On this week’s show : Making the Tesla Model
S P85D Look Slow, powering cars with cow poop,
and how Elon Musk nearly sold Tesla to Google
two years ago for Six billion dollars.
These stories and more, coming up next on
TEN.
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It’s Friday, April the twenty fourth, twenty
fifteen, I’m Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, and
in honor of Earth Day, I’m filming this
outside.
I must be mad…
Last week, we brought you news that GM had
begun to offer some big discounts on the twenty
fifteen model year Chevy Spark EV ahead of
next year’s planned debut of the 200+ mile
Chevrolet Bolt electric car.
Well, today it’s the turn of the first generation
Chevy Volt range-extended EV, which is getting
its own set of price cuts as Chevrolet dealers
try to clear some 200-days worth of first-generation
Volts GM has in inventory ahead of the August
launch of the second-generation model.
As we reported on Tuesday, those wanting a
twenty fifteen Volt can now get a $2,500 cash-on-hood
rebate when buying the outgoing model this
month, while those opting to lease can have
one from just $249 per month with $500 at
singing.
Come to Chevy for the first time, and there’s
an additional $500 discount available, giving
you nothing to pay at singing.
Of course, the new 2016 model year Volt will
have better range, efficiency and one more
seat than the first-generation model.
But if you're on the look out for a bargain,
you may want to visit your Chevy dealership
now.
It’s happened -- and it’s happened two
years ahead of targets: Norway has just sold
its fifty-thousandth electric car, yet again
showing the rest of the world that electric
cars don’t have to be a niche market vehicle.
The fifty-thousandth car -- a brand-new Tesla
Model S -- means that Norway has reached the
EV adoption targets it set itself for twenty
seventeen well ahead of schedule, and has
already prompted Norwegians to try and decide
what happens next.
At the moment, electric cars get some pretty
decent perks, including driving in bus lanes,
free parking and charging in major cities,
and zero sales tax.
But the cost to the national budget -- between
$384 million and $512 million means that Norway
could find itself reducing those generous
incentives a little now that electric cars
have become part of everyday life .
We -- and the rest of the world will be watching
to see what happens next and more importantly
-- if Norway keeps at the forefront of plug-in
advocacy.
With a 0-62 mph time of just 3.1 seconds,
the Tesla Model S P85D -- Tesla Motors’
flagship all-wheel drive variant of its popular
Model S electric sedan -- is one of the fastest
cars around.
And as a consequence, there’s little that
can keep up on the drag strip, electric or
otherwise.
But this week, Italian motorcycle manufacturer
Energica released a video of its twenty fifteen
Energica Ego electric superbike taking on
a variety of high-performance vehicles including
the Tesla Model S P85D in a straight-line
drag race.
With 100 -- yes one hundred -- kilowatts of
power delivered to the rear wheels, the Energica
Ego can reach 62 miles per hour in three seconds,
marginally faster than the Tesla Model S -- and
just received its official approval this week
to go on sale in the U.S. this fall.
I want a go.
Live rival tier one automotive parts supplier
Delphi, German parts and electronics company
Bosch is working hard to develop and test
autonomous driving technology.
To that end, it has recently released a video
in which it gives us a sneak-peak at what
living with an autonomous vehicle could be
like in the future.
While it features concept CGI-generated images
rather than actual self-driving technology,
it gives us a really interesting glimpse into
the near future of self-driving cars.
Eagle-eyed viewers will also note that the
car on which this vision is based is a production
Tesla Model S, with Bosch replacing all of
Tesla’s stock systems with its own computer-generated
suggestion of what auto-drive technology could
offer.
For us, the most interesting feature is a
route-planner which allows the driver to prioritise
manual versus autonomous drive modes, allowing
them to pick longer routes with more autonomous
driving over shorter routes where they’d
have to do more of the work.
It’s going to be interesting to see if this
rather innovative idea takes off because I
for one would love it.
What about you?
Six billion dollars is a lot of money.
I mean, that’s more than the predicted build
cost of the Tesla Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada.
And it’s certainly more than most of us
will ever see in our lives.
But this week ahead of the launch next month
of a new biographical book out Elon Musk by
author Ashlee Vance comes the claim that just
two years ago, money woes at Tesla Motors
nearly resulted in Tesla CEO Elon Musk selling
the Californian automaker to Google for six
billion dollars.
As the story goes, Tesla was struggling to
sell its Model S electric car and finding
funds tight as it tried to fix some of the
early teething problems that plagued some
of its earliest production cars.
Desperate, Musk approached Google CEO Larry
Page for some help, and agreed in principle
the sale of Tesla to Google.
But in the intervening time, Tesla’s fortunes
turned around thanks to some hard work from
Tesla’s sales force, resulting in a welcome
end-of-quarter profit and a massive jump in
stock price.
With cash in hand, Tesla no-longer needed
the acquisition and the whole thing was called
off.
Tesla isn’t commenting on the story, but
we’ve got to admit that it’s certainly
a plausible recollection of what was a tough
time for the company just two years ago.
When it was first announced last year, Volvo
kept official figures for its twenty sixteen
XC90 T8 plug-in hybrid close to its corporate
chest, promising that it expected the luxury
plug-in to get somewhere around fifty-nine
miles per gallon equivalent on the U.S. test
cycle in EV mode.
But this week, we’ve learned that Volvo’s
original estimates were a little conservative
with the news from Autocar that Volvo now
expects fuel economy and emissions to be lower
than previously thought.
Having talked to insiders at the Shanghai
Motor Show, Autocar says Volvo now expects
CO2 tailpipe emissions of 49 grams per kilometer,
down from 59 grams in previous estimates,
as well as official gas mileage figures somewhere
around 167 miles per gallon on the combined
NEDC plug-in hybrid test cycle.
That testing method is different to the U.S.
EPA system, and accounts for two thirds electric
and one third gasoline, so expect U.S. figures
to be slightly different when published.
Either way, better efficiency is better for
Volvo and a massive shot across the bow of
the Audi Q7 e-tron, whose emissions and fuel
economy figures aren’t expected to be as
good.
Let the battle of the full-size plug-in SUVs
begin.
Right now in the U.S., there are three competing
standard for quick charging electric cars:
the Japanese-designed CHAdeMO system favored
by Nissan, Mitsubishi and Kia; Tesla’s proprietary
Supercharger standard currently only used
by Tesla’s own plug-in cars; and the Combined
Charging System (CCS), a standard supported
by a total of seven different U.S. and European
automakers which was designed to be the new
de facto standard for all North American and
European electric cars.
But as data release this week shows, CCS quick
charging provision is way behind both CHAdeMO
and Tesla across the U.S., with California
-- the U.S. state with the most public charging
stations in it -- having more than three times
the number of CHAdeMO charging stations in
it to CCS charging stations.
The data -- collected by PlugShare over the
past four years -- shows that CCS charging
station installation figures are about two
years behind CHAdeMO and one year behind Tesla
supercharger installation figures.
Hopefully, that’s going to change thanks
to a pact between Volkswagen and BMW to install
more CCS-compatible charging stations along
east and west U.S. costs this year.
But while there are certainly more CHAdeMo
compatible stations we’d like to point out
that there are also more CHAdeMO cars, so
you may be better off buying a CCS car even
though there are fewer charging points because
the queues to charge will certainly be smaller.
And finally, over the years plenty of people
have called hydrogen fuel cell technology
bullshit, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
But this week, Toyota decided to use that
claim in its literal form by highlighting
how it’s possible to make hydrogen fuel
from you’ve guessed it, bovine by-product.
Having grown up on a dairy farm I can tell
you that cows poop a lot -- but the process
of converting cow shit to hydrogen isn’t
all that easy or energy efficient.
First you have to let the manure settle and
decompose, capturing the methane that is naturally
released from that process.
Then you have to reform the methane at super
high temperatures near to a metal catalyst
such as nickel in order to split off carbon
monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen.
The process is energy intensive and while
it’s renewable, we suspect there are cleaner
and greener ways of powering a hydrogen fuel
cell car.
Still, we’ve got to give props to Toyota
for being super enthusiastic on this one.
We smell something bad.
I know I pulled a poo joke, but actually cow
poop doesn’t smell all that bad.
It’s pigshit you’ve got to worry about.
You can catch us next week at the same time
for another weekly news roundup or visit our
site every day at transport evolved dot com
for the latest news.
You’ll notice we’ve had no live panel
talk show for a few weeks now: we are bringing
the show back, but as you know, there’s
a transatlantic move in the works and we record
in a home studio.
Say no more.
As usual, there’s been a whole lot we haven’t
managed to fit into today’s show, including
predictions for Tesla’s big announcement
next week, a one megawatt electric car that
puts the super into supercar, Chevrolet's
totally unobtainable but super-sci-fi self-driving
concept car, and our review of the twenty
forteen all-electric Nissan e-NV200 cargo
van.
So when we’re done, click this link, and
head to our site to catch up!
That’s all there is to say.
I’m Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, have a great
weekend, and until next time, keep evolving!
