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Mercedes moves to overtake Audi in China car sales

Volkswagen-owned marque falls out of favour after three decades at the top Go to Source

ZeroAvia Bets On Hydrogen For Electric Air Travel

Is hydrogen the best path to zero emission flight? When I first sat down with ZeroAvia founder, Valery Miftakhov, to talk about his newest venture I admit I was a little skeptical. That’s because we were there to talk about hydrogen fuel cells being used to power commercial aircraft in two to three years time.… Continue reading ZeroAvia Bets On Hydrogen For Electric Air Travel

Zombies! These Bad EV Tech Ideas Seem To Hang Around Forever

Like Zombies, terrible EV tech ideas linger beyond their death. It’s often said that a good idea will always win out in the end. But it’s also true that bad ideas sometimes linger in the public consciousness, attracting funding and media attention long past the point at which they should have died natural deaths. This… Continue reading Zombies! These Bad EV Tech Ideas Seem To Hang Around Forever

E-Mobility: “Hitting and stinging”: Daimler works council fights for construction of electric gearbox in the main plant

Engine compartment of a Mercedes Daimler has to organize the production of electronic drives. (Photo: Daimler AG) Stuttgart Michael Häberle has just had old black and white photos framed. Shown here are employees and machines from the early days of Daimler at the parent plant in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. The memorabilia are still packed in bubble wrap,… Continue reading E-Mobility: “Hitting and stinging”: Daimler works council fights for construction of electric gearbox in the main plant

Live Tesla Inside Out Podcast — November 24 in Sarasota, Florida

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Published on November 10th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Live Tesla Inside Out Podcast — November 24 in Sarasota, Florida

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November 10th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

You might have seen my first two or three articles and videos/podcasts from our new Tesla Inside Out series. If you haven’t, I highly recommend at least a perusal:

Tesla Inside Out — Tesla History From 7-Year Insider
Tesla Inside Out, Part Deux — Tesla Stores, Early Deliveries, & Seeing Elon
Tesla Smart Summon Bonanza — 7 Races (Tesla Inside Out interview in the middle)

Several more conversations are already recorded and in development for future articles, but before getting to those, we have a fun live event to announce.

The Florida Tesla Enthusiasts club has invited David and me to be the entertainment at a coming club event in Sarasota, Florida. We will be on stage recording a live podcast while dozens of Tesla enthusiasts digest their lunch and think up questions for the Q&A session.

I will perhaps reveal a couple of exclusive, fun Tesla stories for the first time during this event (maybe), but I think most of the conversation will be focused on peppering David with questions and then laughing at the stories that pop out of his mouth, eyes, and arms.

(Remember, the man has a background on Broadway!)

If you have specific questions for David, especially if you won’t be able to make it to Sarasota, this is a great place to drop them (down in the comments). After hours upon hours of conversation with David, in the coming two weeks I’ll be picking out my favorite topics and most burning questions for him in order to try to make this show as sizzling, exciting, and interesting as possible.

Oh yeah, and if you’ve been too lazy to click through to the Florida Tesla Enthusiasts page announcing this event, here’s a short bio of David:

“David was born and raised in Michigan, the youngest son of a ‘Big Three’ auto executive and a teacher, his childhood was immersed in Detroit’s rich auto culture. Being both a performance car enthusiast and environmentalist, he had long felt the need to reconcile his love for cars with their negative effect on the environment. Before Tesla came along, there was a direct correlation between how fun a car was to drive and how bad it was for the environment. David was a member of the Tesla team for almost seven years and served in a number of roles while helping develop Tesla’s sales/delivery presence in the Northeast and Florida.”

Of course, I recommend watching our Tesla Inside Out videos — or at least listening to the podcasts (but then you don’t get all of David’s fun animation) — before coming to the event or coming up with questions.

You can listen to this podcast (and other CleanTech Talk podcasts) on: Anchor, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket, Podbean, Radio Public, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or via the embedded SoundCloud players below.

If you will be coming to the luncheon from far away, let me know if you’d like to organize a special event on the side with CleanTechnica.

More information on logistics if you will be attending the Florida luncheon and live podcast:

The luncheon will start at approximately noon. There will be a cash bar with individual checks for your bar bill. The lunch is a sit-down meal. Dress is business casual.

The podcast will begin at approximately 1:30 pm and will be about 30 minutes in duration. It will be followed by questions from the audience.

Charging

The Sarasota Supercharger, with 20 120 kW charging terminals, is less than 10 miles from the Country Club.

Overnight Stays

For attendees wishing to stay overnight, the Courtyard by Marriott Sarasota University Park/Lakewood is across the street from the Superchargers.

Comfort Suites Sarasota — Siesta Key is about 6 miles from the Country Club and has two Tesla destination chargers.

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About the Author

Zachary Shahan is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He's also the CEO of Important Media. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao.

Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA] — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in this company and feels like it is a good cleantech company to invest in. But he offers no investment advice and does not recommend investing in Tesla or any other company.

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Tesla Autopilot & Smart Summon Handle Construction Zone & Traffic Cones Like A Boss

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Published on November 10th, 2019 |

by Iqtidar Ali

Tesla Autopilot & Smart Summon Handle Construction Zone & Traffic Cones Like A Boss

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November 10th, 2019 by Iqtidar Ali

Originally posted on X Auto.

Elon Musk and the Tesla software team are aiming to roll out all of the features of its Full Self-Driving package by the year-end, a tough goal but one that should be achievable with a little margin here and there. The latest version of the Tesla firmware update (not yet available to every owner) shows that the cars can now detect traffic cones.

Tesla owner and hacker knowns as “green the only” recently took his Tesla Model 3 to a construction zone where both sides of the road had traffic cones set up. Interestingly, the car took the cones as guides for the route instead of the lane markings — this is crucial in handling a construction zone.

Green is able to show us how Autopilot detects objects by hacking into the Autopilot/FSD footage rather than the plain video footage that is recorded on the USB via cameras. These immensely technical videos show how the Tesla Supercomputer takes camera input for the car’s vision and neural net.

Just about a year ago Tesla upgraded the neural net vision that enables object detection with the 3D bounding boxes, which previously was 2D. This has certainly improved the performance of the Autopilot driver’s assistance package and is a major enabler towards the full self-driving goal.

This year’s biggest Autopilot feature release yet was Smart Summon, which enables the owner to call the car to the owner’s location from its parking spot. The feature has faced mixed emotions from mainstream media, but most Tesla owners rejoiced.

Some owners did reportedly damage their Teslas by using Smart Summon in an unrecommended manner but mostly the feature has been both fun and useful. According to Elon Musk’s statement from the Tesla Q3 2019 Earnings Call, Smart Summon has already been used more than 1 million times.

That means Tesla has started stacking huge amounts of useful data on how Tesla owners are using the feature and in which conditions. This data (from 8 cameras, 12 sensors, and the front radar) is monumental in improving the self-driving features.

One such Tesla owner took his ride to a bit messy parking lot which had construction work going on and traffic cones also in place. The following videos show how Smart Summon on a Tesla Model 3 handled the situation, pretty well indeed.

Audi to launch Q8 in India in January

NEW DELHI: German luxury carmaker Audi will bring its flagship SUV Q8 in India in January next year as part of its strategy to strengthen presence in the country by 2025. The company has already started taking orders for the vehicle from the weekend as it looks to re-enter the top end of the luxury… Continue reading Audi to launch Q8 in India in January

Full of gas: 6 weeks with a hydrogen-powered car

Which begs the question – why aren’t we switching to hydrogen fuel-cell cars rather than battery-electrics? That’s too complex a question to fully answer here, but part of the reason for driving the Nexo to the Frankfurt show is to interview Hyundai’s Dr Sae-Hoon Kim, who heads up its hydrogen fuel-cell business and can update… Continue reading Full of gas: 6 weeks with a hydrogen-powered car

Ice to meet you: Introducing the coldest large-scale indoor test track in the world

Around the edges are banks of crusty, icier snow, which Mäki reassuringly tells me will prevent an out-of-control Tiguan punching a hole in the facility wall. The track is quite narrow at nine metres, but there’s plenty of space to enter and exit on a wide line. Mäki demonstrates his lifelong mastery of snow driving,… Continue reading Ice to meet you: Introducing the coldest large-scale indoor test track in the world

Tesla Inside Out, Part Deux — Tesla Stores, Early Deliveries, & Seeing Elon

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Published on November 9th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Tesla Inside Out, Part Deux — Tesla Stores, Early Deliveries, & Seeing Elon

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November 9th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

Continuing our discussion of Tesla and David Havasi’s long history at Tesla, we took up where we left off, talking about early Model S days at Tesla. At the time that, Tesla had a gigantic factory in Fremont with almost nothing in it other than big, wild dreams and post-apocalyptic images of Blade Runner and The Highlander flashing through their heads as they looked across the expansive space. (No, it wasn’t the 1980s, but many of the Tesla staff in 2012 had probably come of age in the ’80s, and it seems the atmosphere in the nearly empty factory stirred up those images again.)

If you prefer audio podcasts over watching YouTube videos, you can listen on your favorite podcasting platform instead. You can subscribe and listen to this podcast and other CleanTech Talk podcasts on: Anchor, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket, Podbean, Radio Public, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Stitcher.

David was brought onboard by George Blankenship, who was the architect behind Apple stores and The Gap before jumping into his VP of Design & Store Development role at Tesla. We are so used to Tesla stores now that they may seem like nothing special, but they shattered the auto industry mold by following that Apple model. The goal was basically to be the opposite of an auto dealership — welcoming, warm, cool, and a place you just enjoyed visiting. (Side note: David completely matches those characteristics, except that he’s a human, not a place.)

As David describes them, Apple stores were themselves revolutionary, something like “an art gallery and a petting zoo combined,” and Tesla replicated that feeling of premium, artistic, beautiful products being put on display but also, magically, available for touching and feeling and playing with. The atmosphere in a Tesla store is still something I love to experience. I’ll just go into my local store to see the eyes of wonder and excited tickling of inspiration that you can witness there. You can practically see into people’s brains as they let themselves genuinely consider buying a Tesla.

(At this point, we also had a bit of a chat about kids in Tesla stores, how much kids love Teslas, and how that relates to Tesla’s overall aim with the stores and the atmosphere therein. Then there was some discussion about people comparing Teslas to other vehicles in their class, about the different stages of tech adoption, and about Tesla’s leadership. To separate all of that out from the core of the interview, it will be in a separate video coming later.)

Coming to David’s first time seeing Elon Musk, we had to go back to a time when there were about a dozen small delivery teams around the country. David explained that those teams were made up of people with diverse backgrounds who sometimes had to operate and solve problems in situations they were completely unfamiliar with. He noted that, for example, back then the company was so small and bootstrapping it so much that the delivery teams had to build the trailers for the cars (“build” as in “put together,” sort of like IKEA furniture). Finding people on the team with the right skills for each part of the process was like a game of, “What’s your background? What can you do?” They had to pull together skills and experience and combine them into something like a real-world, come-to-life scrapbook. David shared a funny story about doing that one long day and night.

Getting back to the post-apocalyptic Fremont factory, David talked a bit about watching early Tesla engineers work right on the floor there and develop Tesla vehicles, the manufacturing system, and more. That’s also where he spotted Elon Musk for the first time. It’s not a story of Elon doing anything crazy — or even anything at all — but it’s a fun little story that certainly made me laugh.

The best part of this portion of our interview series, though, related to the head of manufacturing at the time and the final product his delivery team created one night. You just have to watch the video or listen to the podcast for the ending of this episode of “Tesla Inside Out.”

Related: “Tesla Inside Out — Tesla History From 7-Year Insider“

Side note: David and I will be the featured entertainment at a coming Tesla Florida Enthusiasts event on November 24 in Sarasota, Florida. Join us if you can!
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