Electric car

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter Thursday night to announce that Tesla is ramping up the hiring for the Autopilot software team in order to achieve “generalized full autonomy”. Under its current version, the Autopilot can steer the car on highways and change lane by simply activating the turn signal, but to get to full autonomy, Tesla will need to update its software and suite of sensors.

[tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/667516705116065792 align=’center’]

Musk describes the project as “super high priority”. The CEO added that the Autopilot team reports directly to him and no prior experience in the automotive industry is required, but he is looking for “hardcore” software engineers.
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Tesla is temporarily disabling the ‘Autosteer’ and ‘Auto Lane Change’ features of the Autopilot for Model S owners in Hong Kong after a formal request from regulators at the Transport Department . The features were recently introduced to the Model S with the version 7.0 software update. 
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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. 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Autoblog’s latest Translogic episode featured a pretty cool electric vehicle I’d never heard of before: the Defiant EV3, a retro-looking three-wheeled electric roadster. The vehicle is still in its prototype phase and its maker, Shockwave Motors, is looking for investors to bring it to production.

You can watch the episode below the fold:
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Switzerland continues to be an impressive market for Tesla. Based on registration data, Tesla delivered 120 Model S’s in the country last month, which brings the year-to-date total to 1,269 cars versus 357 during the same period in 2014.
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