Tesla – Page 2411 – I wish I had more to offer

Tesla Autopilot detects and avoids family of ducks caught on video, owner says

A Tesla owner claims that Tesla Autopilot detected and avoided a family of ducks in the middle of the road and the whole incident was caught on the TeslaCam. At a presentation about Tesla’s latest self-driving and computer vision capability earlier this year, Tesla Sr. Director of AI Andrej Karpathy said that they are currently working… Continue reading Tesla Autopilot detects and avoids family of ducks caught on video, owner says

Tesla unveils Model 3 made-in-China with media test drives

Tesla has unveiled its first Model 3 made-in-China at Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai and it has now even started to give media test drives of the vehicle ahead of the start of sales. During its earnings last month, the automaker confirmed that it has produced full vehicles at the new factory as part of its trial production:… Continue reading Tesla unveils Model 3 made-in-China with media test drives

China electric-car makers hit by new threat of subsidy cuts

China will gauge demand for EVs before making a decision on whether to cut subsidies for the automobiles again. Shares of Chinese electric-car makers fell in the wake of a Bloomberg News report that said regulators may cut subsidies further on the embattled industry. BYD Co., China’s biggest maker of new energy vehicles, slid 2.8%… Continue reading China electric-car makers hit by new threat of subsidy cuts

Renault Australia Says Portable Chargers May Void Your EV Warranty

Is it because Renault wants to sell more wallboxes or are portable chargers harmful? Most of the time, we think it is very advisable to follow manufacturers’ recommendations, but this one from Renault Australia seems very strange. The Australian office sent its customers an email telling them portable chargers are harmful. Should they decide to… Continue reading Renault Australia Says Portable Chargers May Void Your EV Warranty

3 Tesla Powerwalls + SunPower Solar = 33 Days “Off Grid” — CleanTechnica Interview

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Published on November 10th, 2019 |

by Jake Richardson

3 Tesla Powerwalls + SunPower Solar = 33 Days “Off Grid” — CleanTechnica Interview

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November 10th, 2019 by Jake Richardson

Image Credit: Anthony Sicari

New York state resident Anthony Sicari has a home solar power and energy storage system that he used to power his home “off- grid” for 33 days. That’s a bit more than one month of electricity self-generation, Tesla Powerwall battery storage, and consumption. To be extra clear, the home only used electricity from the solar panel & battery combination during that period, none from the utility.

Anthony made quite a few YouTube videos documenting his solar self-consumption and energy storage experiences, sharing many details about how the batteries were performing, how much electricity the solar was generating, and what concerns arose along the way.

Videos like these explain aspects of the technology and how they work together from a homeowner’s perspective, not using overly technical jargon. Sicari provided some more details in this interview for CleanTechnica.

What inspired you to get a home solar power system?

I started New York State Solar Farm (NYSSF) 10 years ago, serving the Hudson Valley in NY. Our niche was helping homeowners that were thrown to the side or disqualified by other companies because of shading, metal roofs, structural issues, credit, or whatever other limiting factors they had. We spent a lot of time trying to understand what customers’ needs really were, and figuring out how to develop custom solar solutions for every homeowner, even those with the least ideal circumstances.

With every conversation the customer always assumed: “So when the power goes out the system will still power my home, right?” And then we had to do the usual let down: “No, this is a grid-tied system, it only works when the grid works.” That really frustrated me, and as soon as Tesla batteries became a viable option, I wanted to install them in conjunction with solar at my new home to determine for myself if we could truly solve this eternal issue for our customers.

Where is your solar system located, why did you choose SunPower panels, and which panels did you get?

My system is located on my home in Newburgh, NY, and I went with the 360-watt X Series SunPower panels.

To be 100% transparent, we sell SunPower panels at my company. Being in the industry, I could have used any product available on the market. But I put SunPower on my home for the same reason I sell it at NYSSF. SunPower truly is the best of the best in terms of power, efficiency, technology, warranty, aesthetics, etc., and that is why I choose it for my home that I plan to stay in for a long time, and for my family.

SunPower panels are also ideal for integration with the Tesla Powerwall 2.

When I first started to dip my toe into the energy storage market, I looked to Hawaii’s Eco Solar for help, as they have installed more battery systems than any other small company I know, but they also did so without ever wavering on quality, and, like us, they always put their customers first.

When net metering ended in Hawaii and customers could no longer “roll over” their extra solar production, they had no choice but to find the best storage solution for their market. Ben and Mike at Eco Solar stated that Elon Musk and the generation 1 and 2 Powerwalls single-handedly saved the Hawaii solar market. So, I looked to them for support on system configurations. I learned that when going with storage you need a very high efficiency panel to support the batteries in grid outage situations.

A good example of this is the Solar Impulse, the solar plane flown around the world. The panels used on the wings of this plane were SunPower panels because of their record-breaking efficiency. As I’m sure you can imagine, every little bit of power was needed for that trip around the world. Similar to your home in a blackout situation, this becomes very important. I witnessed this first hand one night when the energy stored in my system almost depleted, but because of the SunPower panels still having produced kWh in the terrible weather that day, I was able to complete the 30-day Living Off the Grid Challenge I had set forth on. Without SunPower panels I could not have done so.

What is the capacity of your home solar system?

We have 36 X-360-watt SunPower panels on our roof, for a total system size of 12.96 kW. Our panels will produce about 13,500 kWh/year.

Did you get the Tesla Powerwalls at the same time, or after the solar?

Yes, this system was all installed at the same time. We documented the process in some of the video links below. We designed the solar system and the storage system to work seamlessly together. I am sure everyone says that, though. We design our systems differently than most, because we have a focus on when the power goes out, we want you to sustain as long as possible to the point of not even knowing the grid is down. This is not something that is possible on every home, and it takes careful design and coordination by our electrical engineers. Even where this is not possible, in designing our systems we ensure all of the critical loads of the home are at least backed up.

What is the capacity of your energy storage system and why did you choose Tesla?

My system has a capacity of 40.5 kWh of storage — that’s 3 Powerwalls x 13.5 kWh each. As I mentioned above, I chose Tesla because I knew Eco Solar had already done the grunt work to find the best of the best battery solution. I knew there was no other company who would know this better than they would.

In your videos, you mention you wanted to maintain normal electricity consumption, instead of going into conservation mode.

Yes, my goal was to use everything in the home that we would normally use without changing our daily routines. Washer, dryer, fridge, TVs, air conditioning, and heating with heat pumps and mini splits. Some days my wife would ask me, “Are we still off the grid?” It was pretty amazing to do this with all the modern amenities.

Why did you choose that approach?

I used this approach to prove how amazing the technology that we have is, and I feel this is the beginning of something really special. Similar to when everyone went from landlines to cell phones, I think we have finally come to a point where this will become the norm without people having to make great sacrifices, and I believe in the coming years all new homes will be built this way.

How many days and nights were you able to operate your home using solar and the Powerwalls?

My total duration on only solar and Powerwalls was 33 days and 4 minutes. I have not seen anyone go longer yet but I know this has sparked a lot of interest. In the comments in my videos people wanted to try this test out on their systems.

How much more energy conscious are you now having used the power generation and energy storage analytics with your system, compared to before you got your system?

The beautiful part about this process is that it does make you look at the numbers and make much smarter energy decisions. But the flip side of that is I know through this testing that I did a great job designing the system I have built to take care of all my energy needs. I will likely never need to buy power from the utility again, and in the event they have an outage it does not affect us.

On peak days, with full sunshine, about how much electricity does your solar system produce? Same question for the overcast and gloomy days.

On peak sunny days we produced over 40 kWh, and on gloomy days as little as 4 kWh.

Do you also have an EV or will you consider getting one?

That’s a funny story, I owned a Tesla for a short time (24 hours) but in the end I had to send it back because it didn’t have the Supercharging capability that we thought it had. I made a video on this story — it was quite the experience. I do plan on getting an EV soon. I am excited to see the release of the Tesla truck later this month. Most likely I will get the Model 3.
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About the Author

Jake Richardson Hello, I have been writing online for some time, and enjoy the outdoors. If you like, you can follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JakeRsol

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Happy Veterans Day From Tesla: Special Ops Model S Impresses

The Model S looks fantastic in camo. If you haven’t seen it yet, feast your eyes on this stunning “Special Ops” project from Tesla in conjunction with SS Customs. They’ve created an eye-catching camouflage Tesla that announces the company’s U.S. Veterans Program across the side of the vehicle. Check Out These Tesla Articles: This article comes to us courtesy… Continue reading Happy Veterans Day From Tesla: Special Ops Model S Impresses

Watch Tesla’s new over-the-air performance update put to the test

Tesla recently increased vehicle performance by ~5% through an over-the-air update, and today we have a video confirming the improvement with some side-by-side testing. The video was posted to youtube by Tesla owner Jenny Walsh, and was conducted on two identical performance Model 3s, one with the update and one without. Both cars had their… Continue reading Watch Tesla’s new over-the-air performance update put to the test

Teslas = 77.7% of US Electric Vehicle Sales

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Published on November 10th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Teslas = 77.7% of US Electric Vehicle Sales

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November 10th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

The US electric vehicle market is … not the most interesting. Unfortunately, we have only one mass-market electric vehicle on the market, and there are very few models available across the nation. Actually, aside from Tesla’s offerings, I think there are only two fully electric models available at dealers in all 50 states — the Chevy Bolt and Nissan LEAF. I’ll discuss them a bit more later in this article in order to try to explain why their sales are so dismal despite that wide availability. A note on data first, though:

Deciding whether or not to run these monthly US EV sales reports is a frequent conundrum, since the official data is limited (many automakers don’t publish monthly numbers, if at all) but the reports can also be quite popular and do help to put the US EV market into perspective on an ongoing basis. I decided not that long ago to discontinue the monthly reports and only publish quarterly reports, but our friends at EV Volumes just offered to provide us with their US Tesla estimates to help out with these reports and I decided that was enough to get back into the game. I track official numbers from other automakers on a monthly basis anyway.

That said, we don’t have official monthly data for the following models, so the data I use for them are estimated guesses based on historical sales data: Chevy Bolt, Fiat 500e, Honda Clarity EV, Hyundai Ioniq EV, Hyundai Kona EV, Kia Niro EV, and Jaguar I-PACE. Also, note that this report does not include plug-in hybrids, in part because we cannot get sales numbers for most plug-in hybrids and in part because we think it’s time (the technology is ripe) to evolve past “electrified” models to fully electric models.

With all of that out of the way, on to the numbers. Based on all of our number crunching, the Tesla Model 3 accounted for 59% of US electric vehicle sales in October and 62% in the year through October.

Tesla as a whole accounted for 75% of US EV sales in October and 78% (77.7%) in January–October.

That doesn’t leave many sales highlights from other models. The Chevy Bolt comes in with 10% of sales, the Nissan LEAF 6%, the Volkswagen e-Golf 4%, and the Audi e-tron 3% in October. For the first 10 months of the year, the Bolt accounted for about 7% of sales, the LEAF 5%, and the e-Golf and e-tron 2% each.

The Bolt and LEAF both have long range, good tech, and are available across the country. They are solid electric cars that I think do outcompete other cars available for under $30,000. However, they suffer from several challenges:

They are close in price to the base Tesla Model 3, and many EV buyers heavily prefer the Model 3.
The MSRP of these cars is often notably higher than the MSRP of similarly styled gasoline cars from those companies. (Consumers may not think to do a total cost of ownership analysis, or may not have the ability to get financing for this price of car at all.)
Auto dealers generally don’t want to sells EVs, and often just have a show model or two tucked away in the shadows somewhere.
Nissan and Chevy have been marketing their goods, but they don’t have nearly the customers enthusiasm or fan base that Tesla vehicles have, and the marketing has been minimal compared to other models in their fleets.
Limited availability might be a problem from time to time.

If more consumers find out about the total cost of ownership benefits of a Bolt of LEAF, and notice attractive local-dealer discounts while remembering these models still benefit from the US federal tax credit, you could see a consumer sprint to get more of these models before year-end. Or not.

On the top of the market, since the Tesla Model 3, objectively, is a better vehicle in many key ways than other gasoline vehicles in the $35,000–67,000 price range, we expect sales to continue to be sky high indefinitely. We don’t even see a genuine competitor anywhere on the horizon, unless you count the Model 3’s coming crossover sibling, the Model Y.

If you’d like to buy a Tesla Model 3, Model S, or Model X and want 1,000 miles of free Supercharging, feel free to use my referral code: https://ts.la/zachary63404 — or use someone else’s if you have a friend or family member with a Tesla who has helped you more. The referral code can also be used for a $100 discount on Tesla solar.

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It will make you happy & help you live in peace for the rest of your life.

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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ZF Joins Silicon Carbide Powertrain Bandwagon With Cree

Silicon carbide (SiC) power electronics (especially inverters) are a must-have if you want state-of-the-art efficiency. ZF, one of the tier-one automotive suppliers, announced a strategic partnership with Cree, whose silicon carbide (SiC) materials are selling like crazy. ZF intends to use Cree’s Wolfspeed silicon carbide technology in power electronics for electric vehicles. The main area… Continue reading ZF Joins Silicon Carbide Powertrain Bandwagon With Cree

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