Electric vehicles – Page 9280 – I wish I had more to offer

Location decision in North America: Volkswagen to build new generation of electric cars in Chattanooga

US plant to be prepared for modular electric toolkit (MEB) by investments totaling €700 million ($800 million) Production to start in 2022 with ID. CROZZ electric SUV CEO Herbert Diess: “A key part of our growth strategy in North America” Volkswagen is establishing worldwide production network for electric cars: eight MEB plants on three continents… Continue reading Location decision in North America: Volkswagen to build new generation of electric cars in Chattanooga

Cadillac teases images of its first all-electric vehicle

Days after GM announced that Cadillac would become its lead electric vehicle brand, the automaker teased a few images of its first planned EV. Cadillac isn’t sharing any other details beyond the images — no name, no specs, nothing. That information will be revealed “closer to launch,” the company says. But Cadillac is positioning itself… Continue reading Cadillac teases images of its first all-electric vehicle

VW CEO says hopes U.S. investments help avoid tariffs against EU

DETROIT, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Volkswagen’s Chief Executive Herbert Diess said an $800 million investment to build a new electric car in Chattanooga, Tennessee should help ease tensions with United States President Donald Trump. “We hope that with the investment in Chattanooga we could make a contribution, step forward, to avoid tariffs between Europe and… Continue reading VW CEO says hopes U.S. investments help avoid tariffs against EU

GM president dashes hopes of future Volt, says no more hybrids

2019 Buick Velite 6 Electric
Following news in late November that General Motors would kill off the Chevrolet Volt, one of the pioneers of modern plug-in cars, a senior GM executive has hinted—strongly—that it won't be back.

On Friday, in the Q&A session after the company's investor conference, incoming company president Mark Reuss doused those hopes. In response to a question about building future hybrids, Reuss said, “Hybrids are just countermeasures to an ICE,” referring to an internal combustion engine.

DON'T MISS: Cadillac to become “lead electric vehicle brand” for GM to rival Tesla (Updated)

Following a wide-ranging conference call focused on the company's investment priorities, Reuss continued, “You can't spend money to force the customer to carry around extra stuff they may not need.”

That sounds like a direct reference to a range-extending engine, when electric power and faster charging could accomplish the same.

“Or, you can spend your money on getting the real answer, which is providing the customer a zero emissions, sustainable, affordable solution,” Reuss added.

READ THIS: GM to kill Chevy Volt production in 2019 (Updated)

Fans were hopeful that the company planned to replace it with another plug-in hybrid with similar technology based on GM's Voltec system, in which it invested most of a billion dollars a dozen or so years ago.

However the message could hardly be clearer, that GM plans on focusing on pure battery electric cars in the future, and not “waste” resources building plug-in hybrids.
Hopes for a replacement for the Volt that might be somewhat larger—perhaps a crossover or something with more rear-seat room—sound likely to go unfulfilled, despite the fact that GM is planning to introduce exactly such a car in China this year: the Buick Velite 6 plug-in hybrid. The Velite 6 is also expected to have a fully-electric option when it goes on sale.

CHECK OUT: Buick Velite 6 for China previews new GM approach to electric cars

GM's new strategy was supported by the headline announcement that the company will focus its next electric efforts under the much more expensive Cadillac brand. Clearly, GM is feeling the heat from Tesla, which started with a strategy of amortizing its investments in building new battery supplies by selling cutting-edge luxury cars, not by relying on tax credits to try and sell a greater number of affordable cars to the masses.

The questions now are whether GM's move upmarket for its electric models will come just as more mainstream buyers, with lower budgets, begin shopping for electric cars, and whether electric-car charging infrastructure has reached a state in which those mainstream buyers don't need to be worried about range—and comforted by having an “extra” gas engine, just in case.

Elon Musk Is Giving My Generation Its Future Back. Let’s Not Lose It Again.

Electric Cars
Electric Car Benefits
Electric Car Sales
Solar Energy Rocks
RSS
Advertise
Privacy Policy

Aviation

Published on January 13th, 2019 |

by Jennifer Sensiba

Elon Musk Is Giving My Generation Its Future Back. Let’s Not Lose It Again.

Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook

January 13th, 2019 by Jennifer Sensiba

Like many, I’ve been watching the developments in Boca Chica, Texas, with great interest. SpaceX, one of Elon Musk’s companies, is building the “Starship Hopper,” a shorter and simpler version of a spacecraft that could revolutionize space travel. Seeing images of the mostly complete test vehicle, clad in shiny stainless steel, makes me feel like a kid again.

These are exciting times to be alive. We are at the beginning stages of the electric car revolution. We have access to much of the knowledge of our species at our fingertips. Rockets are being launched, and they mostly return to the ground for the next adventure. There’s serious talk of going back to the moon, then to Mars, and beyond. But much of this seemed like it might not really happen just a few years ago.

While I can’t speak for other generations, I can speak for at least part of mine. I was born in the first half of the 1980s. Growing up, we saw all sorts of marvelous futures depicted in fiction and in speculative non-fiction. The Shuttle program ran through my childhood, and the Apollo program wasn’t such a distant memory for others in the family. Electric vehicles, flying cars, AI, and laser guns … all were shown to be normal at some point in the early 21st century. Perhaps the most precise predictions came from the second Back to the Future film, depicting a high-tech 2015, complete with toy hoverboards for children.

As a kid, I also saw the dystopian fiction and non-fictional predictions for a possible depressing future. Environmental collapse, authoritarian regimes, and technology that serves to enslave or kill us rather than empower us, were common in many films. The Terminator might hunt us down, or maybe we’d become human batteries unknowingly living in a simulation. There was plenty of fear for the future as well — but the common element still remained: massive technological achievement, for better or worse.

While we didn’t see a massively dystopian future, we didn’t get the amazing future that the good or bad films and books presented. Instead of getting missions to Mars and beyond, we watched the Shuttle program go through a disaster, run some more missions, and then come to an end — with nothing to replace it! The electric car was off to a promising start, but later killed off. We saw the horror of the 9/11 attacks followed by the PATRIOT Act, and what seems to be an endless War on Terror. Government got caught spying on countless citizens. We’ve seen racial strife, environmental disaster, and drug addiction epidemics.

It wasn’t all bad, though. We got much better computers. We got smartphones. The electric car was dead, but we got better, more efficient gas cars, both hybrid and not. We got semi-intelligent assistants like Siri and Alexa. But we still sometimes feel cheated. There are no deep space missions to follow. No space outposts on other celestial bodies. Until only relatively recently, there were no electric cars and there are still no real flying cars.

I may sound like a total fangirl saying this, but bear with me: Elon Musk is giving us our future back.

Singlehandedly? Of course not. But without competition from Tesla, none of the other manufacturers would have bothered at all with electric vehicles. We still don’t have a flying car like the movies on the horizon, but it’s looking more and more like the next Roadster might be able to do “short hops” with the SpaceX thruster package, so we may yet see the flying cars we were supposed to have.

Nobody else was bothering to try to reuse rockets like SpaceX, and nobody else is ambitiously pursuing anything as amazing as the Starship. While we still aren’t seeing faster than light travel, we have a strong possibility of going anywhere in the world in around 30 minutes. In our lifetimes, we may actually see colonies on the moon, Mars, and perhaps the moons of Jupiter.

I could go on all day, but I’ll try to be short. He’s also working hard on artificial intelligence (and keeping it safe for us), underground transportation, brain-computer interfaces, and broadband internet for the entire planet.

My generation watched our hopes and dreams go from looking promising, to looking like they weren’t going to happen in our lifetimes, and then come back again. For this, we largely have Elon Musk and his teams of hard workers to thank.

I know Elon Musk isn’t perfect, but we’d be fools to take him and his companies for granted. If we do, other countries might not. From what I’ve read, Musk chose to move from his native country of South Africa to the United States because it seemed like the most innovative and successful place to chase his dreams.

However, we all know that there are entrenched interests who would like to see him fall, and wouldn’t mind quickly extending society’s foot in his path to make it happen. There are people who stand to make billions if the electric car revolution collapses. Others would love to replace SpaceX with more expensive “solutions” that enrich them and theirs at everybody’s expense. I’m not saying Musk deserves a free pass to do whatever he wants in life with no consequences, but I am saying that we need to make sure he continues to get the same freedom of opportunity that we all are theoretically supposed to get in the United States.

Musk wouldn’t be the first innovator this happened to. A quick (and cartoonish) look at the interactions of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison is quite instructive.

If we allow these entrenched interests to corrupt our institutions and weaponize them against innovators like Elon Musk, it probably won’t hurt him greatly in the long run, but it would probably rob us, again, of the amazing future we could have had. At the very minimum, it would be a loss for the United States and a gain for another country that knows the value of who we were throwing away. Even China, with its much more authoritarian government, knows to appreciate Musk. It was not only unusually flexible with him to break ground on a factory, but offered him a permanent resident card — a privilege not extended to many foreigners without family ties to the country.

If we fail to see what we have until it’s gone, somebody else will not. That would be a sad day not only for my generation, but for my children and theirs. We need to appreciate the innovators we have among us, flaws and all, if we want to truly be great in the long run.

About the Author

Jennifer Sensiba Jennifer Sensiba is a long time efficient vehicle enthusiast, writer, and photographer. She grew up around a transmission shop, and has been experimenting with vehicle efficiency since she was 16 and drove a Pontiac Fiero. She likes to explore the Southwest US with her partner, kids, and animals.

Advertise with CleanTechnica to get your company in front of our readers.

CleanTechnica Clothing & Cups

Tesla breaks ground on Shanghai factory which will produce Model 3 EVs for China

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the company’s first overseas factory in Shanghai will focus on producing Model 3 vehicles for the Chinese market only. Musk is currently in China to break ground on the new factory today, which is being developed in partnership with the Shanghai government — an ally that is likely to… Continue reading Tesla breaks ground on Shanghai factory which will produce Model 3 EVs for China

Schneider’s EVLink car charging stations were easily hackable, thanks to a hardcoded password

Schneider has fixed three vulnerabilities in one of its popular electric car charging stations, which security researchers said could have easily allowed an attacker to remotely take over the unit. At its worst, an attacker can force a plugged-in vehicle to stop charging, rendering it useless in a “denial-of-service state,” an attack favored by some… Continue reading Schneider’s EVLink car charging stations were easily hackable, thanks to a hardcoded password

Electric cars: Security flaws could let attackers control charging stations

Electric car drivers could find themselves unable to charge their vehicles, if attackers exploit recently discovered flaws in Schneider Electric’s EVlink Parking charging stations, found in offices, hotels, and supermarkets across several countries. Featured stories Security experts Vladimir Kononovich and Vyacheslav Moskvin at Positive Technologies are now offering details of the three vulnerabilities they found that… Continue reading Electric cars: Security flaws could let attackers control charging stations

Volkswagen to invest $800 million, build new electric vehicle in U.S.

Dr. Herbert Diess, CEO, Volkswagen AG, speaks in front of an image of a van concept vehicle during the company’s presentation at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 14, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst DETROIT (Reuters) – Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) said on Monday it is investing $800 million to build a new… Continue reading Volkswagen to invest $800 million, build new electric vehicle in U.S.

Volkswagen to build new electric vehicle in U.S. — Tennessee governor

DETROIT, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Volkswagen AG is announcing on Monday it will build a new electric vehicle at its plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee as it shifts toward zero emission vehicles, the state’s governor told Reuters. The German automaker is making the announcement at the Detroit auto show and will make an unspecified additional investment… Continue reading Volkswagen to build new electric vehicle in U.S. — Tennessee governor