Chinese carmakers’ global growth “comes as major U.S. carmakers … have withdrawn from promising markets such as India, Indonesia & Thailand to focus on their North American base.”
Market share of Chinese automakers “has jumped in many markets over the last 5 years, growing from 3% to 10% in Thailand, from 1% to 9% in Australia and from nothing to 13% in Mexico … Gains in Russia have been even starker, jumping from almost nothing to more than a third.”
For anyone who watched The Jetsons and dreamed of a future of flying cars, that future could be up for pre-order as soon as this year, according to Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Xpeng.
Xpeng AeroHT aims to deliver its flying car to customers in 2026, the company’s president told CNBC, with the vehicle currently going through a certification process with the Chinese aviation regulator. Here’s more.
Matt Farrah of The Smoking Tire gave an honest and (therefore) devastatingly negative review of the #Cybertruck. Good on him. Every point he makes is spot-on (except maybe the chuckle-inducing post-Apocalypse truck argument).
“Inside Tesla’s sprawling factory in Austin, Texas, known as Giga Texas, the company on Monday took a striking step to adjust to its new reality. It was the first day without a night shift for the Model Y … which effectively cut the company’s output of the vehicle in half.”
The United States is protecting is uncompetitive automakers addicted to expensive SUVs and trucks from facing a real challenge that would force them to innovate and could accelerate the EV transition by making cheaper models much more accessible.
I don’t often share the fanblogs, but this is a good look behind the scenes: Elon Musk has been absent from Tesla for the past year, but now he’s reasserting himself by doing mass layoffs with little regard for the effects on the business. It’s a mess.
This is truly one of the more baffling decisions I’ve seen in a long time. Tesla is a leader in charging infrastructure, to the degree that virtually every other carmaker is even adopting its standard.
Then Elon Musk laid off the entire Supercharger team.
Elon Musk is betting Tesla’s future on using self-driving fantasies to boost the share price instead of building a real car business. He just gutted the teams working on the Supercharger network (right as other companies are adopting it!) and new vehicles.
In Vox, I explained how federal policy encourages car bloat, making American vehicles more enormous, polluting, and dangerous than they'd otherwise be.
That's the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
A driverless vehicle recently made its way through the tight streets and chaotic traffic of Bhopal, India. So, how did it do? As Futurism reports, it’s either “an impressive feat of engineering — or a disaster waiting to happen.” Watch the video, then decide. https://flip.it/oi_yQt #Tech#Technology#Cars#Automobiles
Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving has been linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, according to a federal investigation published today.
“In total, NHTSA investigated 956 crashes, starting in January 2018 and extending all the way until August 2023,” reports @theverge. “Of those crashes, some of which involved other vehicles striking the Tesla vehicle, 29 people died. There were also 211 crashes in which ‘the frontal plane of the Tesla struck a vehicle or obstacle in its path.’ These crashes, which were often the most severe, resulted in 14 deaths and 49 injuries.”
It’s an unpopular opinion among EV purists, but I think hybrids will reduce a lot more carbon emissions than BEVs, for the simple reason that way more people can switch. Even without access to charging outlets, hybrids are far more efficient thanks to their regenerative braking. With access to outlets, they are as good as EVs within their electric range, which will account for most of the daily commutes of their owners, and all with far smaller batteries and better costs of ownership than BEVs.
The way to eliminate emissions due to personal transportation is not to put people in BEVs. It’s to eliminate commutes and massively invest in (electrified) public transportation.
Elon Musk once promised Tesla vehicles would have insanely high resale value because they’d all be robotaxis. Owners must be pissed he keeps gutting the value of vehicles they paid much more for a few years back.
The decision to build freeways instead of rail in the post-war years, along with the low-rise single-zoned suburbs it promoted, has been an absolute planning disaster.
But the mistake can be fixed, and freeways can be removed.
City Beautiful's Dave Amos @citybeautiful has an interesting look at some of America's endangered freeways, and how communities can get them removed:
Toyota wants hydrogen to succeed so bad it's practically paying people to buy the Mirai…”you can get $40,000 off a 2023 Toyota Mirai Limited, a fuel-cell vehicle that retails for $66,000. When you factor in the $15,000 in free hydrogen over six years and the available 0% interest loan, the new car would run you just $11,000. “https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/hydrogens-real-markets/#cars#hydrogen#technology#climate#environment
The editors of Scientific American have written an opinion piece saying we need to move away from #cars to #activetransport because of local & carbon #pollution, road crash death & injury and how it restricts access to life for so many- the young, the elderly, the poor & disabled. #ClimateCrisis#ClimateChange