26 June 2018 | Tesla Employee Tweets About Production Rates, Italy Wants To Be An EV Hotspot and Outlander PHEV Review
Episode 162, Jun 25, 2018, 11:01 PM
Tesla Employee Tweets About Production Rates | Another Tesla Interior Update | Mad Max Mode For Autopilot Lane Change | Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Review: A Strong Case For Hybrids | First 350kW Charger Opens In Germany | Italy Aims To Pass Norway As Europe's No. 1 EV Market | Jaguar Land Rover's £13.5bn Investment | New Peugeot 308 PHEV Coming In GTi Form | Electra Meccanica Continues Compliance Testing For Solo EV
Well good morning, good afternoon and good evening, wherever you are in the world, hello and welcome to the Monday 25th June edition of EV News Daily. It’s Martyn Lee here with the news you need to know about electric cars and the move towards sustainable transport.
TESLA EMPLOYEE TWEETS ABOUT PRODUCTION RATES
- Elon Musk tweets about Tesla's production rates, the challenges, the successes. Dave from accounts does NOT. Linda from HR does NOT. John from the Gigafactory does NOT.
- Except, John Totah did exactly that yesterday.
- John Totah is the Lead Material Flow for Model 3 at Gigafactory 1 and a Twitter account using his name, so we're assuming it is really him, make some bold claims before they were swiftly deleted.
- John said: "Our original goal was 2,500/wk and we didn't hit it. Now we just hit 5,000/wk throughput in June. Insanely hard work by @Tesla team."
- If you didn't know that’s exactly the kind of language and tweet we would get from Elon. You know, the CEO. One of a handful of people on the planet who can comment publicly on Tesla. And not just because they're being precious but because the Q2 production and deliveries, whether batteries or completed cars, is potentially the most important announcement in the history of the company. This is the last week of the quarter.
- On the bright side that's a doubling in two months so understandably he's proud.
- He even had time to send a follow up, before he found the delete button: "We want to sustain over 5k/wk since current capacity of the lines are built for a max 6k/wk. It was incredibly difficult to hit 2500 in March. We revised many processes and built new systems that worked better. Incredible work and brain power."
- As you may have heard before on the podcast, when I was talking about the production lines heading from Tesla Grohmann Engineering in Germany to Nevada, to fix one of the four zones, that was when Elon replied directly to me to confirm it. Super exciting, so we knew they had a shutdown to speed up Gigafactory. And once JB Straubel was tasked with sorting out Zone 4 at Giga, and it would amazing new if true before batteries were a bottleneck at one point.
- He wasn't clear on his tweet whether the throughput was specifically about his area of responsibility, or overall Model 3 production rates at Giga. And remember none of this means Freemont is on target for 5,000 Model 3's week.
- The twitter account has now been protected. The news was reported on Reddit, Electrek etc, so I feel it can be reported on.
ANOTHER TESLA INTERIOR UPDATE
- InternetDude: "So I finally got my 2018 Tesla Model S P100D. I ordered it with cream interior but it was supposed to have figured ash dark wood. Tesla made a production change just about 10 days after I ordered and changed almost all of the aluminium accents to dark graphite colour instead. They also changed to the wood to a natural oak decor finish, more like the Model 3."
MAD MAX MODE FOR AUTOPILOT LANE CHANGE
- Elon has tweeted a picture of the centre display with the car running in 'development mode'. Within Feature Settings you can now enable Mad Max mode in the 'Blind Spot Threshold'.
- He also joked: "We considered going beyond Mad Max to “LA Freeway” level, but that’s too loco". It follows his retweeting of an old post from 2017 from a twitter user which photoshopped a Tesla Semi into a Mad Max type future.
- The current options you can see in Dev Mode are Standard, Aggressive and Mad Max.
- He also talked about how a self-driving car is programmed to yield in the event of a conflict: "It’s a tough call. Reality is that it will be pretty easy to bully a self-driving car, as it will always yield. Will prob have a manual override that requires continuous press for hardcore lane changes."
- Surely this will be part of Version 9 software coming this Autumn with self-driving features. So whereas currently you initiate a lane change with the blinker, it's your call to ensure the road is clear, this is a hint towards more autonomy.
- The other options you can see now are “Follow Nav,” “Blinker to Fork,” “Enable ULC,” and “Vision Stops."
CAR MAGAZINE - MITSUBISHI OUTLANDER PHEV REVIEW: A STRONG CASE FOR HYBRIDS
- CAR Magazine UK: "we headed out to Provence, France, for a spin to see how the changes stack up. This engine revision plus work on the battery – which gets 10% more power output and total capacity of 13.8kWh thanks to new cells and better management - has allowed Mitsubishi to recalculate maximum electric range, fuel economy and CO2 emissions for new-age, more realistic WLTP testing, and the results are more impressive for that reason. We’re talking 30 miles on electric power, 141mpg and 46g/km. You’re also able to drive faster on electric power – now 84 rather than 78mph. ts PHEV tech is so effective, in fact, that it’s set to be rolled out to larger Renault and Nissan models in the coming years as that new alliance comes to fruition. In return, pure EV bits from the Leaf will go the other way and be used on smaller Mitsubishis."
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-reviews/mitsubishi/outlander-phev/
FIRST 350KW CHARGER OPENS IN GERMANY
- Fastned are a charging network here in Europe with 73 stations in and they just posted a Twitter video of their first station opening in Germany. That's the first of 18 in Germany this year but goal is in the hundreds. They say it's in the A3 at Limburg an der Lahn and if you have a car which can take advantage of slightly faster speeds like a Hyundai IONIQ or Jaguar I-PACE you'll be pleased to hear they're 350 kW DC chargers.
- The charging station is covered in solar panels too, and all of the energy they source is renewable.
- Bart Lubbers is the co-founder of Fastned and said: "In the next few years, German car manufacturers such as Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes will introduce fully electric models that can charge at high power. This is a great challenge and opportunity for the automotive industry and charging companies like Fastned.”
- We heard recently Fastned also have plans for the UK and Belgium.
ITALY AIMS TO PASS NORWAY AS EUROPE'S NO. 1 EV MARKET
- Bloomberg broke the news yesterday: "The populist government in Italy, Europe’s most sluggish market for electric cars, has a big-bang plan to put 1 million of the vehicles on the nation’s roads. Getting anywhere near that target could cost the state $10 billion in incentives."
- com: "Italy’s new populist government has a plan to put 1 million electric vehicles on the nation's roads by 2022 in an effort to go from being the region's weakest EV market to replacing Norway as its strongest. Italians last year bought just some 2,600 full-electric cars, out of a total of about 2 million vehicles sold, and the number rises only to around 4,800 if plug-in hybrid models are included, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. Fewer than 5,000 full-electric models are estimated to be on the country's roads today. And that's the problem, critics say. To go from being an EV backwater to Europe's biggest market, the Italian government would need to roll out incentives at least at the level of Norway's, which could cost several billion euros, analysts say. Even that might not be enough."
JAGUAR LAND ROVER'S £13.5BN INVESTMENT
- Times Of India report: "Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover has lined up investment worth 13.5 billion pounds in the next three years on new models, technology development and capacity addition. The investments will be on new models, technology, capacity with significant amount of it on electrification and on a new platform"
- JLR said: "Our roll out to MLA will be fully complete by 2025, at which point every product can cater for an ICE (internal combustion engine), BEV (battery electric vehicle) or PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) derivative."
NEW PEUGEOT 308 PHEV COMING IN GTI FORM
- French motoring site Caradisiac says the next gen Peugeot 308, which you'll be able to buy in 2020, will rely on electric power for GT and GTi status. The GT model most likely to couple up a gas engine with electric motor both driving 220 hp to the front wheels. Whilst the GTi will add an electric motor to the rear axle for AWD and 300hp.
ELECTRA MECCANICA CONTINUES COMPLIANCE TESTING FOR SOLO EV
- The SOLO is priced at $15,500 USD, and interested consumers can place a fully-refundable $250 deposit by visiting EMVauto.com. The global compliance testing is a multi-faceted series of tests, performed in several facilities, assessing the car's structural and functional integrity over numerous categories. Electra Meccanica has partnered with the most state-of-the-art organizations and facilities to ensure that the SOLO passes the most stringent safety requirements.
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