Category Archives: Tesla

News and reviews of Tesla electric cars (including plug-in hybrids).

Tesla Model 3: 215-mile, $35,000 electric car revealed

At a launch event held in Hawthorne, California, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk introduced the Model 3 sedan, the company’s highest-volume, lowest-priced effort yet.

Tesla Model 3 (Image: Green Car Reports)
Tesla Model 3 (Image: Green Car Reports)

The Model 3 quite closely follows the style of the Model S sedan and Model X crossover, and it’s unmistakably a Tesla. Yet at a far more affordable $35,000 starting price, it should help break past dismissals that Tesla is a brand only for the rich. And the Model 3 is a crucial step toward the company’s goal of 500,000 annual sales.

Just over the past couple of days, the company has made great strides toward seeing that goal as perhaps reasonable. In the 24 hours leading up to the beginning of the launch event, more than 115,000 people put $1,000 each down to make a reservation for the Model 3—sight unseen, and before any specifications had been detailed.

Read more: Green Car Reports

Tesla – “Capable Of Greatness” Commercial

Many thanks to Elon Musk for the inspiration of a better world for all of humanity, and the inspirational words of Carl Sagan, one of my favorite astronomers and philosophers.

“We were hunters and foragers, the frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth and the ocean and the sky. The open road still softly calls. Our little tarraquest globe is the madhouse of those hundred, thousand, millions of worlds. We who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds; are we to venture out into space?

By the time we are ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We’re an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars, it will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, far seeing, capable, and prudent.

For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallabilities, we humans are capable of greatness.

What new wonders undreamt of in our time will we have wrought in another generation and another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered by the end of the next century and the next millennium? Our remote descendants safely arrayed on many worlds through the solar system and beyond, will be unified. By their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the universe, come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the Blue Dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was.

How perilous our infancy. How humble our beginnings. How many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.” – Carl Sagan

WHAT WE LEARNED DRIVING A TESLA MODEL S TO THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

Tesla’s all-electric flagship Model S gives you range confidence.

1620_Tesla_modelS_GQ

The 20th Century failed to deliver several high profile science fiction promises: jetpacks exist but are impractical, flying cars never worked, and working androids are still yet to arrive outside of a Japanese technology conference. The 21st Century is doing a little better. It’s now possible for anyone to travel thousands of miles in a semi-autonomous all-electric vehicle, as long as they have a little extra money to spend.

Taking a Tesla Model S on a 1,200 mile round-trip to the middle of rural France is not only possible, thanks to the company’s network of supercharger stations, it’s one of the best road trips we’ve ever driven. For the last few years Tesla has been building a network of 120kW supercharging stations which can get you to half charge in 20 minutes. That means you can get almost anywhere in Europe, for free, if you have a compatible car and don’t mind stopping every few hours (which you’ll probably do anyway).

Read more: GQ Magazine

A SolarPlant engineer installs the UK’s first Powerwall home battery in Cardiff at Mark Keer and Lyndsey Bennett’s home (Image: G. Phillips/Guardian)

First Tesla Powerwall installed in the UK

Just a week after the first Tesla Powerwall for residential use in Australia has reportedly been installed in a Sydney suburb, it’s now the UK’s turn to get its first Tesla home battery pack.

A SolarPlant engineer installs the UK’s first Powerwall home battery in Cardiff at Mark Keer and Lyndsey Bennett’s home (Image: G. Phillips/Guardian)
A SolarPlant engineer installs the UK’s first Powerwall home battery in Cardiff at Mark Keer and Lyndsey Bennett’s home (Image: G. Phillips/Guardian)

Homeowner Mark Kerr has become the first British Tesla Powerwall owner after a SolarPlant engineer installed the system at his home in Wales. Kerr and his family have a solar installation at their home and will use the excess energy produced during the day to charge the battery pack. Kerr talked to The Guardian about his new energy storage system:

“This is the future, definitely. For me this is the logical next step. We have the solar panels but we need a way to make best use of the power they produce. Me and my family are all out in the day, and we are not making use of the enormous amount of clean energy that our solar panels produce. The battery will allow us to store the energy we don’t use in the day to use when we need it in the evenings.”

Kerr, an electrician by trade, added about the design of the Powerwall:

“It’s a gorgeous-looking piece of technology, its design is very sleek and minimalistic and something you can hang on the wall like a piece of art, definitely nothing like some of the other clunky looking batteries.”

South Wales solar installer Solar Plants installed Kerr’s new home battery pack. The company shared some marketing statistics about the Powerwall. Since it has been made available, the company emailed 3,000 solar customers about the battery. Out of the 1,500 who opened the email, 600 said they wanted one.

These potential buyers will have to wait a bit since Solar Plants says Kerr’s installation will work as a pilot project to get a better idea of how the system works.

Source: Electrek

Tesla Model S Drivetrain

Tesla Drivetrain Engineer Explains Why Electric Motors Are Inherently Superior To Gas Engines

Fortune interviewed Dustin Grace, who for nine years was working on drivetrains at Tesla Motors, and earlier this year switched to electric bus maker Proterra by becoming their director of battery engineering.

Grace shared his opinion about the advantages of electric motors over internal combustion engines.

Tesla Model S Drivetrain
Tesla Model S Drivetrain

We listed some of the main topics, but full details can be found directly in the source Fortune article:

  • Electric motors generate motion, not heat (high efficiency)
  • They’re more powerful (high torque from zero rpm for great acceleration)
  • They’re simpler (not many parts, no transmission needed in most cases)
  • They’re (vastly) easier to service (less parts, smaller and lighter, fewer subsystems around the motor)
  • They feed themselves (regenerative braking capability)
  • They’re smarter (ultimate controlling accuracy, especially useful in AWD with two or even four motors controlled independently)

Source: Inside EVs

Bloomberg reviews the Tesla Model X

While travelling around the floor at the Los Angeles Auto Showon press days this week we made note that Tesla was not present at the event with the Model X or S.

But perhaps somewhat unsurprising, Bloomberg is again seemingly acting as the de facto main stream press release source for Tesla, and just so happened to be provided with a Model X “sneak peak” by the company on the first day the show is open to the public.

We don’t care much for all the overt gushing, as the spot almost comes over as a paid placement – “Place your order now, because it’s going to go fast”, but it is still a great look inside the Tesla Model X; which should start heading into mass deliveries for Signature Series reservation holders in the next couple weeks.

Source: Inside EVs

Tesla Model S (Image: AutoExpress)

Don’t buy an electric car

Don’t buy an electric car before you’ve read our 11 things you must know – The stuff they don’t always tell you

Like any radical new technology, electric vehicles (EVs) can be confusing. Are they cheap or expensive to buy and run? Do they actually do any good for the environment? Are range anxiety and charging real worries? And what are they really like to own, to drive and to look after?

The good news is there are undoubted up sides to owning an EV, but you need to know about the battery-powered pitfalls too. Good news for you, then, that this here is our guide to the 11 things every driver should know about electric cars.

1. Some electric cars are ludicrously fast

The latest Tesla Model S sports a ‘Ludicrous Mode’ that allows the four-door saloon to blast to 60mph in just 2.8 seconds. That’s precisely the same performance as Porsche’s 918 Spyder supercar and faster than just about anything else on the road. In other words, electric cars today are most definitely not the feeble carts of yesteryear. Just like combustion cars, they’re available in a wide range of specifications with performance to match. You simply cannot generalise about electric cars being slow any longer.

2. Some electric cars are cheap

front-tracking_renault_zoe_AutoExpress

Yes, the aforementioned Tesla might break the bank at upwards of £80,000, but cars like Renault’s Zoe are much more accessible. In many ways, the Zoe is a standard compact hatchback, similar in size to Renault’s own Clio or the Ford Fiesta. You can buy one from just £13,995. You can also put one on your drive for around £160 a month and a deposit of just £600 £155 a month and a deposit of just £250. So EVs are no longer the preserve of well-heeled early adopters. If you are in a position to buy almost any new car, you can probably afford to add electric to your shortlist.

Read more: T3

Tesla Model S P85D (Image: AutoExpress)

Electric vehicles shine

Watch out petrol, it’s time for electric vehicles to shine

Stephen Hill is an enthusiast for electric vehicles, noble and economical successor to the internal combustion engine

Since the beginning of time, mankind has needed a form of transport to move faster and further than his legs could carry him. For millennia, this need – as basic as food, clothing and housing – was met by the horse in the West, whether harnessed to a carriage or for riding, carrying, hunting, charging, ploughing or pulling, and by the camel in Arabia.

1_1_tesla_model-s_unk

Then the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century Britain changed everything, especially with the invention of the steam engine, the first form of mechanised power for transport. By 1883, steam engines, which were actually external combustion engines, could generate the power of 10,000 horses.

Then the beginning of the twentieth century saw the advent of the ubiquitous motorcar, powered by two completely different sources: petrol and electricity. The first petrol-driven vehicle was produced in 1902 by Daimler-Mercedes. Meanwhile, the first electric car, produced and sold in Chicago in 1906, is still running to this day. The power of these cars, however, was still rated by the number of horses that they replaced.

The twentieth century belonged exclusively, however, to the petrol-driven internal combustion engine, or ICE, for several reasons: first, fuel was available and relatively inexpensive, at least until 1974’s oil crisis; secondly, it offered superior performance, especially acceleration and top speed; and thirdly, mass-production made it widely affordable.

These advantages turned the ICE-driven automotive industry into by far the world’s biggest industry, employing millions. The electric vehicle, or EV, could not compete back then with ICE, as batteries were unable to store the electricity required and could not offer anything like the same performance and endurance, especially acceleration, top speed and distance, and were expensive.

The twenty-first century is changing all that, as EV will increasingly overtake ICE, because fossil fuel costs have risen significantly during the last half-century; the issue of toxic emissions is now widely understood and condemned for their harmful effects on the wider environment; the development of battery power now gives the same performance, including acceleration, top speed and distance, for EVs as ICE; EV is cheaper to manufacture and repair than ICE; and EV has much lower depreciation, and therefore lower annual running and finance costs. Above all, EV has no toxic emissions.

In the 2014/15 motor-racing season, for the first time, there will be Formula E running alongside Formula 1. Formula E will offer the same performance, including acceleration and top speed, as Formula 1, but with no noise or toxic emissions.

Ten EV teams will compete, not on out-of-town noisy, smelly race-tracks, but in ten city centres, given that they are green, including Los Angeles, New York, London, Beijing and six others. Various forms of EVs are now in mass-production in California, France, Germany, and Japan, with India, China and the UK soon to follow.

The leading EV manufacturer, Tesla in California, has opened a showroom at Westfield in London; can now provide power for 700 miles; and has just announced an unlimited eight-year warranty on batteries and motor parts. It’s a bit of a shame that the first design of the Tesla S model is so bland… but watch out, old ICE manufacturers: EV is now real.

Source: Spears WMS

BMW i3

10 Most Fuel-Efficient Luxury Cars Of 2015

Kelley Blue Book released its list of the “10 Most Fuel-Efficient Luxury Cars of 2015.”

Ranking is opened by BMW i3 (second year in a row in the # 1 spot), followed by Tesla Model S, Mercedes-Benz B-Class ED, Cadillac ELR and BMW i8. Plug-ins capture the entire Top 5.

BMW i3
BMW i3

Best hybrid is at 6th and with more plug-in models coming, next year plug-ins could take the entire Top 10.

  1. 2015 BMW i3
  2. 2015 Tesla Model S
  3. 2015 Mercedes-Benz B-Class
  4. 2014 Cadillac ELR
  5. 2015 BMW i8
  6. 2015 Lexus CT 200h
  7. 2016 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid
  8. 2015 Lexus ES 300h
  9. 2015 BMW 328d
  10. 2016 Audi A3 TDI

About the winner:

“BMW’s i3 tops this list for the second year in a row. This electric 4-door’s design is modern and fresh, and truly stands out on the road. Not only is the i3 the most fuel-efficient luxury car, it’s the most fuel-efficient car, period. Adding a cure for anxiety is an available range-extending gas engine.

City/highway/combined mpge: 137/111/124
Range: 81 miles”

Source: Inside EVs