On this week’s show : Tesla makes a move
to buy SolarCity, Hyperloop One signs a deal
with Russia, and some really clever students
make an electric car accelerate really, really
quickly.
These stories and more, coming up next, on
TEN.
Enjoying today’s show on Youtube and want
to read the stories we’re referring to today?
Just head to our website at Transport Evolved
dot com forward slash TEN, where you’ll
find today’s show notes -- as well as links
to the latest future car news, buying guides,
tech primers, and car reviews.
It’s Friday, June 24th, twenty sixteen I’m
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield and while I know some
of you were more than angered about last week’s
preamble to the show, I want to thank those
of you who watched, engaged, and proved I
did the right thing.
Thanks.
We’re starting today’s show with a story
that had been rumbling around as a rumor for
the past few months but then suddenly became
a breaking news story on Tuesday that had
journalists around the world scrambling for
their keyboards.
You see, that’s because on Tuesday California
automaker Tesla Motors announced publicly
that it wanted to acquire SolarCity, one of
America’s leading providers and installers
of domestic photovoltaic solar panels.
The deal itself will need to be approved by
shareholders of both Tesla Motors and SolarCity
before it can go ahead, but if approved would
see Tesla acquire any outstanding shares of
SolarCity for an estimated $2.8 billion in
Tesla stock.
At that point, SolarCity would become part
of Tesla, and customers could buy Solar Panels
alongside Tesla Energy products and electric
cars at any Tesla store.
While many hardened fans are happy about the
news, Wall Street isn’t quite so bullish,
with Tesla’s share price falling more than
$15 between the announcement and the time
of filming.
We’ve also heard from several Tesla owners
and shareholders who are worried the deal
will spread Tesla just too thinly ahead of
its Model 3 launch.
Do you agree?
Leave your thoughts in the Comments below.
This next story doesn’t involve massive
fluctuations in share prices, but it’s still
very important for Tesla and any other electric
automaker looking to bring an affordable long-range
electric car to market in the coming year
or so.
That’s because this week, Japanese automaker
Nissan confirmed during the EVS 29 conference
in Montreal, Canada that its next-generation
LEAF hatchback will come with a 60 kilowatt-hour
lithium-ion battery pack as standard, giving
it more than 200 miles of real-world range
per charge.
And while Nissan has yet to confirm a date
for the launch of said vehicle, hints are
now being dropped that suggest we should see
Nissan’s next-generation plug-in some time
towards the end of this year at a major auto
show with a production debut some time next
year.
Given the 60 kilowatt-hour long-range prototype
Nissan has shown us in the past, as well as
the IDS concept it debuted in Tokyo last year,
we can’t wait to see what it has planned
as it prepares to take on both the Chevrolet
Bolt EV and the Tesla Model 3 in the long-range,
affordable electric car marketplace.
We might think of 200 miles as being long-range
for an electric vehicle, but how about four
thousand, two hundred and three miles, because
how far the amazing all-electric Solar Impulse
2 had travelled non-stop when it arrived in
Seville, Spain on Thursday after a mammoth
two day, 23 hour, 8 minute flight from New
York across the Atlantic Ocean.
The plane itself, with a wingspan as large
as a commercial airliner but weighing less
than a minivan, used the longest day to its
advantage, harvesting 1.368 megawatt-hours
of electricity on its trip to power it during
the day and charge its batteries for night-time
flight.
Now it’s back in Europe, the Solar Impulse
2 has completed 90 percent of its round-the
world trip, so here’s to pilots Bertrand
Piccard (who flew the atlantic leg), Andre
Borschberg, and the rest of the solar impulse
team as they prove categorically that we don’t
need fossil fuels to travel around the world.
Well done all!
The team behind Solar Impulse 2 may be all
for demonstrating the benefits of electric
transportation, but to date, Japanese automaker
Toyota has been reluctant to do the same,
despite producing two generations of the Toyota
RAV4 EV.
But this week, Toyota’s Chief Engineer for
its Prius hybrid admitted that Toyota, while
still heavily focused on hydrogen fuel cell
vehicles, is far more open to the idea of
electric cars than it once was, producing
electric and hybrid cars for mainstream buyers
and reserving hydrogen fuel cell technology
for its luxury and high-end models.
Teasing electric vehicles in the past for
being limited in their range and slow to refuel,
it seems that Toyota is now starting to realize
just how far ahead of it many other companies
are on electric vehicles.
And with electricity grids around the world
getting cleaner and cleaner and the cost of
producing electricity using renewable methods
now cheaper than fossil fuels, it seems that
Toyota might be regretting its past stance
on plug-in cars.
Of course, there may be an ulterior motive:
namely the cost of producing hydrogen vs electric
vehicles, but I’m keen to see what you make
of Toyota’s unexpected policy change in
the Comments below.
We’re off to Russia next, where we heard
this week that Hyperloop One -- one of several
companies tried to bring Elon Musk’s Hyperloop
Alpha to commercial reality -- has signed
an agreement with the city of Moscow to develop
hyperloop Routes that could be connected to
Moscow’s existing transportation system.
The partnership -- set up between the Russian
government, Hyperloop one and the Summa Group
-- aims to one day set up a Hyperloop between
Moscow and China, making it possible to transfer
goods and people from the heart of China to
Europe in less than a day using the renewable,
zero-emissions technology.
At the same time, Hyperloop One and its new
partners announced the judges for its Hyperloop
Global Challenge, a competition designed to
identify teams and locations around the world
that will help bring Hyperloop to commercial
reality.
Not to be confused with the Hyperloop SpaceX
competition, this new competition will see
the winning designs built as full-scale prototypes
in the Nevada Desert next to Hyperloop One’s
headquarters.
We’ll keep you posted of more news concerning
both parts of this story as and when we have
it.
We’re back to more traditional forms of
transportation now with the news that German
automaker BMW is about to produce a prototype
all-electric version of its i8 sports car
with a view to evaluating it as an electric
car.
As UK magazine Autocar reported on Thursday,
while the existing BMW i8 -- which is a range-extended
plug-in hybrid sports car -- is proving popular
with customers around the world, the BMW is
now looking to replace the complex drivetrain
with a larger battery pack and three electric
motors capable of improving its straight line
performance and yielding true long-distance,
Tesla-level range per charge.
We understand that the prototype, which will
be based on the i8 fuel cell prototype the
automaker produced last year -- will have
a wide central tunnel into which the long-range
battery pack will be fitted, and weigh almost
the same as the production plug-in hybrid.
If successful, BMW sources hint that it could
replace the existing i8 in the not-too-distant
future, proving that BMW is most certainly
in it for the long run when it comes to electric
cars.
Changing gears, we’re off to California
now, where governmental fleets are welcoming
a number of heavily-discounted Toyota Mirai
hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to their ranks
courtesy of a special deal worked up between
the state and the Japanese automaker.
You see, while private customers in the Golden
State will find themselves paying a sticker
price of $57,000 before incentives, Sacramento
County and the city of Long Beach have each
managed to get some incredible deals on the
limited-production vehicle.
Long Beach is paying twenty-four thousand
dollars to lease its Mirai, including maintenance
and free fuel, for three-years, while Sacramento
is buying each of its four Mirias at a state-contracted
price of 41 thousand dollars, more than 28
percent off list price.
We’re not quite sure who sucks up the price
difference, but when you add in a fifteen
thousand dollar rebate on each car from the
California Air Resources board under its fleet
pilot project scheme, these counties are essentially
getting their Mirias at less than half their
usual value.
Now why can’t those kind of discounts go
on elsewhere too eh?
An automaker unlikely to offer those kind
of outlandish discounts next is Mercedes-Benz,
which has confirmed this week that its S-class
plug-in hybrid -- the S550e -- will gain wireless
inductive charging as standard from 2018 onwards.
As we’ve explained before, wireless inductive
charging for electric vehicles is still very
much in its infancy, so much so that the standards
by which wireless inductive charging systems
should work only just getting laid out by
the Society of Automotive Engineers.
But as a high-end, high-ticket car, Mercedes-Benz
believes that its customers will pay the extra
for the facility on the S550e, ensuring that
as long as they’re parked over an inductive
charging pad their car will charge its battery
pack for the next trip.
Given that we’re using an inductive charging
system with our staff Nissan LEAF right now,
I’ve got to say that the experience is certainly
convenient, but I’m still to be convinced
the added cost compared to just plugging the
car in is really worth it.
The jury is still definitely out on this one.
Staying with German automakers, we’ve got
another update on the ongoing Volkswagen diesel
gate scandal now in the form of news that
the German Government has just approved yet
more proposed fixes for non compliant diesel-engined
vehicles.
Details at the moment are sparse, but it is
believed that VW now has approval from the
German motor vehicle authority for 4.7 million
of the 8.5 million affected cars believed
to be affected by the cheating software in
Europe.
In the U.S. meanwhile, Volkswagen is still
working hard with regulators to finding a
satisfactory solution given the country’s
tougher limits on NOx emissions.
In related news, VW is now believed to have
agreed to pay customers in the U.S. up to
$7,000 per car in compensation for the scandal,
depending on the age of the vehicle and a
few other undisclosed factors.
And while the entire process is still very
much up in the air, it’s believed the end
is in sight for both VW, the EPA, CARB and
the U.S. Justice Department, so watch this
space for more information.
And finally,
We all know the Tesla Model S P90DL is fast,
reaching 60 mph in under three seconds, but
it now looks positively glacial thanks to
a new electric car record this week set by
Grimsel, a single-seat sports car built by
a team of students from Switzerland.
Those who have watched the show for a year
or more will remember that Grimsel featured
in a previous episode after setting a 0-62
mph acceleration time of around 1.7 seconds,
but this week with a few tweaks here and there,
the same car managed the sprint in 1.513 seconds.
Officially a world record, this is one car
you’ll never see in production, but frankly,
but when it hits 62 mph in less time than
it takes to actually get out of the car -- it’s
fast.
I am sadly nowhere near that fast, nor are
either of the two Transport Evolved staff
cars sitting downstairs, but I have managed
to reach the finish line for this week’s
show, so don’t forget to leave your reactions
to the stories we covered in the comments
below, as well as giving us a thumbs up and
share if you liked it.
And If you didn’t, give us a thumbs down
and tell us why because otherwise, we can’t
improve.
I’ll be back next week at the usual time
with another episode of TEN.
In the meantime you can find all the news
that’s fit to print at our website at transport
evolved dot com, catch up with us on twitter
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As always, there are lots of stories we didn’t
manage to fit into today's show, including
why Nissan’s electric vehicle lineup could
soon be expanding to include SUVs and CUVs,
Farady Future gets permission to test autonomous
vehicles in California, BMW demonstrates an
energy storage product that uses stock BMW
i3 battery packs with no modifications necessary,
and Honda’s all-electric NSX EV Concept
prepares to do battle on Pikes Peak this weekend.
So when we’re done, be sure to head to our
site to read them all.
Thanks for watching, I’m Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield,
have a great weekend, and until next time,
keep evolving!
