This article is part of a short series on the history of EVs. You can find Part 1 here. The Tesla Roadster Both the compliance cars and the serious cars since 2010 have one big thing in common: they were forced into existence by pressure from the Tesla Roadster. Like … [continued]
The five co-founders of Tesla — Marc Tarpenning, Martin Eberhard, Elon Musk, JB Straubel, and Ian Wright — were certainly greenies, and the environmental value of EVs was one of their prime motivators. However, they were also rocket scientists and sports car connoisseurs, and they were well aware of another exciting advantage of electric powertrains.
It sometimes happens that a symbolic event marking the end of one era neatly coincides with an event that ushers in the next, although no one notices the concurrence at the time. In late 2003, a brief renaissance of electric vehicles came to an ignominious end, as GM rounded up and smashed its EV1 electric cars. Just a few weeks later, three Silicon Valley entrepreneurs sat down for a fateful lunch.
The past 12 years of Tesla’s growth and development has been a sight to see, and it’s been a terrific story to cover closely since 2012. This past week was the 10 year anniversary of Tesla buying its Fremont factory from Toyota and GM. Tesla cofounder and CEO Elon Musk recently reflected on the company’s growth since then and memories of that period, which feels like a lifetime ago.
Considering how much major automakers are struggling to develop their own commercially viable EVs and catch up with Tesla, it’s ironic that several of these brands did produce EVs back in the 1990s, but cancelled those models, leaving the field wide open for the California upstart.
Make no mistake, Ford’s unveiling of the Mustang Mach-E was a momentous move — arguably the most important electric vehicle story of 2019. Why? Because it represents the first indication that a non-Tesla automaker plans not only to produce an EV, but to sell it in volume.
What was the media writing about Tesla 5 years ago? What was CleanTechnica writing about Tesla 5 years ago? How does all of this compare to Tesla headlines today?
It would be hard to think of any technology more critical to today’s technological wonders than the lithium-ion battery, which is found in everything from tiny hearing aids to giant power plants. Three pioneers of our “rechargeable world” — John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino — have now won a well-deserved Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work in developing lithium-ion energy storage technology (as reported by Bloomberg).
A couple of years ago, Nicolas Zart interviewed one of the few owners of an AC Propulsion tzero and explained the history of the transformative tzero for CleanTechnica readers. I recently ran across the article and decided it was ripe for a reprint. Enjoy! —Zach
A Tesla Motors Club forum member somehow came across a 2018 electric vehicle (EV) sales target from Volkswagen Group that the company shared back in 2010. Volkswagen was hoping to sell ~300,000 EVs a year by 2018. It turns out the 2018 total was more like … 82,685 (and that’s counting a bunch of plug-in hybrids as electric vehicles, which many people wouldn’t count).
