The last week of the year is always a little surreal to me. Much of the working world shuts off. Much news shuts off. But we typically roll through it all like any other day, and the news that does slip into the end of the year has a special tint.
This past week, the hottest stories on CleanTechnica were:
The year just wrapped up here in Europe. Below were the 30 most popular articles of the year here on CleanTechnica. Naturally, despite a slower production ramp than expected and planned, the big cleantech story of the year was the Tesla Model 3. However, no article about that car won the top spot. Surprisingly, the top spot was won by a piece I very quickly put together after almost deciding to go to bed instead. I think there’s really something to that article’s success, and I think Tesla would be wise to consider it — but that’s a discussion for another day.
Elon Musk has been off Twitter for days. The internet is panicking. Some humanoids — facing a mental-emotional vacuum — are even now pondering the meaning of life.
With 2017 being such a huge breakthrough year in the transition to electric vehicles, it raises the question: “What major news, milestones, and developments related to electric vehicles will occur in 2018?”
Episode #43 of Cleantech Talk is here! This episode covers accident liability for self-driving cars, the EV tax credit, and fuel cells’ exponential ramp.
As I noted a moment ago, I recently took a small risk, faced a short freakout, and then made it through my first Tesla software update. The reason I cut it close on the timing and installed the update was that it was a fun Christmas one that I knew my older daughter (3 years old) would love.
Some other members of our Tesla Shuttle team installed Tesla software updates on our Model S earlier in the year, but the first time I personally did so was the day after Christmas (or 2nd day of Christmas as some people call it). I was a little uncertain whether to do the update at that time — we needed to leave approximately 2 hrs later and the car said it would take 1 hour and 40 minutes. Additionally, I was a little concerned about how much energy it might take. We had an 85% charge but quite a ways to drive. “How much energy does a Tesla software update take?” I had never thought to ask and didn’t recall seeing this information somewhere, so I searched online. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an answer.
From buying and selling electricity to raising capital for new ventures to securing the grid and valuing decarbonization directly, innumerable innovators from tiny startups to the largest technology firms and governments in the world are exploring how blockchain technologies can transform.
The world’s largest grid storage battery built by Tesla and installed in South Australia has been tested twice this month. Both times it reacted so quickly the grid administrator couldn’t measure its response time accurately.
Just yesterday, I ran through a bunch of hypotheticals, delivery estimates, and financial assumptions for Tesla for the year 2022. One of those was the assumption that Tesla would have a pickup truck on the market by 2022 — and hitting 55,000 deliveries a year by 2022. Another assumption was that Tesla’s energy generation and storage revenue would approximately triple from 2017 to 2022.
