Tracking monthly US auto sales has been a fascinating endeavor this past year. Unfortunately, we don’t get data from some brands — Tesla, all Ford Motor Company brands, GM brands, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles brands, Jaguar Land Rover no longer report monthly sales. However, there are 17 brands that do report monthly US sales, so let’s have a look at them.
The US electric vehicle market … is not the most interesting. Unfortunately, we have only one mass-market electric vehicle on the market, and there are very few models available across the nation. Actually, aside from Tesla’s offerings, I think only two fully electric models available at dealers practically anywhere are the Chevy Bolt and Nissan LEAF.
There are about 100 companies out there developing eVTOL (electric vertical take off and landing) vehicles, but there are only a handful of companies developing the AI that will power them and one day turn them into robotaxis, autonomous delivery drones, and any other airborne function that does not require a pilot. One of the leaders in this field is Daedalean, a company best in Switzerland.
The most popular stories of the past week on CleanTechnica were led by a visual comparison of the Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model Y, followed by Paul Fosse’s early review of one-pedal driving in a Tesla Model 3 (following a recent software update many of us still haven’t gotten). My second piece on non-Tesla electric vehicle models that might one day reach 10,000 sales a month was in third, and an answer to the never-ending question of whether Teslas work in snow was right behind it. For the rest of the top 20, and to actually see the headlines and click through to fun articles you missed, scroll down below.
Volkswagen will introduce the 7th electric car based on its MEB electric car platform at the LA auto show on November 19. It will feature a completely new interior design and up to 300 miles of range.
Elon Musk and the Tesla software team are aiming to roll out all of the features of its Full Self-Driving package by the year-end, a tough goal but one that should be achievable with a little margin here and there. The latest version of the Tesla firmware update shows that the cars can now detect traffic cones.
You might have seen my first two (or three) articles and videos/podcasts from our new Tesla Inside Out series. If you haven’t, I highly recommend at least a perusal:
Continuing our discussion of Tesla and David Havasi’s long history at Tesla, we took up where we left off, talking about early Model S days at Tesla. At the time that, Tesla had a gigantic factory in Fremont with almost nothing in it other than big, wild dreams and post-apocalyptic images of Blade Runner and The Highlander flashing through their heads as they looked across the expansive space.
The biggest threat to Tesla’s existence has not been the so-called “Tesla Killers” from the competition, but rather Tesla’s dependence on the capital markets to fund its growth. The lack of sustained profits made the company rely on financial markets to raise equity and debt at regular intervals to fund its operations.
CleanTechnica sat down with SolarEdge co-founder and VP of marketing and product strategy, Lior Handelsman, at SPI 2019 for a nice long chat about the company’s new Smart Home tech. Along the way, Lior mentioned that SolarEdge is also developing intelligent, connected EV charging tech that will allow multiple charging stations on a single circuit to load balance between themselves without exceeding the capacity of the circuit.
