Today
TSLA: 249.24
The California Department of Motor Vehicles published its Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports for 2016 today, which include statistics on disengagements for all of the companies currently testing self-driving cars in the Golden State. Importantly, Alphabet’s Waymo reported far fewer safety-related disengages and far more miles driven in 2016 compared to 2015, signaling that the company’s system is — as it should — continually getting safer…
Passion is an important factor in Tesla’s success. The company goes out of its way to hire passionate people in general, but also people passionate about the company’s mission to accelerate the advent of renewable transport and energy. That wasn’t ever more obvious than today after a Tesla store manager broke down into tears during her testimony before the Indiana’s Road and Transportation Committee.
As we reported yesterday, Indiana’s legislature is introducing a new bill acutely aimed to kill Tesla’s direct sales business model in the state. If it passes, it would result in Tesla having to stop its retail and service operations in the state. expand full story
When GM first introduced the Chevy Bolt EV, the automaker said that they didn’t plan for the all-electric car to replace the Chevy Spark EV, but things have changed. Now two years later and after the Bolt has hit a few markets, the company confirmed that its first all-electric vehicle program in a decade is now dead. expand full story
While Tesla has now thousands of vehicles equipped with its latest Autopilot hardware on the road today, only a few prototypes in its captive fleet have a software build capable of level 4 or 5 self-driving installed.
In its latest Disengagement of Autonomous Mode report with the California DMV, the automaker confirmed that it operated 4 of those prototypes last year and that they accumulated 550 autonomous miles in 2016. expand full story
Today, GM released its delivery report for the month of January and confirmed that it delivered 1,162 Chevy Bolt EVs so far this year. It sounds like the vehicle is still production constrained since the company claims that it has “the fastest days to turn in the industry at 7 days.” expand full story
Tesla’s General Counsel Todd Maron filed with the SEC today to officially change the certificate of incorporation of ‘Tesla Motors’ to ‘Tesla Inc.’. The move doesn’t come as a surprise since the company changed its branding throughout the last year, but it is now official.
Solar eclipse allowed Germany to test grid, learning that up to 80% renewables is possible – Pretty cool to think that the German scientists and grid operators took the time to use a solar eclipse on one of the world’s largest solar power deployments as an experiment. I cannot imagine it would be possible to test such an aggressive ramp up and down in the real world without upsetting broader society – but during a solar eclipse it is possible.
Maryland House (not the Senate yet) votes to overturn Governor’s veto of Renewable Energy bill – The House of Representatives of Maryland has overruled the veto of an energy bill by the state’s governor. Reading the comments here and in other locations I hear the same tired arguments about ‘sun and wind taxes.’ It’s like there is a group distributing talking points all across the country that is funded by those making money from fossil fuels. Good thing we have a double digit number of analysis showing that the House of Representatives is right from a science standpoint and that they are supported by the people.
After obtaining a 5-star safety rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and a 5-star rating from Euro NCAP, the Tesla Model S had its first safety rating setback today in the 4 years since its introduction.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) finally crash-tested the vehicle and it failed to achieve its top safety rating due to a problem with the seatbelt for the small overlap front crash test. expand full story
In a future where the world’s car fleet is rapidly transitioning to electric vehicles, gas stations will be forcefully downgraded to simple convenience stores and consequently, they will lose a significant revenue stream brought in by people stopping for gas but buying something at the convenience store.
Some oil companies have accepted that the transition is happening and started installing electric vehicle chargers at their gas stations. Shell is the latest major company to jump on board. expand full story
