Fiat to slash prices on aging small car lines: report

2017 Fiat 500SWhen it launched in the U.S. back in late 2010, the current Fiat 500 marked the return of the storied Italian brand to these shores. The little three-door hatchback gave buyers another retro small car in the vein of the BMW-built Mini Cooper. But six years later, the 500 is fairly old by industry standards, and it faces a market that has shunned...

Fiat to slash prices on aging small car lines: report

2017 Fiat 500SWhen it launched in the U.S. back in late 2010, the current Fiat 500 marked the return of the storied Italian brand to these shores. The little three-door hatchback gave buyers another retro small car in the vein of the BMW-built Mini Cooper. But six years later, the 500 is fairly old by industry standards, and it faces a market that has shunned...

Electric-car ‘datathon’ to be hosted by White House tomorrow

The White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]The Obama Administration will make at least one more push to promote electric cars as it enters its final two months. The White House will hold its first-ever "Electric Vehicle Datathon" tomorrow, with the goal of devising ways to use data to increase electric-car adoption. Held in concert with the Department of Energy and four of its national...

Electric-car ‘datathon’ to be hosted by White House tomorrow

The White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]The Obama Administration will make at least one more push to promote electric cars as it enters its final two months. The White House will hold its first-ever "Electric Vehicle Datathon" tomorrow, with the goal of devising ways to use data to increase electric-car adoption. Held in concert with the Department of Energy and four of its national...

Tesla stores to focus on energy as well as electric cars

Tesla Powerwall 2.0Tesla is perhaps best known for its electric cars, but the company has another prominent business as well. Its Tesla Energy division markets stationary lithium-ion battery packs for energy storage. Energy-storage systems can increase the utility of home solar arrays, meaning Tesla Energy will likely become more important now that Tesla is set to...

Daimler ups-the-ante to €10 billion for electric vehicle R&D

Daimler is planning to invest up to €10 billion ($11 billion) in electric vehicles research and development, up from €7 billion announced only 6 months ago.

"By 2025 we want to develop 10 electric cars based on the same architecture," Thomas Weber told Stuttgarter Zeitung's Saturday edition.

"For this push we want to invest up to 10 billion euros," he said, adding three of the models will be Smart branded cars and that thanks to larger batteries they will be able to increase their cruising range up to 700 kilometers.

In September, a person familiar with Daimler's plans said that the car maker plans to roll out at least six electric car models as part of its push to compete with Tesla and Audi.

Separately, Daimler said on Friday that it will continue to sell diesel-powered vehicles in the United States, in contrast to German rival Volkswagen.

"There is currently no decision nor are there considerations to withdraw diesel from the U.S.", a company spokesman said, denying a report from weekly magazine Der Spiegel, which had said the carmaker was considering stopping its sales of such cars in the U.S. next year.

Diesel-powered cars account for less than one percent of the Mercedes brand's car sales in the U.S. this year, he added.

That compares to a diesel car share of about 5 percent several years ago, Der Spiegel said.

Daimler is conducting an internal investigation of its certification process for diesel exhaust emissions in the United States at the request of the Justice Department, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it would review all light-duty diesel vehicles.

According to Der Spiegel, the potential pullback of diesel cars from the U.S. market is not related to this probe.

Volkswagen said on Tuesday it would drop diesel vehicles in the United States and refocus on sport utility and electric vehicles, in the wake of a damaging diesel emissions cheating scandal.

Tesla to offer Zero Marginal Cost Mobility

We've all witnessed first-hand how in just two decades the internet has digitised industry after industry to deliver an increasingly zero marginal cost society (Marginal cost is the cost of producing an additional unit of a good or service after fixed costs have been absorbed.)

While I don't subscribe to the entire zero marginal cost society thesis, it is a good explanation for the effects that have transformed information industries like media, music & software. The same now applies increasingly to energy. While the fixed costs of the harvesting technologies to generate green electricity are decreasing exponentially, the marginal cost of producing renewable energy is near zero. The sun and the wind are free and only need to be captured and stored.

At a recent shareholder meeting, Elon Musk said Tesla's new solar shingles will cost less than a "normal roof" and the energy would essentially be free. Does this mark the dawn of mass market zero marginal cost mobility? Popular Mechanics recently ran the experiment, powering three electric vehicles with a conventional rooftop PV system. They concluded that buying a rooftop PV system to power your electric vehicle is comparable to prepaying three years worth of gasoline, based on $4/gallon, and never having to pay for it again.

We think the payback time for a retrofitted rooftop PV system can be even shorter! Based on average annual motoring, 15,000 km/year in Australia, a small 1.5 kW PV array (PM used 7.5 kw) could power a typical EV like a Nissan Leaf (114 Wh/km quoted energy consumption) on it's daily commute for 25+ years at an average cost of < $0.004/km.

Eliminating the $240/month a typical household spends on vehicle fuel, a modest rooftop PV system would pay for itself in just 6 months. Ticking the box to have Tesla tiles fitted to your new house eliminates the payback stage altogether. It is effectively a rooftop perpetual fuel pump where the per kilometre cost is zero from day 1.

Combine Tesla's solar shingles and EV powertrain which, irrespective of their "infinite Mile" 8 year warranty, is expected to last well in-excess of a million miles, (true for all EVs) with the ever growing installed base of rooftop PV systems (25% of households in some Australian states) and we could soon see zero marginal cost mobility becoming reality at internet speed, hammering another couple dozen nails in the coffin of ICE cars.

2017 Zero electric motorcycles: more range, more power, better options

2017 Zero electric motorcycle lineupAutumn is here, the leaves are changing and as the riding season winds down we continue our annual tradition of discussing what’s new for the Zero Motorcycles lineup of electric motorcycles. This year Zero has a few surprises in store to broaden their bikes' appeal to new riders. There are now 14 configurations of Zero Motorcycles ranging in...