Zachary Shahan Zach is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species). He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He's also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession and Solar Love. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada. Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in. But he offers no professional investment advice and would rather not be responsible for you losing money, so don't jump to conclusions.
July 18th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
A local news report in the Polish city where I've been living for nearly 10 years highlights that our relatively fresh electric carsharing program — Vozilla — has passed 30,000 users. Before moving to Florida a month ago, I was seeing the cars — mostly Nissan LEAFs — everywhere I went
July 17th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
A reader recently passed along a story in The West Australian that made scary, but incorrect, claims about rooftop solar power. Let's take a look
July 15th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
I thought the Model 3 would be great, top of its class, similar to the Model S we've had for a year. However, it seems I was caught off guard due to Tesla's incessant improvements and all of the nitpicky, consistent attacks from Tesla critics (paid or otherwise). The Model 3 is better than I expected. I expected to love it, but I didn't expect to love it so much. In particular, there were a handful of little things that made the car significantly more comfortable as a passenger and more enjoyable to drive than our 2015 Model S
July 14th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
I recently test drove the Chevy Bolt (at last!) and also spent some time driving a 2015 Nissan LEAF again (due to our i3 being in service). The differences were striking, and I have to say that the Bolt was a letdown — compared to the electric cars I'm used to
July 14th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
The most popular CleanTechnica stories of the past week actually did not lead with Tesla. Check 'em out below, and dive into the comments of ones that intrigue or excite you
July 13th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
Yep, our new (used) BMW i3 REx already made a trip to the BMW service center, approximately 3 weeks into its time with CleanTechnica
July 9th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
Let's get the biggest matter out of the way right off the bat: no one outside of Tesla really has a clue as to how many Model 3s were delivered in the US in each month of Q2. Yes, we have a Model 3 delivery total from Tesla for the quarter as a whole, but the company doesn't break that down by month or region. For a while, the slowly growing ramp allowed us to estimate without too much difficulty, but a few things changed in May and June
July 8th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
EV leader/legend Paul Scott talks with CleanTechnica for Cleantech Talk Today #10. We cover the US federal tax credit for EVs, California's $2,500 EV rebate, and unfortunate US politics today with Republicans guiding our ship toward a giant iceberg followed by a flaming crater of hell
July 8th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
I'll be honest, I'm a little tired of the phrase "Elon promised [insert your favorite blue unicorn or Model 3 production target]." I've actually had this draft started — just the title — for over two months, but it doesn't seem to lose its relevance
July 8th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
One of our faithful cleantech readers* sent over a note a week ago highlighting that Q2 seemed to be the first quarter in which Tesla sold more Model X's than Model S's. "I think this got lost in the maze of numbers released today," he added. I agreed that this seemed like a noteworthy milestone
July 7th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
At the last Autonomy conference*, I had the opportunity to sit down in Paris with Simon Lonsdale, Chief Strategy Officer at ChargePoint, for a long chat about EV adoption, EV charging, EV convenience, and EV charging station design
July 7th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
The top 20 CleanTechnica stories of the past week — in terms of traffic, not quality, but they may be related — are as follows. Enjoy!
July 4th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
First of all, yes, charging on other EV charging networks is certainly fun as well. In the US, there are several other networks — like EVgo, Blink, and Greenlots — that I'm sure are fun to use. In Europe, I know from personal experience that GreenWay and Fastned are great. But when it comes to daily EV life in Sarasota, Florida, ChargePoint is king — and I'm sure that's the case in a large number of cities across the country
July 1st, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
The 20 hottest CleanTechnica stories of the past week as well as the 20 hottest CleanTechnica stories of June are below. Have a gander
June 30th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
In addition to our long-term Nissan LEAF and long-term Tesla Model S reviews, we're now adding a BMW i3 REx to the CleanTechnica stable
June 17th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
Life is a fragile, wonderful gift. And all lives must come to a close on this Earth. I lost, as they say, someone very close to me a few weeks ago. As a result, I forgot to do a the weekly #CleanTechnica Top 20 article and a May #CleanTechnica Top 20 article. As such, below were the top 20 CleanTechnica articles from the first two weeks of June. Following that list are the top 20 CleanTechnica articles published in May. In both cases, the lists are based on pageviews — they're not lists of my favorite articles
June 16th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
The new Nissan LEAF doesn't get a ton of attention or love. It was born in the shadow of the Tesla Model 3, and that's a big shadow. But it's a few leaps above the original LEAF, and that model is still the most common plug-in car on the planet as far as I've seen
June 14th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
I've actually had this draft started for weeks, and it rose to the top today coincidentally. The only thing I changed in the title was the word "hit" to the word "counterattack," since the latter fit the day (the start of the 2018 World Cup in Russia), the former seemed too aggressive in general, and counterattack really is what we're talking about here anyway
June 13th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
Aside from just asking which companies will be semi-leaders, which will be surviving laggards, and which will go bankrupt or be acquired, a question that came to my mind this week was, "When will leading car companies go 100% electric?" So, let's go through some companies and brands and consider this question
June 13th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
For the second episode of a daily Cleantech Talk Today show, Nicolas Zart and I talked about Tesla marketing, Tesla Model 3 battery production, Tesla battery recycling, and some other highlights from Tesla's annual shareholder meeting. But that was just to kick off the show
June 12th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
Nicolas Zart and I have been thinking for months about an idea of doing a daily chat about cleantech news. We finally kicked this off
June 12th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
Following up on our "What Changed In The Electric Vehicle Industry In May?" roundup, below is a summary of major solar energy and energy storage news from May. This roundup isn't just about big project announcements. The point is to highlight notable shifts or milestones here or there in the industry
June 11th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
So much electric vehicle news, so little time, but what actually changed in the electric vehicle industry last month? Below is some notable news
June 9th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
The Tesla Model 3 continues to open up its lead over every other plug-in car on the US market. For all the hype about a slower than projected Model 3 production ramp up, it seems there isn't another plug-in vehicle that comes within two laps of touching it. It sits at about triple the sales of the #2 Toyota Prius Prime (a plug-in hybrid) and nearly 4 × the sales of all 7 of BMW Group's plug-in models combined
June 8th, 2018 | by Zachary Shahan
BMW is a top electric vehicle producer. Indeed, it isn't yet shipping 1 million EVs a year and it only has the i3 in its fully electric stable, but it already has plug-in versions of four of its popular models, to supplement the "born electric" i3 and i8. Overall, BMW's plug-in vehicle sales have been growing significantly and they now represent 5% of BMW's sales globally (7% in the US and 9% in the UK). BMW's plug-in vehicle sales have increased 73% in the US, 25% in the UK, and 646% in China this year
