The Chinese tech giant LeEco has begun construction on its planned $3 billion electric car manufacturing facility in China, following a $1.44 billion investment from an unnamed source.
2017 is shaping up to be the year that the affordable EV goes big, with the much anticipated Chevy Bolt and the updated Renault Zoe (with its breakthrough 400 km range) rolling out en masse, as well as the competitive and perhaps widely available Hyundai IONIQ, Toyota Prius Prime, and Chrysler Pacific Hybrid (PHEV). And that’s not even mentioning what is due in the second half of 2017 (hint: Tesla Model 3).
An interesting cost-analysis overview of Chevy Volt ownership was recently posted by “edaniel” on the GM-Volt.com forum that seems worth quoting from here.
CleanTechnica reader “No way” had a great suggestion last week — poll the community on 2017 Tesla production and delivery predictions. We actually did this last year, but I forgot to check on the numbers until Karl Graves emailed them over. A few of us were quite close to nailing the 2016 total. However, I think we didn’t carefully consider production versus delivery figures, so we are clearly separating those this year.
Here’s the Tesla week-in-review, via Twitter.
Faraday Future recently released a tweet stating that the company had already (in under 36 hours) taken 64,124 reservations globally for the newly revealed FF91.
Waymo, previously the self-driving tech arm of Google X but now independent, will begin testing its new self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans on public roads by the end of the month.
Florida-based Motorsport Network announced that it has nailed down a stake in the Formula E electric vehicle racing circuit. The deal all but guarantees a higher profile for EV technology among auto and sports fans, helping to push the case for mainstreaming battery-operated vehicles in the consumer market.
Below are the 20 CleanTechnica articles from the past week or so that apparently thrilled readers the most. Following that list of the most popular articles of the week, you can also see my 30 favorites.
The second generation of the Nissan LEAF will feature the company’s ProPilot technology — allowing for autonomous travel on highways under many circumstances — according to Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.
