electric vehicle

Germany is the thirteenth government to join the International Zero-Emission Vehicle Alliance, which aims at making all passenger vehicles emission-free by 2050. The group made the announcement Thursday at the UN global climate talks in Paris.

The governments now participating in the ZEV Alliance include the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway in Europe; California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont in the United States; and Québec in Canada.
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We learn through GreenCarCongress that the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) published a list of 10 states which are now adopting electric vehicle fees ranging from $43 to $300 to replace lost revenue from fuel taxes.

Fuel taxes at the pump have theoretically been used to finance highway maintenance, but electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids using less or no gas at all are not contributing to this fund.
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Mitsubishi CEO Osamu Masuko talking to Automotive News confirmed that the company will launch the Outlander PHEV in the US around “mid-2016”. The plug-in hybrid version of the Outlander consistently reach the top of the best-selling lists for plug-ins in European and Asian markets where it is available, but the Japan-based automaker has been delaying a U.S. launch for quite some time now. If we are to believe CEO Osamu Masuko, 2016 might finally be the year.
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It’s no secret that Tesla’s retail strategy is inspired by Apple’s. In 2010, the automaker hired George Blankenship as VP of Store Design & Development. Blankenship was a GAP veteran who led Apple’s real estate business from 2000 to 2006 and to whom Apple Store’s early success has been largely attributed. 

Blankenship retired in 2013, but apparently it wasn’t the end of the connection between the retail strategies of the two companies. We learn that earlier this month, Tesla hired the team leader of the architectural team for Apple Stores at Callison, an international architecture firm.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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GM executive vice president Mark Reuss was speaking at the LA Auto Show this week and he said that the company plans to unveil the production version of the Bolt at CES 2016 – almost a year to the day after unveiling the concept car at the 2015 Detroit Motor Show.
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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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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.
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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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