Home Charging Challenge, Daimler EV Investment and Autopilot Upgrade | 25 Feb 2018
Chinese Investment In Daimler With EV Projects In Mind | National Newspaper Says 2% Of Owners Have Home Chargers | Tesla Looks To Workplace Chargers | Profits Up For VW As Electric Plans Move Forward | Tesla Autopilot On Verge Of Major Update | Porsche 911 Could Electrify
Home Charging Challenge, Daimler EV Investment and Autopilot Upgrade | 25 Feb 2018
Chinese Investment In Daimler With EV Projects In Mind | National Newspaper Says 2% Of Owners Have Home Chargers | Tesla Looks To Workplace Chargers | Profits Up For VW As Electric Plans Move Forward | Tesla Autopilot On Verge Of Major Update | Porsche 911 Could Electrify
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! Wherever you're listening around the world, a very warm welcome from London, UK. Here is today’s news about electric cars and future transport. My name is Martyn Lee and this is your EV News Daily for Sunday 25th February 2018. On the podcast today… we’ll talk about free Tesla chargers for where you work, and strange surveys….
GEELY GO AFTER THE GERMANS
…but first Chinese EV maker Geely has invested in Daimler, and they’ve invested enough to be the largest single shareholder. Now Geely already own Lotus, Proton, and Volvo since they bought it from Ford in 2010 – who earlier this week we were talking about making a PHEV V60 model, plus the new London Black Cabs which are EV REX. Plus of course they recently spun off Polestar from Volvo to make expensive, high end electric cars.
It seems it’s Geely’s owner Li Shufu who has made the investment, which is just under 10% of the company around £6.4bn, or $9bn.
So what’s behind the move? Well the owner of Geely is a billionaire to he’s clearly a good businessman. The Mercedes EQ brand has been getting a lot of publicity and, from the details we’ve had, is well regarded in terms of the progress they’ve made with developing EV drivetrains for their cars. There are economies of scale too; the new LEVC black cab has recognisable bits switchgear from a Volvo for example.
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mercedes/102743/geely-buys-a-10-stake-in-mercedes-benz-owner-daimler-ag
MAJOR SURVEY SAYS 2% OF EV OWNERS HAVE HOME CHARGERS
Next let’s’ talk about how EVs are written about by the mainstream media. It’s a Sunday and as people sit down to read a Sunday newspaper supplement – although fewer and fewer people do these days – what did the Sunday Times Newspaper here in the UK have to say about EVs?
2,000 people were surveyed, 16% saying the next car would be a BEV, PHEV or hybrid. And yet it says a third would have to drive 10 miles to charge it. The survey was done by CarWow. It says 2% of those with an EV already have a charger at home. And that doesn’t seem to make sense. I can’t think of any question CarWow would have asked, even singling out PHEV drivers or including all soft hybrid cars as “electric”, to get a result so low. There are 140,000 EV’s sold here in the UK and 100,000 home chargers have been installed.
Andrew Hooks is the COO of Carwow and we tried to connect with him on Twitter to reach out to him to ask about methodology, and now they get the 2% figure, but we doesn’t seem to be on social media. When their PR are back in the office on Monday I’ll follow it up.
https://www.driving.co.uk/news/middle-classes-drive-electric-car-boom-nowhere-charge-battery/
As for where and when you charge, we reported last week about a large US study of LEAF owners who had charging at home and at work, and 96% of all charging was done in either location. And now Tesla are getting into workplace charging. Now Tesla has announced it wants to work with large workplaces to install free chargers for Tesla owners as long as the employer pays for the electricity.
For most people, they’re at work for 8-10 hours a day, and then at home 8-10 hours a day so, between both locations, their charging should be covered. With a Tesla charger you could just charge at work if you live in an apartment or don’t have parking at home.
PROFITS UP FOR VW, AS EV PLANS TAKE SHAPE
VW Group posted record earning on Friday. I’m torn as I still own a Golf, I love VW quality, I’ve had two golfs, but I really hate their culture on emissions, animal testing to further their diesel agenda. So on one hand Dieselgate was a turning point when I said I’d never own another VW, but their investment into electrification is huge and you can see from the top of the company the direction they’re going in.
The Dieselgate emission scandal has cost them $30bn already, that’s about £21.5bn, with more set aside. However profit is up to almost $14 Euro helped by the top end of the market, like Audi and Porsche. Of course, coming soon is the E-Tron and Mission-E respectively.
TESLA AUTOPILOT ON THE VERGE OF MAJOR UPDATE
Tesla is beta testing its new Autopilot. Tesla already have billions of miles of autopilot driving logged and advances to its Neural Net system is said to be at the core of these improvements.
We heard a few weeks ago from Elon Musk saying a new version was coming soon, so Tesla owners are probably close to getting an update.
The question that’s still being asked: is Autopilot 1.0 better than Autopilot 2.0?
LEGENDARY 911 COULD GET BATTERIES
And finally, the legendary Porsche 911. Porsche hasn’t exactly made a ringing endorsement for electrification but they said they wouldn’t rule it out, and that the most positive they’ve been.
TESLA WANT TO CHARGE YOUR CAR AT WORK
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