Cars

A major new partnership between Blink, BMW, ChargePoint, Nissan and EVgo was announced today at the LA Auto show. The five partners created the ROEV association with the goal to access all 3 charging networks with a single account.

Between them Blink, ChargePoint and EVgo operate more than 17,500 electric vehicle charging stations or about 91% of all stations in the US.

Full press release below:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Acciona, a Spanish conglomerate in renewable energy and infrastructure, created last year the first team to compete at the Dakar rally with an electric vehicle. Unfortunately, they didn’t last long, but they are coming back for Dakar 2016 and they feel more confident than ever after coming out of the Morocco Rally last month as the first team to finish it with an electric vehicle.

The company seriously upgraded the vehicle this year with a focus on efficiency and a brand new battery pack. At Dakar 2015, Acciona’s car could achieve 125 miles (200 km) on a single charge with a 140 kWh battery pack under the race’s difficult road conditions. The upgraded car has a 150 kWh pack, which is only a 7% increase, but the team says it can now travel 217 miles (350 km) on a single charge under the same racing conditions, which is a 75% increase.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Yesterday, Taxelco unveiled its two new all-electric taxi services: Téo Taxi and Téo Black. Earlier this year, the startup acquired the second largest taxi company in Montreal with a fleet of 500 cars and 1,000 drivers. The company recently started taking delivery of Kia Soul EVs, Nissan LEAFs and Tesla Model S’s in order to launch Téo in beta version starting November 26.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Yesterday, Audi of America President Scott Keogh held a presentation at the LA Auto Show and he made some interesting comments about the brand’s effort in the electric vehicle space and the future of EVs in general.

Keogh said he expects Audi’s e-tron models, all-electric and plug-in hybrid drivetrains, will represent 25% of all the company’s sales over the next decade.
Expand
Expanding
Close

BMW is expanding its “ChargeNow DC Fast” program in partnership with eVgo by installing 500 more DC fast charging stations across 25 U.S. markets. eVgo already installed 100 stations throughout California last year as part of the ChargeNow DC Fast program and now the company will add 50 stations (~2 in each market) before the end of the year under the new deal, which should bring the total to 600 stations by the end of 2018.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Comparison of the old and new Gigafactory plans on top of a recent satellite photo of the project.

The final size of Tesla’s $5 Billion battery factory is growing. Originally announced to occupy up to 10 million square feet (930,000 square meters), the Gigafactory is now expected to reach 13.6 million square feet (1.3 million square meters), according to a senior Tesla executive talking to Fast Company. The new number is a 36% increase to the two-story structure’s planned size, and is the equivalent of adding the entire square-footage of One World Trade Center to the project.
Expand
Expanding
Close

In a recent email blast to certain Model S owners and prospective buyers, Tesla says that the Model S trade-in value “recently increased due to secondary market demand” and that owners looking to upgrade should request new estimates.

Tesla is trying to achieve a record quarter by delivering between 17,000 and 19,000 cars during the last 3 months of the year. In order to reach its goal, in addition to offering trade-ins to current Model S owners, the company is adding a “significant amount” of demo vehicles, marketing cars and service loaners to offer for direct sales.
Expand
Expanding
Close

A new source with connections at Tesla’s design group has informed me that late stage tweaking of the Model 3 is being done with an eye towards extreme minimization of wind resistance. The Model 3, which of course is the renamed Model E, is scheduled to be shown off for the first time publicly in March of 2016. The mass market Tesla is expected to be a smaller sedan/crossover platform that resembles the BMW 3 series in size. The range of the vehicle is expected to start at 200 miles and go up from there with various size batteries and drivetrains. The majority of Tesla employees are now working on this car.

What I’m hearing internally is that CEO Elon Musk is intensely driving the engineering designers to deliver a design with a drag coefficient lower than .20 which would make it the lowest of any mass production car in the world and close to extreme vehicles like GM’s EV1 and Volkswagen’s XL1 (pictured above), – both cars that have flat rear wheel covers…
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the Gigafactory in Nevada as a product, calling it the “Gigafactory 1” – implying there will eventually be a “Gigafactory 2”. This second battery factory could end up being built in Germany according to comments made earlier today by Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Volkswagen announced today that the Golf GTE Sport plug-in hybrid will make its North American debut at the Los Angeles International Auto Show, which starts November 19. Although the vehicle is still only in its concept phase, considering the “Dieselgate” situation, some expect VW to accelerate its electric car projects in order to compensate for the recent scandal, which could lead to the potential commercialization of the GTE Sport. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Since Tesla is taking its sweet time to starts delivering the Model X in volume, we thought you might want to get your eye-candy fix of the all-electric crossover. Tesla delivered the very first Model X, a ‘Founder series’ P90D, to its CEO Elon Musk and a Tesla Motors Club member recently spotted the vehicle at the Hawthorne Supercharger.
Expand
Expanding
Close

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) updated its study on the average greenhouse gas emissions of electric vehicles versus gasoline-powered vehicles based on electricity sources and reiterated that on average, EVs indeed create less emissions than gasoline-powered cars.
Expand
Expanding
Close

This weekend Tesla released a 360° look into its Amsterdam showroom. If you watch the video on your phone with the Youtube app, you can simply move your device to look around the store, which is even more impressive if you have access to a Google Cardboard VR headset.

You can watch the video below the fold:
Expand
Expanding
Close

A new report from Autocar states that sources confirmed Jaguar is planning to launch its first electric vehicle in 2017 and it should be a SUV with “around 300 miles of range”. The concept is expected to debut at the “Mondiale de l’Automobile” in Paris, which will start on October 1st, 2016.
Expand
Expanding
Close

There’s been some concerns over the way Tesla is reporting the power output of its Model S, especially the Dual Motor version. Until recently, the company advertised the combined power output of both motors without accurately accounting for the limitations of the battery pack.

This resulted in the Model S rarely, if ever achieving the advertised horsepower. After several complaints from owners, CTO JB Straubel wrote a blog post explaining the logic behind Tesla’s calculations, but some owners in Norway still moved forward with formal complaints to the local consumer protection agency.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tesla rarely, if ever offer discounts at the purchase of its products, but with its ambitious goal to deliver between 17,000 and 19,000 vehicles globally in the last 3 months of the year, it seems the company resorted to offering a significant discount to new Chinese customers.

The company announced through a blog post on its Chinese website that from November 15 to December 31, it will offer up to 80,000 Yuan ($12,500 US) in discount at the purchase of a Model S under its “fuel vehicle replacement” program.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Earlier this week, we reported on the Danish government suspecting Tesla of having registered 2,500 cars to profit from the tax breaks for electric vehicles, which will start phasing out next year. A Tesla representative quickly denied the claim saying that only 114 Model S’s were registered in October in Denmark, but now both parties clarified the situation and Tesla confirmed having ordered 2,500 license plates.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Yesterday, BMW celebrated the two-year anniversary of the launch of the BMW i3 by releasing a few tidbits of information about the vehicle program. The company says its Leipzig plant is assembling 100 units per day and that the i3 is now the third best-selling electric vehicle in the world, but in my opinion the most interesting information BMW released is that over 80 percent of BMW i3 buyers are new customers to the BMW Group.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Today Tesla is expected to open its first store in Boston in the Shops at the Prudential Center according to the Boston Business Journal. The opening is part of Tesla’s plan to significantly expand its retail presence in the US with 12 more stores opening during the fourth quarter.
Expand
Expanding
Close