sedan against a 3,500 lbs Ford GT supercar.
Watch the full video below the fold:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Jordan, a small Middle Eastern country of about 8 million people, is popular in the media these days for its role in the Syrian refugee crisis. The country is providing asylum to about 1 million refugees according to the UN Refugee Agency. Some, including Britain’s Prince Charles, see climate change as the root cause of the civil war in Syria, which sparked the refugee crisis.
An extreme drought believed to have been caused by climate change forced as many as 1.5 million people between 2006 and 2009 to migrate away from lands and into the cities. The sudden urbanization caused social stresses which eventually led to the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Arguably, Jordan is doing more than its part by offering asylum to so many refugees, but the country is also addressing the root cause by accelerating its plans to curb emissions. The government recently announced a tax and custom duties exemption for electric vehicles and charging equipment. Tesla is one of the first company to take advantage of the new policy.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Sky News staged a race between Nissan’s battery-powered LEAF and Hyundai’s hydrogen fuel cell ix35 SUV. The race started at Sky’s studios in London and the finish line was in Paris for the COP21 Conference. Spoiler alert: the ix35 won.
The 270-mile journey was well within the 369-mile range of the ix35, but with the LEAF’s 84-mile range, it needed to stop to charge its 24 kWh battery pack.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Fully Charged’s latest video features Jonny Smith’s modified Enfield 8000 ECC now called the “Flux Capacitor”. The vehicle beautifully illustrates how far batteries have come in the last few decades. When originally manufactured in 1974, the car was equipped with 300 kg of lead-acid batteries for 96 volts, now Smith equipped his with 145 kg of li-ion batteries for 378 volts.
The video and specs below:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Kandi announced a deal with Pang Da to bring a fleet of 1,000 electric vehicles to Tianjin for a new car-sharing program – one of the biggest of its kind. The program will use Kandi’s Smart-looking K10 EV with 93 miles (150 km) of range on a single charge. All the cars should be delivered by the end of the year.
Full press release below:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya announced via Twitter that he took delivery of his ‘Founders series’ Model X #13, which he described as the “sickest car on the planet”. He joins a select group of Model X ‘Founder’ owners including, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, Tesla board member Steve Jurvetson and Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself.
Expand
Expanding
Close
BMW debuted the i8 with ‘Laser Lights’ in the U.S. at the 2015 LA Auto Show last week. The ‘Laser Light’ option was available in Europe since the introduction of the i8 in 2014, but the FDA has been stalling the feature the in the U.S. until now.
Expand
Expanding
Close
According to a recent government filing obtained by Reuters, U.S. regulators are delaying a ruling on low-speed sound alert requirements for electric and hybrid cars until at least mid-March 2016.
A ruling on this issue has been in the works since 2013, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that the odds of an electric or hybrid vehicle being involved in a crash with a pedestrian are 19% higher compared with a louder gas-powered vehicle.
Expand
Expanding
Close
In a new note issued this morning, Credit Suisse analyst Dan Galves reiterated an ‘outperform’ rating and $325 price target on Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) . The analyst considers the fourth quarter guidance to be “achievable” and he sees a “reasonable path” to $4 EPS in 2016 – compared to the ~$2.30 annualized loss per share in the last quarter.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Why another electric supercar you ask? You’d think that after Tesla, Rimac, Renovo and the myriad of other companies making high-end electric vehicles, it would reach a point where there’s just too many? The fact of the matter is that the number of electric supercars is still dwarfed by the number of gas-powered supercars.
We are all cheering for more affordable EVs, but until I see more supercars powered by batteries than gasoline, I will not be tired of seeing new super-EVs coming out and this 1 MW concept from Toroidion is “super” alright…
Expand
Expanding
Close
We came across two interesting reads for electric vehicle enthusiasts today. If you have about half an hour over Thanksgiving, I suggest you take the time to read them. I wrote short descriptions for both articles:
Expand
Expanding
Close
According to PlugShare’s quarterly report, Tesla added 858 charging stations across the US from September 2014 to September 2015. The increase is largely due to Tesla’s “Destination Charging” program, which now accounts for over 80% of Tesla’s charging points in the US.
The automaker operates two different types of charging networks, the “Superchargers” and “Destination Charging“. Supercharger stations can charge a Model S at a rate of more than 300 miles of range per hour and they are mainly located next to popular routes to facilitate road trips.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company can’t offer the Autopilot as a retrofit. There are a few aftermarket options available to add driver assist features to a car, but nothing close to Tesla’s ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’ features… until now.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Last month we reported on comments made by BMW CEO Harald Krüger about the BMW i3 getting a new battery pack with more range in 2016. Now we learn through an article coming out of Autocar yesterday that sources close to BMW are saying that the new battery pack should enable “up to 124 miles of range on a single charge” and be available as a retrofit to current i3 owners – something Krüger hinted could be possible.
Autocar’s Greg Kable didn’t say on what he is basing his “124 miles” figure, but he compared it to the current range of the i3 which he said is “just under 100 miles”. This means he is working with the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) which is not very accurate in predicting real world range.
Expand
Expanding
Close
The city of Sion in Switzerland approved a pilot project with two all-electric and fully autonomous buses which will hit the road as soon as spring 2016. The project could become the first fully autonomous public transportation system in operation.
The buses are being introduced in collaboration with the city of Sion, France-based electric bus manufacturer Navya and self-driving software firm BestMile.
Expand
Expanding
Close
When Tesla first unveiled the Model X in September, the vehicle was widely reported to cost $132,000, but a lot of publications failed to understand that it was the sale price of the limited “Founders series”. Then Tesla opened orders for the “Signature series” – for people who reserved the vehicle with a $40,000 deposit – and now Tesla finally opens the order book to the reservation holders for the production version.
There’s no surprise. The base version is the “Model X 70D”, which starts at $80,000 ($5,000 more than the Dual Motor version of the Model S) and has an EPA-rated range of 220 miles. Tesla says that new orders will start shipping in “mid to late 2016”.
You can see a screenshot of the Model X design studio below:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Between established automakers accelerating their electric vehicle programs and the newcomers in the EV industry – like Apple, Faraday Future or Atieva – engineers with battery experience are not short on employment opportunities. Earlier this year, Apple poached several battery tech experts from A123 Systems and we also reported that about 1 in 8 of Faraday Future’s ~400 employees is formerly from Tesla Motors.
From an executive’s standpoint, retaining talent in a specific field can be challenging on its own, but for Elon Musk, CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, it can be even more complex when both companies he’s managing require talent in the same field…
Expand
Expanding
Close
We learn through a new report from Pacific Business News that Tesla is opening its first store in Honolulu. The store will be Tesla’s second retail location in Hawaii, but the first official retail store, since the current location in Waikele in Central Oahu is mainly a service center with a showroom.
Expand
Expanding
Close
On November 20th, Tesla completed the Supercharger route between Melbourne and Sydney by opening a location in Gundagai. The company now operates 7 Supercharger locations in Australia and they are all located between Victoria’s coastal capital and the capital of New South Wales.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Earlier this summer, Lucasfilm announced that Fiat’s FCA will be one of six major brand participating in an “expensive and historic” promotional campaign for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As part of the campaign, FCA unveiled a custom-painted Fiat 500e stormtrooper at the LA Auto Show last week.
The Fiat 500e is equipped with a 24 kWh battery pack and can achieve 87 EPA-rated miles on a single charge. At a MSRP of $32,795, the 500e can be an interesting smaller alternative to the Nissan LEAF, Chevy Spark or Kia Soul EV, but like the Soul EV, it suffers from the price comparison with its gasoline-powered counterpart, which starts at $17,990.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Last Friday, Tesla issued a voluntary recall on all Model S’s manufactured in the past 3 years to check for a possible defect with the front seat belts. The reason for the recall is due to a customer in Europe reporting earlier this month that her seat belt disconnected when she turned to talk to someone in the back seat. The defect didn’t cause an accident and the seat belt has been repaired.Tesla already inspected 3,000 other Model S sedans, but the company didn’t find the same problem with any of them.
Nonetheless, Tesla decided to issue a recall on the Model S to check every single front seat belt as a precaution. The company referred to the cost of the recall as “immaterial” since it only requires owners to go their local service center for a short inspection. Owners who already completed the inspection are reporting that they were in and out in under 5 minutes, but to make it even less on an inconvenience, Tesla dispatched technicians to Supercharger stations to inspect the seat belts while the cars are charging.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel were in Korea this week and they attended the Energy Korea Forum 2015. Local South Korean news reported on comments made by Straubel during a Q&A session at the forum, the CTO said that Tesla is “committed” to the South Korean market and that he sees a “great potential” there. Although he didn’t offer a concrete timeline on when the company plans to start selling cars in the country.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Tesla Vice President of Corporate and Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell often represents the company for official government presentations. Last month, he spoke before California’s Air Resources Board to lobby for the acceleration of the state’s zero emission mandate. And this week, he joined several industry representatives in Washington to appear before the Subcommittee on Information Technology and Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets for a hearing on “The Internet of Cars”.
Expand
Expanding
Close
The Verge interviewed Nick Sampson and Richard Kim from Faraday Future. If you have been following our coverage of Faraday Future, a young startup developing an electric vehicle in Los Angeles, you probably know most of the little information available on the secretive startup, but it is still interesting to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
You can watch the video below the fold:
Expand
Expanding
Close
