As someone who has driven a Tesla since December 2016 (we are on our second Model S), I am a huge fan of the seamless charging experience I’ve had with both the Supercharger (DC fast charger) and Destination Charging (Level 2) networks.
While researching my book, Tesla: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Remade the Automotive and Energy Industries, I was fortunate to be able to interview two of the Tesla founders, Marc Tarpenning and Ian Wright. Wright offered some keen insights about Tesla’s systems approach to its software, which was the opposite of the way the legacy automakers were (and mostly still are) doing things, and this turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the book.
While the overall Chinese auto market is slowly picking up (+12% year over year in November), plugin vehicles are already on the fast lane, growing by 138% year over year (YoY) to a record 198,000 units.
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.
Tesla CEO* Elon Musk has tweeted more than 3,000 times this year. We at CleanTechnica follow his tweets closely, since he provides much insight on Tesla via tweet and even breaks much news via Twitter. Additionally, I interacted with Elon several times this year on Twitter regarding a variety of Tesla topics (Autopilot, solar, and gigafactories, for example).
It’s notoriously hard to get good model-specific plugin vehicle sales stats out of the UK. However, the UK government recently published figures for October 2019 through September 2020. The figures show that the Tesla Model 3 accounted for 30.69% of new registrations of fully electric vehicles
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.
Thanks for your input on the draft EV charging plan we are putting together for the Biden administration. I’ve read through the comments and e-mails, and in the second draft for a charging plan, we will be incorporating most of the changes you all suggested. Here are the top two questions we got:
Earlier this month, I shared my thoughts about a CNN article that stated that Tesla (TSLA) short sellers lost more than the entire US airline industry in 2020. In that piece, I also shared some thoughts from Jim Chanos, one of Tesla’s most notorious and outspoken short sellers, who happens to still believe that Tesla will fail.
Tesla Greater China is in the holiday spirit and has shared some adorable Christmas decorations.
