Cars

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced that he took delivery of a rare Tesla Model X P90D, presumably a ‘Founder Series’ since Signature Model X reservation holders have yet to be assigned a delivery date.
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Tesla builds its own battery packs, but imports the several thousands battery cells needed per pack from suppliers, mainly Panasonic. The automaker is heavily investing to change that by building the Gigafactory, in partnership with Panasonic, to manufacture both the cells and battery packs in the Nevada desert east of Reno.

But the planned output of the factory is 35 GWh in battery cells and 50 GWh in battery packs, meaning the Gigafactory will need to import 15 GWh of battery cells. Tesla already confirmed its intention to source the cells from more than one suppliers “potentially including Panasonic”, and today we learn through a new report from Asia Nikkei that the company is reportedly in the final stages of negotiations with LG Chem.
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DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Tesla Model S owner, had a car accident in Beverly Hills on Oct. 19. Little is known about the actual accident, but it was severe enough to break Katzenberg’s wrist, which required a surgery followed by a stay at the hospital.

Apparently the accident could have been much worse because Katzenberg felt the need to thank Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, for his car might have “saved his life.
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While it seems near-certain that Google plans a full-scale commercial rollout of its self-driving cars, and that Apple has serious plans for a competing vehicle of its own, neither company is likely to manufacture the cars itself. As a recent opinion piece argued, actually manufacturing a car is massively complex undertaking.

Both Google and Apple will therefore be looking for partners to pull together different elements of the car, and Re/code has put together an interesting look at the most likely candidates. Though the piece is focused on the Apple Car, the analysis applies to Apple, Google and Tesla alike … 
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Honda is set to join the few other manufacturers ready to unveil new electric vehicles at the Tokyo Motor Show, which start October 29. Nissan and Mitsubishi already announced their intentions to debut new EV models and now Honda is ready to introduce a new plug-in hybrid according the a report from AutoNews.

Honda’s electric offering has been seriously lacking with its most important contribution to the EV market being an Accord plug-in with 13 miles of range on all-electric, and although the company seems to still prefer hydrogen as an alternative zero emission fuel, the company is showing continued investment in electric drivetrains.
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The Renault-Nissan Alliance announced it will provide a fleet of 200 electric vehicles for the 2015 Paris climate conference (COP21), which runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. The fleet will include the companies’ flagship electric vehicles Renault ZOE, Nissan LEAF and Nissan e-NV200.

The companies said that 200 Renault and Nissan employee volunteers will drive the cars alongside professional drivers.
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Tesla Motors sent an email Monday morning to all Roadster owners to confirm the expansion of its battery upgrade program to now include early models, which were excluded until recently. Earlier this summer, Tesla released the details of its long-awaited battery upgrade for its first vehicle, but a lot of owners were disappointed to learn that it was only available to later versions of the all-electric sport car.

Now every owner with $29,000 to spare gets access to the upgrade which increases the range of the vehicle by about 35%.
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The so-called “poaching war” for top automotive engineering talent between Tesla and Apple gathered quite a few headlines in the past months, especially after Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the Cupertino company the “Tesla Graveyard” for hiring people he claimed were “fired” by the company. But after looking closer into the recent hires between the two companies, it looks like Tesla has little to fear from Apple’s recruiting effort, at least if we compare it to Faraday Future’s.

Faraday Future took a small step out of ‘stealth mode’ earlier this summer to announce that it is looking for a location for a manufacturing facility to build an electric vehicle. In the months since, the 1-year old startup ramped up its hiring effort and now has over 400 employees with an impressive percentage coming from Tesla.
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Earlier this summer we wrote about Taxelco, a Montreal-based startup which bought the second largest taxi company in Montreal (500 cars and 1,000 drivers) with the intention to transition the whole fleet to electric. The company is getting ready to launch its pilot program in November with 50 new electric cars, including a dozen Tesla Model S’s recently acquired.
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On Thursday, California’s Air Resources Board had a meeting and status update on the state’s ‘Zero Emission Vehicle’ (ZEV) program where industry actors expressed their views on the clean vehicle market and the ZEV credit mandate. During a presentation to the board, Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell argued that lobbying efforts from automakers effectively delayed fuel economy in the U.S. by about 20 years.

He added that the automotive industry used similar lobbying tactics to delay the commercialization of Zero Emission Vehicles. He said the effort delayed the state of California’s initial 1998 goal of 2% market penetration by 16 years – Zero Emission vehicles only reached 2% of the market in 2014.
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As expected, Tesla started releasing its Autopilot software update to European and Asian markets on Friday, except Japan which is still under review, after gaining regulatory approval. While announcing the worldwide rollout on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk already announced ‘Autopilot 1.01’ to improve the system’s autonomous features.
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BMW CEO Harald Krüger talked to German magazine Die Zeit earlier this week and confirmed that the company will introduce an upgraded battery pack for next year’s version of its flagship all-electric vehicle, the BMW i3.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in China this week to personally oversee the release of the Autopilot in the country. Speaking at the Tsinghua University earlier today, he said that the company will have production capacity in the country within 2 years according to a Chinese report. The timeline matches the company’s planned release of its mass market $35,000 car, the Model 3.
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Formula E, which starts its second season on Saturday, announced that Leonardo DiCaprio will promote electric vehicles for the organisation and become Chairman of the championship’s newly created ‘Sustainability Committee’.

The committee will focus on promoting the mass adoption of electric vehicles and the “long term imprint” of the Formula E in the cities where it races.
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At this point the fact that Apple is working on an electric vehicle is all but confirmed. Recent reports show that Apple is searching for a private road-testing site, they hired hundreds of workers with automotive industry experience and the company is even allegedly in talks with BMW to license some technology. Officials within Apple have yet to confirm the ambitious new product, but CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that the automobile industry is ripe for disruption and it is difficult to imagine them backing out at this point.

The electric car is reportedly codenamed ‘Project Titan’ and it is indeed a project of titanic proportions. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently made some comments warning the Cupertino company of the complexity of manufacturing cars. Those comments were surprisingly met by mockery from a lot of Apple fans. I think Apple can and will make an electric vehicle, but I’d like to put the project into perspective.
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Tesla released its Autopilot software last week to North American Model S owners, but the company said that regulatory approvals were holding back the release in Europe. This morning CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to say that the company is hoping for an European release on Friday October 23.
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