Tesla – Page 4 – Impact Lab

Tesla wants to make every home a distributed power plant

May 6, 2021

Aria Alamalhodaei

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to turn every home into a distributed power plant that would generate, store and even deliver energy back into the electricity grid, all using the company’s products.

While the company has been selling solar and energy storage products for years, a new company policy to only sell solar coupled with the energy storage products, along with Musk’s comments Monday, reveal a strategy that aims to scale these businesses by appealing to utilities.

“This is a prosperous future both for Tesla and for the utilities,” he said. “If this is not done, the utilities will fail to serve their customers. They won’t be able to do it,” Musk said during an investor call, noting the rolling blackouts in California last summer and the more recent grid failure in Texas as evidence that grid reliability has become a bigger concern.

Last week, the company changed its website to prevent customers from only buying solar or its Powerwall energy storage product and instead required purchasing a system. Musk later announced the move in a tweet, stating “solar power will feed exclusively to Powerwall” and that “Powerwall will interface only between utility meter and house main breaker panel, enabling super simple install and seamless whole house backup during utility dropouts.”

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Elon Musk wants the upcoming Tesla Roadster to hover

February 19, 2021

By Trevor Mogg

Tesla boss Elon Musk revealed a couple of years ago that he wants to stick some rocket thrusters on the second-generation Roadster as part of a special “SpaceX package” when the electric sports car launches in 2022.

And now he says he wants it to hover, too.

Chatting with Joe Rogan in a podcast released this week, Musk said that his team of crack engineers is currently trying to work out how the Tesla Roadster can be made to hover “without, you know, killing people.”

“I thought, maybe we could make it hover, but not too high,” Musk told Rogan during the chat. “So maybe it could hover, like, a meter above the ground, or something. So if you plummet, you blow out the suspension but you’re not going to die.”

He added that he thought his team could add a thruster “where the license plate flips down, James Bond-style, and there’d be a rocket thruster behind it that gives you three tons of thrust.”

Science & Technology News, Tesla

THE TESLA SEMI’S ECONOMICAL ADVANTAGE IS FRIGHTENINGLY UNDERESTIMATED

January 26, 2021

By Simon Alvarez

The Tesla Semi has its own fair share of critics, and even today, some notable voices such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believe that the Class 8 all-electric truck is not feasible. When one looks at the currently available information about the upcoming vehicle, however, one would see that the Tesla Semi is vastly underestimated.

One of the key criticisms surrounding the Tesla Semi is its weight, which skeptics would claim is far too much to be economically viable. Tesla has not shared any specifics surrounding the Semi’s weight, though the company did note that the vehicle consumes less than 2 kWh per mile. As noted by the OBF in a YouTube video, this would translate to the Semi likely having a battery that’s roughly around 600 kWh to 1,000 kWh, depending on whether the vehicle features a 300 or 500-mile range.

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla’s $25,000 electric car could be coming sooner than we though

January 16, 2021

Fred Lambert

tesla's-$25,000-electric-car-coming-sooner — TESLA’S $25,000 ELECTRIC CAR

Tesla’s recently announced $25,000 electric car could be coming sooner than we thought, according to newly unveiled documents about Gigafactory Shanghai.

When talking about what Tesla’s new battery cell and “structural battery pack” architecture could enable at Battery Day last year, CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla will be making a $25,000 electric car.

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla’s Autopilot Full Self-Driving Completes Round Trip From San Francisco to Los Angeles PRACTICALLY WITHOUT ANY HUMAN INTERVENTION.

January 18, 2021

By Jeff Yeung

Footage has surfaced showing a TeslaModel 3 making a round trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles using its Autopilot Full Self-Driving mode.

The video came from YouTube user Whole Mars Catalog, whose entire channel appears to be dedicated to testing Tesla’s Autopilot FSD functionality. According to the channel, the drive was made possible via the latest Beta version of Tesla’s software, and the entire round trip was completed with close to no human intervention at all, except for one scenario where debris had shot up from the road after the car in front passed over it and so the driver had to take control immediately for just one second.

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Elon Musk pushes Tesla to have more in-car gaming in preparation for self-driving future

January 14, 2021

Fred Lambert

Elon-Musk-pushes-Tesla-to-have-gaming-1 — CEO Elon Musk is pushing Tesla to have more in-car games and entertainment, which he sees as ‘critical’ in a self-driving future.

Is he getting ahead of himself?

Last weekend, Tesla started pushing a new software update that Musk had been hyping as ‘fire’ over the last few weeks.

The update ended up consisting of a few user interface changes and the main new features were 3 new in-car video games and a new ‘Boombox’ feature to play custom sounds through external speakers.

Musk followed up the update with several comments regarding in-car video games and entertainment, which he sees as “critical” when achieving autonomous driving:

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Elon Musk would consider having Tesla acquire a legacy automaker

December 17, 2020

Kirsten Korosec

Elon-Musk-consider-tesla-acquire-legacy-automaker — SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk speaks in front of Crew Dragon cleanroom at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California on October 10, 2019.

SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk speaks in front of Crew Dragon cleanroom at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California on October 10, 2019.Elon Musk would consider leveraging Tesla’s mega $554 billion market cap to buy a legacy automaker, but only if it was on friendly terms, the billionaire entrepreneur said Tuesday in a wide-ranging interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner.

Musk, who received an award Tuesday from the media giant, discussed his various interests and businesses, notably SpaceX and Tesla, both of which he leads.

Döpfner noted that Tesla’s valuation far exceeds the market cap of incumbent automakers like BMW, Daimler and VW, which along with others in the industry once dismissed Musk’s ability to make electric vehicles mainstream. When asked if it would be a serious option to buy one of the legacy automakers, Musk said it was possible, but only under certain conditions.

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla truck with 1,000 kilometre-range: Tesla Semi out to prove Bill Gates wrong

December 12, 2020

tesla-truck-1,000-kilometer-range-semi — Bill Gates may have his doubts about battery powering heavy vehicles but Elon Musk is claiming Tesla Semi may eventually boast of a four-figure range.

Elon Musk recently highlighted that the upcoming Tesla Semi truck will work towards establishing an on-road range of around 1,000 kilometres, a claim – if proven true – that could contradict Bill Gates’ opinion of heavy battery-powered vehicles being rather unfeasible. The massive per-charge range on the Tesla Semi may be made possible by making use of in-house batteries being developed by the EV-maker.

Musk has been vocal about the range capabilities of its 36,000-kilo capacity vehicle with the initial figure pegged between 480 and 800 kilometres. This figure was ramped up to around 960 kilometres but now, the Tesla CEO is claiming that a 1,000 kilometre-range is also possible and that that could make the Semi a winner in long-haul journeys. “If you want, for long-range trucking, you can take the range up to, we think, easily 800 km, and we see a path over time to 1,000 km range for an heavy duty truck,” he was quoted as saying by Electrek.

Automobiles, Electric Vehicles, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla opens world’s largest Supercharger station

November 26, 2020

It is located between two of Tesla’s biggest markets.

Tesla has been quickly expanding its Supercharger network lately and it just reached another milestone by opening the world’s new largest Supercharger station.

Tesla’s fleet is growing at a fast pace and the automaker is adding more electric vehicles to the road than any other automaker.

At the same time, the company is trying to keep up its infrastructure, like service centers, mobile service fleet, and charging infrastructure in order to support its growing fleet.

Tesla’s charging infrastructure mainly consists of the Supercharger network, arguably one of the company’s greatest assets.

Continue reading… “Tesla opens world’s largest Supercharger station”

Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla battery researcher shows new test results pointing to batteries lasting over 2 million miles

October 27, 2020

A Tesla battery researcher showed updated test results pointing to batteries lasting over 15,000 cycles or the equivalent of over 2 million miles (3.5 million km) in an electric car.

Last year, we reported on Jeff Dahn and his lab, who is under contract to do battery research for Tesla, releasing a paper that shows how the latest Li-ion battery technology can produce batteries that would last 1 million miles in electric vehicles.

In a new presentation, Dahn discussed updated test results from this new battery, which he hopes becomes the new standard Li-ion battery against which new battery technologies benchmark themselves.

The scientist, who is widely recognized as a pioneer in Li-ion batteries, referenced our article from last year about their paper and said that it sparked a massive interest in this new battery chemistry and battery longevity.

Continue reading… “Tesla battery researcher shows new test results pointing to batteries lasting over 2 million miles”

Automobiles, Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Battery Breakthrough enables ‘Holy Grail’ of super fast-charging electric cars

October 18, 2020

Tesla vehicles and other electric cars have a range of around 500km but the battery takes around an hour to charge

Recharging a car could be almost as quick as refueling.

Engineers say they are close to achieving the “holy grail” of batteries after a major breakthrough brought forward the possibility of charging electric vehicles in mere minutes.

The advance could provide electric cars with 500km of range from just 10 minutes of charging, researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) said.

“The combination of high energy, high [charging] rate, and long cycle life is the holy grail of battery research, which is determined by one of the key components of the battery: the electrode materials,” said USTC professor Hengxing Ji.

Continue reading… “Battery Breakthrough enables ‘Holy Grail’ of super fast-charging electric cars”

Batteries, Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla aims to mine its own lithium in Nevada after dropping plan to buy miner

October 11, 2020

But so far no company has been able to mine lithium from clay commercially

Elon Musk told investors last week that Tesla has secured access to 10,000 acres of lithium-rich clay deposits in Nevada and planned to use a new, “very sustainable way” of extracting the metal.

Tesla Inc. secured its own lithium mining rights in Nevada after dropping a plan to buy a company there, according to people familiar with the matter.

The automaker held discussions in recent months with Cypress Development Corp., which is seeking to extract lithium from clay deposits in southwest Nevada, but the parties didn’t reach a deal, the people said, asking not to be named because the information isn’t public. The electric car maker, which has vowed to slash its battery costs by 50 per cent, instead focused on the plan that chief executive Elon Musk outlined last week to dig for lithium on its own in the state.

Continue reading… “Tesla aims to mine its own lithium in Nevada after dropping plan to buy miner”