E-Mobility

Tesla and Samsung have hedged their nickel price bets and their battery production remains relatively unscathed when it comes to the stratospheric rise of the metal used for the cathode in extended range batteries. President Biden is doing the government's share by calling the powers of the Defense Production Act to rein in rising EV battery material prices.

The Tesla Model 3 that lodged between an ambulance and a parking lot embankment in San Diego the other day was ruled a human error, rather than caused by engaged Full Self-Driving Beta mode. Instead of jumping on the breaks while parking, the driver slammed the accelerator pedal, resulting in the Tesla landing on the roof of a parked ambulance below.

Tesla fans in select US cities will be given the option to use one of the electric car company's models in a monthly subscription option instead of purchasing or leasing it. Provided by Kyte, the US$995/month Tesla subscription service will start in select New York locations as well as in San Francisco, California.

A new electric scooter is now available to pre-order in China from Xiaomi, the Mijia Electric Scooter 3 Youth Edition, also known as Mijia Electric Scooter 3 Lite. The vehicle has been designed to be lightweight and easy to carry, weighing about 29 lbs (13 kg), with a battery that enables you to travel up to ~12 miles (20 km) between charges.

Lucid Air keeps scoring 2022 Car of the Year awards in the electric vehicles category as, after it won the MotorTrend trophy, it now scored the Cars.com badge of honor. The famous car magazine gave it its EV of the year award on account of its record range on a charge, copious cargo space, and a responsive infotainment system in the luxury interior.

Kia has released a statement confirming that a production version of the concept EV9 SUV will be released in Europe next year. The company also gave the exterior measurements of the new vehicle and affirmed the use of a solar panel to provide additional charge to the car’s battery.

The British automaker, who is mostly known for nimble sports cars like the iconic Lotus Elise, has now officially revealed a new 600 hp strong EV which apparently is a mixture of an SUV and an electric hypercar.

GMC's 9,000 lbs off-road monster appears to be immensely popular among American buyers. The automaker has already received 65,000 reservations, which means that new orders of the electric pickup truck model variant of the Hummer EV will not be fulfilled until the year 2024.

Today's high nickel or cobalt content in extended-range electric vehicle batteries could turn into a recycling bonanza towards the end of the car's useful lifespan, argues Tesla's co-founder JB Straubel. His company is now recycling up to 10 GWh a year and he says current EV batteries will last at least 15 years before the battery is sold for recycling.

The long-range RWD model of the Kia EV6, which is equipped with a sizable 77 kWh battery, has missed its projected WLTP range of 328 miles in a real-life test by a quite considerable margin.

The continuous success of the electric Porsche Taycan, which has easily surpassed the sales numbers of the gasoline-powered Porsche 911 in some markets, apparently convinced the German automaker to develop an EV model variant of its arguably most legendary sports car.

Tesla owners at trafficked Supercharger network locations in Australia such as Broadway in Sydney Pacific Fair at Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, or Knockrow in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, have their battery charge level automatically set to 80%. They can still override and charge to full, though, as Tesla employed the measure to avoid congestion.

The parent company of Chrysler alone will now have to pay US$572 million in retroactively applied fuel economy standard penalties as per the NHTSA decision. The new penalties that will be applied as far back as model year 2019 will be a boon for EV makers like Tesla which can now charge even more for CAFE standard compliance credits.

A new electric scooter, the NAVEE N65, is now available to purchase from Geekbuying. Thanks to its larger battery and energy-saving technology, the vehicle has a 65 km (~40 miles) range. The Xiaomi company suggests that this gadget is excellent for commuters, with handy folding features.

In a wide-ranging interview, Tesla's Elon Musk confirmed his belief that Germany should not only stop closing its operational nuclear power plants, but should also reopen the ones it already closed as a stopgap solution on the way to sustainable energy sources. Speaking on the topic of longevity, he called Biden's administration 'ancient' and lacking touch with the people or penchant for innovation like Tesla.

After hiking the prices of its most popular Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles, Tesla no longer qualifies for California's Clean Vehicle Rebate Project subsidy with them. Buyers who ordered their Model 3 or Model Y before, or on March 15, will still be able to apply for the US$2000 rebate, though.

The world's largest battery maker CATL inadvertently trolled Tesla's Elon Musk while teasing its upcoming battery technologies by saying it 'found that consumers' quest for long range is still a trend,' contrary to Musk's claim that a 600-mile Tesla is pointless. CATL said it will launch a 4680-type cell with 13% higher capacity this year, as well as a 600-mile battery in 2023.

Due to another shortage of a critical component, Volkswagen is forced to delay its planned April launch of the VW ID.5. The required cable harnesses sourced from Ukraine are, understandably, in short supply due to the ongoing military conflict.

One of the first 30 customers who waited 3 years to receive the keys of a made-in-Europe Model Y from Elon Musk upon the opening of Tesla's new Gigafactory in Berlin, already managed to get into an accident. Rear-ended by an Audi at a red light stop, he was told that the bumper replacement or repair will take a few weeks, mainly while the shop is waiting for the Model Y parts to arrive.

Ford F-150 Lightning already proved that its specs are better than they are on paper by covering 20 miles more on the grueling EPA range test than it is officially supposed to. The next test is of its towing capacity in the extreme heat and cold of the Davis Dam and Colorado's Gauntlet.

It's still a long way to go until the official 2023 release of the new all-electric Porsche Macan, which is why graphic designers have now edited pictures of a recently spotted prototype of the upcoming luxury compact SUV in order to give a better impression of how the production model of the German EV may look like.

Tesla made US$1.5 billion from selling government-mandated carbon tax credits to legacy carmakers, mainly overseas, as well as various smaller subsidies. That's more than a quarter from its US$5.5 billion net income in 2021, forcing the SEC to mandate it report regulatory credits as a separate line item in its annual financial statement.

The grotesque stunt and ensuing crash once again highlight that the sheer quickness and neck-breaking acceleration of a Tesla Model S can in fact become dangerous if the premium electric sedan is being driven in a completely irresponsible manner.

The Deep Crimson Multicoat and Mercury Silver Metallic colors that leaked in the Tesla app last year may turn out to be actual hues in which Model Y SUVs will be coming off the conveyor belts of the Gigafactory Berlin over the coming months. Elon Musk tipped that the red color consists of no less than 13 layers, while the 'liquid silver' needs 8 layers of paint to materialize.

In a speech to Tesla Gigafactory Berlin employees during the factory's opening ceremony, Elon Musk confirmed that they are exploring manganese as a cathode material. In order to scale EV batteries to the 300 terawatt-hours of annual production needed to achieve sustainable transportation, he said, alternatives to affordable LFP battery materials will be needed.

Reportedly, Xiaomi is preparing to showcase its first EV as early as this year. While the company is not expected to begin mass-producing vehicles for another two years, it could have a prototype model ready for delectation by the autumn.

Ford managed to beat its own F-150 Lightning range on a charge specs in the EPA range estimate tests by 20 miles with a top 320-mile number for the XLT, Lariat or Pro versions. Thus, the F-150 Lightning models with extended-range battery manage to outlast their direct competitor, the Rivian R1T electric truck.

Elon Musk is on stage in Germany today to hand the keys for the first Model Y units built in Tesla's new Berlin-Brandenburg Gigafactory. Not only will Tesla's first factory in Europe be building hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles there, but also millions of state-of-the-art battery cells.

Although Volvo's "Concept Recharge" looks more like a crossover than a full-grown SUV, the production model called "Embla" could establish itself as the electric alternative to the popular premium SUV Volvo XC90.

Instead of working on brace new Tesla models, the electric carmaker may prioritize scaling up the production of its existing ones in its Master Plan 3 roadmap, tips Elon Musk. Tesla's Master Plan 3 will be all about 'scaling to extreme size,' he teased, in order to end our dependency on fossil fuels.

Porsche managers have recently travelled to the U.S. to meet with Apple representative over mysterious but “exciting common projects.” The latest Porsches already offer some of the deepest integration with Apple’s software and services among carmakers, though, while the Porsche-Apple partnership story comes hot on the heels of a reputed analyst’s memo that the Apple Car team has been “dissolved for some time.”

A Tesla employee, John Bernal, was fired last month after he put up a video on his YouTube channel showing some of the problems with the company's Full Self Driving (FSD) Beta software. Though Tesla didn't mention specifics in writing, Bernal said that he was verbally told his channel's content broke Tesla's policy and presented a conflict of interest.

After the luxury automaker recently reiterated that the BMW iX1 is still on schedule to be launched in Germany by the end of this year, the Munich-based company has now also revealed the official WLTP range and the power consumption of its upcoming compact SUV.

The blazing-fast and probably very expensive electric sports car being developed by Maserati is scheduled to launch in 2023, and it will be the first of many sporty EVs planned by the Italian luxury carmaker.

Customers in Europe can now purchase the 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE, which will start shipping next month. The sedan has a fast-charging 170 kW battery and 410 miles of range.

Mercedes has shared a first look at the interior of the 2023 EQS SUV. The images show a 56-inch hyper screen nearly as wide as the car, including the instrument cluster and a passenger display.

Tesla's fresh 2022.8.2 software update has been parsed for new features and a surprise new bunch of environmental factors it now accounts for when giving range estimates has emerged. Teslas will include factors like crosswinds or humidity in their trip energy expenditure calculations, albeit seemingly in China only for now.

With a projected EPA range of 305 miles and a striking design, the BMW i7 is supposed to become the electric flagship sedan of the Munich-based luxury automaker. An extremely wide 32:9 panoramic display with an 8K streaming resolution meanwhile ensures that passengers in the rear seats are well entertained.

The robotics division of the well-known conglomerate Kawasaki has raised some eyebrows with its new ridable electric goat robot, which may be a tad too slow for fans of the sporty motorcycles for which the Japanese company is usually known.

Fiido has been teasing the launch of its first-ever scooter, an 'extreme' hybrid type called the Beast, through crowdfunding. Now, it has revealed a date for this Indiegogo event, as well as how much the first early-bird rewards will cost. For those in the market for a lighter and more urban electric scooter, the OEM has also now indicated that its second-gen model will be more along those lines.

In a press release, Subaru has announced that it is exploring the electrification of its WRX STI vehicle. The company said it would not build the next generation of the car on the new WRX platform, to meet climate change-related targets.

Several years after Volkswagen released a teaser for its all-electric sedan, the German automaker has now officially revealed a rough time table regarding the launch of the highly-anticipated electric Passat alternative called VW ID. Aero or Aero B.

New images of a working Audi A6 e-tron prototype reveal slight design changes in comparison to the previously shown electric concept car, including a particularly eye-catching headlight design.

As the likely successor to the affordable E110S, the new Segway E110A electric moped comes with a range of up to 35 miles and is designed for shorter commutes in urban settings.

Frustrated by 'inflationary pressures' on Tesla and SpaceX, their CEO Elon Musk tweeted he'd like to enter a 'single combat' with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The fight will be over Ukraine, he added, as the Russian invasion there has forced Tesla to increase prices and widen EV delivery windows.

The Tesla Model 3 will soon have a direct competitor in China, as the largest EV maker there has leaked the specs of its upcoming BYD Seal electric sedan in a regulatory approval filing. The BYD Seal specs include single and dual-motor configurations and an innovative blade battery, while its price will undercut the Model 3 by a wide margin.

Tesla has now priced the base Model Y Long Range and Model Y Performance, as well as the Model 3 Long Range models with the Nickel-Cobalt-Aluminum batteries at US$59,990, US$64,990, and US$51,990, which is a $1000 hike compared to just the other day. The culprit is the exorbitant rise of nickel prices.

Rivian just pulled a Tesla as its CEO announced in an earnings call that the EV truck maker will be switching its standard-range fleet vehicles to the cheaper and more available LFP batteries this year. Using iron instead of the rarer nickel or cobalt, these batteries are also the ones Tesla installs in its standard-range Model 3 or Model Y now.

Yamaha has unveiled the NEO's, the company's first electric scooter to launch in Europe. The vehicle has a 2.3 kW motor and can travel up to 24 miles (38.5 km) between charges.

Ducati has unveiled the Futa, its first pedal-assisted electric road bike. The bicycle comes with a 250 W motor with five power assistance levels. A limited-edition version is also available, which comes with a Garmin Edge Explore GPS bicycle computer.