Electric Vehicles News & Discussions

[weatheriscool]

South Korea fines Tesla $2.2 mln for exaggerating driving range of EVs
Source: Reuters

South Korea's antitrust regulator said it would impose a 2.85 billion won ($2.2 million) fine on Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) for failing to tell its customers about the shorter driving range of its electric vehicles (EVs) in low temperatures.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said that Tesla had exaggerated the "driving ranges of its cars on a single charge, their fuel cost-effectiveness compared to gasoline vehicles as well as the performance of its Superchargers" on its official local website since August 2019 until recently.

The driving range of the U.S. EV manufacturer's cars plunge in cold weather by up to 50.5% versus how they are advertised online, the KFTC said in a statement on Tuesday.

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In 2021, Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty, a South Korean consumer group, said the driving range of most EVs drop by up to 40% in cold temperatures when batteries need to be heated, with Tesla suffering the most, citing data from the country's environment ministry.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodi ... 023-01-03/

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Xyls]

Sorry, going to have to disagree with the tweets above:

I suspect Canada won't be mass-adopting EVs any time soon. They simply don't perform well enough for the cost in cold weather.

[weatheriscool]

Tesla turns up heat on rivals with global price cuts
Source: Reuters

Tesla lowered prices across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, following a series of cuts last week in Asia, in what analysts saw as a clear shot at both smaller rivals that have been bleeding cash and legacy automakers aggressively ramping up electric vehicle production.

The discounts may make EV cars affordable to people who were previously priced out of the market. U.S. and French buyers could take advantage of both the discounts and federal tax credits available in both countries for certain electric vehicle purchases.

The U.S. price cuts on Tesla's global top-sellers the Model 3 sedan and Model Y crossover SUV were between 6% and 20%, Reuters calculations showed, with the basic Model Y now costing $52,990, down from $65,990.

Those cuts are before a $7,500 U.S. federal tax credit that took effect for many electric vehicles on Jan. 1 that could bring discounts to more than 30%.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 023-01-13/

[weatheriscool]

Electric vehicles accounted for 10% of global auto sales last year — this could quadruple by 2030
Jacob Zinkula
Jan 16, 2023, 11:46 AM 

While Tesla's stock is tanking, the electric vehicle industry appears to have achieved a key milestone ahead of schedule last year, and it could be poised to surpass even more expectations in the decade ahead. 

There were 7.8 million electric vehicles sold worldwide in 2022, a 68% increase from 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing preliminary research from the automotive research groups LMC Automotive and EV-Volumes.com. The uptick helped electric vehicles achieve a roughly 10% global market share in the automotive industry for the first time, WSJ reported.

While 10% is only a modest share of the total market, the industry is growing faster than some had predicted. In 2021, for instance, the International Energy Agency projected that it would take until 2030 for the EV industry to reach between 7% and 12% of global auto sales.

Europe and China have led the way, where electric vehicles already account for 11% and 19% of total car sales respectively, WSJ reported, citing data from LMC Automotive. 

"Last year, every fourth vehicle we sold in China was a plug-in, and this year it will be every third auto," Ralf Brandstätter, the head of Volkswagen AG's China business, told WSJ. "We haven't reached the tipping point yet, but we're expecting to get there between 2025 and 2030."

More recent projections expect the EV market to make even more headway in the years ahead.

https://www.businessinsider.com/electri ... ?r=US&IR=T

[wjfox]

Wyoming wants to phase out sales of EVs by 2035 to “ensure the stability” of the oil & gas industry

Posted on January 14, 2023

The State of Wyoming is considering phasing out the sales of electric vehicles by 2035 to “ensure the stability” of its oil and gas industry. Senators Jim Anderson, Brian Boner, Ed Cooper, Dan Dockstader, Representatives Donald Burkhart, Jr, and Bill Henderson sponsored the bill SJ0004.

In the bill, the group of politicians claimed that oil and gas production has been one of the state’s proud and valued industries, creating “countless jobs” and contributing “revenues to the state of Wyoming throughout the state’s history.”

The group also based their worries on a lack of EV charging infrastructure which would “make the widespread use of electric vehicles impracticable for the state.”

The bill praises gas-powered vehicles for allowing the state’s industries and businesses to flourish and criticize the use of batteries in electric vehicles due to the critical minerals contained in them. The bill states that the minerals in the batteries are “not easily recyclable or disposable” and claimed that municipal landfills in the state would be required to develop safe and responsible disposal solutions for the minerals.

The bill then praises the oil and gas industry. It states: “The proliferation of electric vehicles at the expense of gas-powered vehicles will have deleterious impacts on Wyoming’s communities and will be detrimental to Wyoming’s economy and the ability for the country to efficiently engage in commerce.”

https://www.teslarati.com/wyoming-phase-out-evs-2035/

[weatheriscool]

Wyoming laws seek to kill net metering and EVs
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/01/24/ ... g-and-evs/
The coal and oil state says that the proposed laws aim to protect its fossil-fuel related revenues, seeking to end sales of electric vehicles by 2035 and net metering by the summer of 2024.
January 24, 2023 John Fitzgerald Weaver

Legislators in the State of Wyoming have introduced two laws against clean energy, with a stated purpose to protect the state’s fossil fuel based revenue.

The first law, SJ0004, lists reasons to avoid the “misadventure of electric vehicles”. For example, one passage notes that the “vast stretches of highway, coupled with a lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, make the widespread use of electric vehicles impracticable for the state.” The legislation also claims that EV batteries are not easily recycled, and would require the development of new waste management techniques. Additionally, the document states that the vehicles contained limited “critical minerals” (rare earths) that put the nation at risk.

Interestingly, coal deposits, which Wyoming has in abundance, are often rich in rare earth deposits. The state has known about its rare earth resources since the middle of the 1900s, but they remain undeveloped.

They also want to kill of net metering. These bastards are coming after everything the left promotes just to shit on the left.

[weatheriscool]

Manchin pushes to delay tax credits for electric vehicles
Source: Associated Press/By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ratcheting up his criticism, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Wednesday moved to delay new tax credits for electric vehicles, a key feature of President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law.

Manchin said guidelines issued by the Treasury Department allow manufacturers in Europe and other countries to bypass requirements that significant portions of EV batteries be produced in North America.

The climate law, officially known as the Inflation Reduction Act, “is first and foremost an energy security bill,” Manchin said, adding that the EV tax credits were supposed “to grow domestic manufacturing and reduce our reliance on foreign supply chains for the critical minerals needed to produce EV batteries.″

Manchin’s bid to delay the tax credits surfaced as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi visited the Washington, D.C., Auto Show on Wednesday to highlight the administration’s efforts to boost electric vehicles and related infrastructure.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/biden-politi ... 79561557b5

[weatheriscool]

Tesla Poised for Record Quarterly Earnings Amid Wall Street Unease

Source: Wall Street Journal

Tesla Inc. is poised to report record quarterly profit for the final three months of 2022 as Wall Street hungers for clarity on the company’s growth plans in light of apparent demand weakness.

Elon Musk‘s electric-car maker is forecast to report nearly $3.8 billion in fourth-quarter profit, up around 62% from a year earlier, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet, even as vehicle-delivery growth slowed.

Tesla, due to release results after market close on Wednesday, is expected to have generated some $24.7 billion in sales for the period, up nearly 40% from the year prior, FactSet data show.

Wall Street’s faith in the EV maker has been shaken, however, as the company faces challenges including higher interest rates, stiffer competition and diminished brand popularity. In 2022, Tesla came up short of its annual growth target, lost about $675 billion in market valuation and saw its share price fall 65%, its largest annual decline to date. The stock has since recovered somewhat.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-tsla ... 1674617368

[caltrek]

How Just a Fraction of EV Owners Could Stop the U.S. Grid From Failing
by Matt Simon
January 27, 2023

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) At first glance, electric vehicles seem like rolling disasters for the power grid. Surely the ancient, creaky network in the United States can’t handle the demand for charging those massive batteries. But a new analysis suggests that just a fraction of EV owners could make the grid more flexible and reliable by plugging into a system called vehicle-to-grid charging (V2G), or bidirectional charging.

V2G means that when demand spikes, utilities can pay EV owners to tap into their idle car batteries—a distributed network of ready-to-go backup power. That’ll be critical as we transition to renewables: Wind and solar power won’t always be available, so we need to bank energy when supplies are low. “We can use some energy that’s already stored in our EVs to give back to the grid,” says Chengjian Xu, an industrial ecologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the paper, which was recently published in Nature Communications. Last year, the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that if California exploited all of the 14 million EVs it’ll have by 2035, they could power every home in the state for three days.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/environmen ... -storage/

[weatheriscool]

Treasury makes more electric SUVs eligible for tax credits
Source: AP

By MATTHEW DALY 2 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury Department said Friday it is making more electric vehicles — including SUVs made by Tesla, Ford and General Motors — eligible for tax credits of up to $7,500 under new vehicle classification definitions.

The revised standards for EV tax credits follow lobbying by automakers that had pressed the Biden administration to change vehicle definitions to allow higher priced vehicles to qualify. Tesla CEO Elon Musk met with top aides to President Joe Biden last week to discuss the EV industry and the broader goals of electrification.

Under the sweeping climate law approved last summer, pickup trucks, SUVs and vans with a sticker price up to $80,000 qualify for EV tax credits, while new electric cars, sedans and wagons can only be priced up to $55,000. The rule had disqualified some higher-priced EVs, prompting complaints from Tesla and other automakers.

Ford and market leader Tesla both said in recent weeks that they are cutting prices on some EVs, in part to qualify for the new federal tax credit and spur buyer interest.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/biden-elon-m ... bd2b95ffa6

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

New Biden EV charger rules stress Made In America, force Tesla changes
Source: Reuters

The Biden administration on Wednesday issued long-awaited final rules on its national electric vehicle charger network that require the chargers to be built in the United States immediately, and with 55% of their cost coming from U.S.-made components by 2024.

The Biden administration hopes the new rules, issued after nearly eight months of debate, will jump-start the biggest transformation of the U.S. driving landscape in generations. It seeks to give consumers unfettered access to a growing coast-to-coast network of EV charging stations, including Tesla Inc's (TSLA.O) SuperChargers.

Companies that hope to tap $7.5 billion in federal funding for this network must also adopt the dominant U.S. standard for charging connectors, known as "Combined Charging System" or CCS, and use standardized payment options that are smartphone-friendly.

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The network is a central part of U.S. President Joe Biden's plan to tackle climate change by converting 50% of all new U.S. vehicle sales to electric by 2030. A dearth of chargers on U.S. roads has slowed the growth of EV sales and the positive environmental impact, advocates say.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 023-02-15/

[weatheriscool]

Tesla HQ to return to California, Musk announces
Tesla is returning to California.

Elon Musk announced during a joint press conference with California Gov. Gavin Newsom that Tesla would be returning its global engineering headquarters to California, two years after a dramatic exit that saw the electric car company leave the Golden State for a facility in Austin, Texas.

Tesla will open up shop in the former home of Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, Musk said.

The move returns Tesla to the world’s center of technology and innovation, and puts Musk in closer to proximity to the headquarters of Twitter, which the billionaire tech entrepreneur purchased last year in a massive social media shakeup.

Musk called the move into HP’s old building a “poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla.”

Newsom applauded the decision to return Tesla to California, saying that the state remains on the forefront of “discovery and new ideas and innovation.”

https://ktla.com/news/california/tesla- ... announces/

[weatheriscool]

Tesla catches fire twice after crashing into Scottsdale building
Source: Azcentral.com

A Tesla caught fire after it crashed into a building in Scottsdale on Friday morning, then caught fire again as crews tried to tow it away from the scene.

Crews originally responded to the area of Paradise Lane and Scottsdale Road at about 8 a.m. after receiving reports of a vehicle that had crashed into a building.

After crashing, the Tesla caught on fire, to which the Scottsdale Fire Department responded...

...After the initial fire was controlled, the Tesla was then towed away from the scene, ultimately igniting again. The second fire, which happened near southbound Scottsdale Road at the Greenway Hayden Loop, caused the roadway to close with no estimated time to reopen. Scottsdale police later added on Twitter that northbound Scottsdale Road was closed as well.

Read more: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/lo ... 941739007/

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Mexican president says Tesla to build plant in Mexico
Source: AP

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's president announced Tuesday that electric car company Tesla has committed to building a major plant in the industrial hub of Monterrey in northern Mexico.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the promise came in phone calls he had Friday and Monday with Tesla head Elon Musk. It would be Tesla's third plant outside the U.S., after one in Shanghai and one near Berlin.

López Obrador had previously ruled out such a plant in the arid northern state of Nuevo Leon where Monterrey is the capital, because he didn't want water-hungry factories in a region that suffers water shortages. But he said Musk’s company had offered commitments to address those concerns, including using recycled water.

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López Obrador said the company planned to release more details on Wednesday.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/me ... r-AA182AS9

[weatheriscool]

Tesla says it will cut costs of next generation cars in half
Source: Associated Press/By Tom Krishner

DETROIT (AP) — Tesla says it will cut the cost of its next generation of vehicles in half, largely by using innovative manufacturing techniques and smaller factories.

CEO Elon Musk and other executives outlined the goals during a 3 1/2-hour investor day presentation at Tesla’s Austin, Texas, headquarters Wednesday as they presented the company’s third master plan.

The changes could bring the cost of a new generation of vehicles to around $25,000. Many investors were hoping to catch a glimpse of the next generation vehicles, but Musk said they wouldn’t be shown until a proper product unveiling.

“We’d be jumping the gun if we answer your question,” about the new vehicles, he told an analyst.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/tesla-invest ... osition_09

[wjfox]

Tesla's Next-Gen Electric Motors Will Get Rid Of Rare Earth Elements

Mar 02, 2023 at 9:23am ET

The use of rare earth elements is one major point of contention against EVs, and Tesla aims to make it a thing of the past.

https://insideevs.com/news/655233/tesla ... -elements/