Coming up on today's show: President trump vows to end the regulatory "assault" on
the auto industry, Tesla begins building -- and testing -- Model 3 release candidates, and
Lucid announces how much you'll have to pay to get your hands on a 240-mile Lucid
Air EV.
These stories and more, coming next on TEN.
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It's Friday March seventeenth twenty seventeen, I'm Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield and I've spent
this week driving the twenty seventeen Toyota Prius Prime.
A review is on its way -- but right now it's TEN time, so let's get on with the first
story of the week -- namely that this week Tesla announced and then completed a round
of funding worth an estimated one point two billion dollars.
Announced Wednesday and completed by Friday morning, the extra funding -- which will help
keep Tesla's finances ticking over until mass Model 3 production starts -- comes from
the issuing of an additional one point three million common shares at two hundred and sixty-two
dollars per share, as well as the sale of eight-hundred and fifty million dollars in
convertible notes.
Tesla says the new shares dilute existing share value by less than one percent, but
notes that this could raise slightly depending on the final value of the convertible notes.
As in previous stock offerings, Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased a significant number of
shares -- about twenty five million dollars worth -- which Electrek noted this week has
likely been made possible thanks Musk borrowing from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
Given Musk's 21 percent majority stake in Tesla now accounts to more than nine billion
dollars though, I don't think either bank minds.
For the past year and a half or so, we've seen a number of automakers announce larger-capacity
battery packs for current production (yet mid-cycle) electric cars, nudging the range
of a whole slew of cars -- like the Renault ZOE, Nissan LEAF, BMW i3 Volkswagen e-Golf
and Ford Focus EV to name a few -- over the 100-mile mark for the first time ahead of
next-generation models that are widely expected to get two hundred miles or more per charge.
Well, this week, South Korean automaker Kia became the latest to announce such a tweak
to its Soul EV, announcing that the twenty eighteen model year Soul EV would get a larger-capacity
30 kilowatt-hour battery pack to give it a range of 'over 100 miles' for the first
time.
How much further can it travel?
Well, given the original Kia Soul EV battery pack was twenty-seven kilowatt-hours, don't
expect the range to be all that much larger, adding maybe ten or fifteen miles over the
original 93 EPA-approved miles of the original battery pack.
As usual, while we don't have much more information to share here, we'll give you
more as soon as we have it.
Reducing the size, scope and budget of the U.S. EPA was one of Donald J Trump's promises
during the election campaign, and as we've detailed over the past few weeks, it looks
as if now he's in office, the forty-fifth president of the U.S. will follow through
on those plans.
This week during a special event in Detroit attended by key auto-industry executives,
President Trump announced that the government would reopen the comment period for EPA emission
rules for twenty twenty-two through twenty twenty-five model year vehicles, something
which had prematurely been closed by President Obama's administration in an attempt to
lock down emissions regulation back in January, something Trump said, gone unchallenged, "would
have destroyed, or further destroyed, the auto industry."
Now, as our friends at GreenCarReports noted this week, the U.S. Auto industry has just
had its second most successful year in history and as we've noted in the past, fuel economy
regulations are always complained about by automakers but then met and exceeded when
it comes to real-world production.
And while Mr. Trump did not mention either climate change or global warming during his
time in Detroit, choosing instead to promise that his administration would "work tirelessly
to eliminate the industry-killing regulations," his first budget -- released this week -- did
make it very clear where the current administration stands on climate change, slashing the EPA's
budget, remit, and ending a huge amount of scientific funding.
It's going to be a rough few years -- and because I've just touched on politics, expect
the comment section to be similarly emotional.
With politics out of the way, we're off to Germany next, where luxury brand Porsche
has detailed that it intends to follow Tesla's lead when it comes to keeping its upcoming
Porsche Mission E electric sports sedan up-to-date.
Tesla, as I'm sure you all know, uses an always-on Internet connection in its Model
S and Model X to remotely update and improve and refine the capabilities of its electric
cars, a feature that means your Tesla is always up to date with the latest features and capabilities,
no matter how old it is.
Well, Porsche has been taking note, and it intends to do just the same thing with the
Mission E, ensuring its luxury sports sedan always has the latest capabilities and can
receive important software updates and bug fixes without going anywhere near a dealership.
And with more and more automakers putting always-on Internet connections in their cars,
I think this kind of capability is just going to become more and more common -- don't
you?
Our next story involves one of our neighbors here at Transport Evolved -- hardware company
Intel -- which has announced this week that it has acquired Israeli firm Mobileye for
a massive fifteen point three billion dollars.
Mobileye, for those who don't know, was responsible for the first-generation autopilot
hardware found inside twenty fourteen through twenty sixteen Tesla Model S electric
cars, and is considered to be one of the foremost authorities on autonomous vehicle technology
-- which does kina explain its fifteen point three billion dollar valuation.
For that, Intel -- which already has an impressive set of autonomous vehicle programs -- will
gain access to all of Mobileye's programs, including sensor fusion, mapping, front- and
rear-facing camera tech and much more.
It's already committed to moving its autonomous vehicle division to Israel too, an interesting
move that ensures Mobileye's staff won't have to relocate to the U.S… at least for
now, that is.
Alongside the news that Tesla has raised some extra capital, we heard this week that Tesla
is now producing and testing what it's calling "Model 3 release candidates" on Tesla's
Fremont production line.
This term -- usually reserved for software development -- hints that Tesla is going to
hit its Model 3 production timeline without a hitch, but according to those who heard
the closed investor call in which Tesla made the disclosure Tesla is referring to these
Model 3 cars as release candidates because it's building them on the Fremont production
line using almost entirely production tooling.
Unlike previous Tesla development cycles, Tesla has focused hard on tying down the automation
and tooling for Model 3 early on in its development cycle, which it says should dramatically reduce
the time that it takes to bring the finished cars to market.
It's no surprise then that Musk said that these release candidate cars will be driving
on the public roads in a few weeks time, allowing Tesla to make final tweaks ahead of mass production
this September.
As part of its penance for building and selling TDI-engined cars with emissions software designed
to cheat in emissions testing, Volkswagen was forced by the U.S. EPA and the California
Air Resource Board to invest two billion dollars into supporting and promoting electric vehicles,
under the name "Electrify America"With that two billion dollars, Electrify America
will spend the next ten years promoting electric cars and investing in electric vehicle charging
infrastructure, but this week we learned how the first of five, two point five year investment
cycles will be spent
According to documents released by the California Air Resource Board, Electrify America will
invest two hundred million dollars in EV infrastructure and promotion in the state of California over
the next thirty months, while the rest of the U.S. will get three hundred million dollars
in investment.
And while it's good to see this project get off the ground, I'm not convinced the
money is all that evenly spread between California and the rest of the U.S.
Given California has already got a healthy EV adoption rate, it feels like the money
should have been spent on the rest of the country, although CARB did have a part to
play in this: as part of the diesel gate settlement, it claimed eight hundred million of the two
billion dollars for the golden state, while the EPA settled for one point two billion
for the rest of the U.S.
It's frustrating, and may mean that Electrify America won't have the effect on the whole
country it really could.
If you've watched recent shows, you'll know that there's an ongoing court battle
between Alphabet's Waymo (nee Google self-driving car project) and Uber, with Waymo alleging
that former employees stole its IP and started Otto -- a self-driving trucking company which
was ultimately acquired by Uber.
Well, this week, things have got a whole lot more complicated.
First, late last week, Waymo filed a preliminary injunction attempting to stop Uber from testing
or using any of the tech it claims has been stolen.
Then yesterday, Uber applied for compulsory arbitration as a way of heading off the court
case, something legal experts described as a long-shot.
And that's on top of that fabled email which put Uber in the hot seat in the first place
-- y'know, the one in which an Uber employee accidentally sent an email to a Waymo employee
which contained Otto designs for a LiDar circuit board… a design which was extremely similar
to the very same circuit board Waymo has been refining for a very long time.
Whoops.
With its super-sexy stylings, fast performance and autonomous capabilities, the Lucid Air
is starting to look like the first true competitor to the Tesla Model S -- and this week we learned
that Lucid is preparing to launch its entry-level Air with a pre-incentive price tag of sixty-thousand
U.S. dollars, undercutting the entry-level price of the Tesla Model S by a significant
amount.
For that, you'll get 240-miles of quoted electric range, as well as four hundred horsepower
put to the road through the rear wheels.
That's more than the 210-miles of the entry-level Tesla Model S 60, and if Lucid can get an
EPA range that matches its quoted range, I think good things could happen.
It will also give Tesla some much-needed competition.
Like the Tesla Model S, the Lucid Air will come in a range of trim levels, with the range-topping,
high performance model costing well over one hundred thousand dollars.
When will you be able to drive one?
Well, that's something we're still yet to learn, but I certainly can't wait to
see this car go head to head with the current premium electric car champ.
Fun times lie ahead.
Staying with high-performance cars, we're off to SXSW next, where chinese firm NextEV
-- or NIO as it's wanting to be known -- unveiled the EP9 electric car, a megawatt producing
halo car it hopes will spawn its first production luxury car.
The problem?
It looks very similar to the Faraday Future FF91 -- so much so in fact that Nick Sampson,
FF's R&D vice-president took to Twitter to complain about just how similar the two
cars look.
NIO is of course denying that it ripped off the FF91's design, but with its visibly
similar appearance, on-board autonomous vehicle tech and on-board artificial human interface
system (which sounds familiar to Faraday Future's facial recognition features), I've got to
admit that Sampson has a point.
Do you agree?
Leave your thoughts in the Comments below.
And finally,
If you spend any time at all online and you're a gamer, you may be familiar with Rooster
Teeth's Red vs Blue, an ongoing comedy series following the civil war between two sets of
soldiers in the middle of … well… a distant portion of the galaxy (and yes, it's shot
using Halo gameplay)
But anyway I digress.
The guy behind RvB, Burnie Burns, happens to be a Tesla Model S owner who, this week,
released video of a very special mod he's made to his car: covering his P90D with a
full-over body wrap to make the high-end car look like it's been flat colored (a coloring
technique that if you're in any fandom that produces custom art you'll be extremely
familiar with)
The result?
A Tesla Model S that looks like it's jumped out of someone's comic strip and come to
life.
It's beautiful, highly creative and frankly, I want to do the same to my car.
Well, maybe with a few extra added tweaks to include a couple of my cosplay, steampunk
and furry alter egos thrown in.
Nerdvana.
And on that note, it's time for me to say goodbye, because it's the end of the show.
As usual, don't forget to check out our other videos from this week which include
a staff car update on a dead 12-volt battery and I teach Amazon Alexa to talk to my car.
As always, don't forget to like, comment and subscribe, visit transport evolved dot
com for more cleaner, greener, safer and smarter transportation news, or join in the conversation
on Twitter at transport Evolved.
And if you liked what you saw today and want to help us make more shows like this, please
consider making a donation to our Patreon crowdfunding campaign, a link for which is
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Thanks again for joining me, I'll see you next week, I'm Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield,
That was TEN, have a great weekend, and until next time, keep Evolving!
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