California Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco has introduced legislation that would add $3 billion to the state’s zero-emissions incentive program over the next 12 years. “We’ve been able to dispel the notion that you can’t clean the environment and grow the economy,” Ting says. “The next wave is electric vehicles.”
Elon Musk has tweeted that production of the much anticipated Model 3 will begin on Friday, July 7. He expects 30 cars in July, 100 in August, 1,500 in September, and 20,000 in December.
BMW has announced that it will have an all-electric 3 Series sedan on display at the Frankfurt Auto Show in September. The company is cutting a number of previously available options throughout its model lineup to pay for electric car research and development. Is there anything Elon Musk cannot disrupt?
I’m a couple days late on this one, but people seem to love these roundups, so scan through the top CleanTechnica stories of June for some fun and to see if you missed anything especially popular last month!
The top CleanTechnica stories of the past week, in case you missed them:
A new $293,000 Porsche GT2 RS can accelerate to 60 mph (100 km/h) in a stunning 2.7 seconds. That’s slower than a $140,000 Tesla Model S P100D (2.3 seconds).
It seems as if the Bavarian carmaker BMW has secretly started testing the 94 Ah (33 kWh) European i3 battery pack upgrade for the US market, a market that rightfully deserves it!
The Arcimoto team, based out of Eugene, Oregon, did a great job with its electric three-wheeler, the SRK. I think an electric three-wheel platform, otherwise known as RT3, is one of the most ideal solutions to urban mobility, allowing for fast and convenient hops throughout the city. And the Arcimoto SRK certainly looks like it would be fun to own, whether I lived in a city, the countryside, or the desert. I briefly test drove an early version of the SRK at the Los Angeles Auto Show and was immediately impressed.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said on multiple occasions in the past year that the target was to start production of the Tesla Model 3 in July. When he first said this (on one of Tesla’s quarterly conference calls), he was very hesitant to say it because he indicated it was a strict target for suppliers specifically because they knew not all suppliers would end up meeting the target. To try to really meet the target (or not go far beyond it), Tesla had penalties in place for suppliers who missed the deadline. Furthermore, as a backup, Tesla said it was preparing production capacity for any critical parts of the car itself in case its suppliers fell through.
The European passenger plug-in market had more than 21,000 registrations last month, up 48% over the same month last year. Year-t0-date, the market is up 27% this year, with the EV share standing at 1.4%.
With quality control issues solved in the second half of the month, the Renault Zoe was once again Master in Command, with the BMW i3 and Outlander PHEV recovering some ground over the ageing Nissan Leaf.
