Electric Vehicles & Cars News - Page 1

Tesla has just unveiled its new Model 3 Performance electric vehicle, with the company teasing a highly differentiated performance trip that uses Tesla's latest manufacturing and engineering capabilities to create what the company considers to be a "perfect, high-performance daily driver". Check it out:

The new Model 3 Perf ormance features Tesla's very latest Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) and comfort improvements of the new Model 3, as well as the bespoke chassis hardware the increases performance and stiffness while reducing mass, including adaptive dampers with hollow damper piston rods, multi-sectioned stabilizer bar, ultra-high strength steel springs, and stiffer suspension top mounts.

Tesla bakes in its latest-generation performance drive unit -- the Performance 4DU -- which unlocks even more torque, power, and improved efficiency of the new Model 3 Performance. Compared to the previous Model 3 Performance drive unit, the new Performance 4DU can delivery over 22% more continuous power, over 32% more peak power, and over 16% more peak torque delivery.

Elon Musk said that Tesla will unveil its self-driving Robotaxi product on August 8, in an official post from SpaceX and Tesla's CEO on X, the platform he also owns.

Musk tweeted out with a simple: "Tesla Robotaxi unveil on 8/8," and that's it. The Tesla CEO talked about self-driving Robotaxis back in 2019 and did originally say -- and we reported on it, with the link below -- that he'd have them out on the road in 2024, and here we are in 2024 with Robotaxis to be unveiled on August 8, 2024.

An email sent out by Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been leaked online, revealing that Tesla has now changed the way it delivers its electric vehicles to customers.

The email was originally leaked online by WholeMarsBlog and then later confirmed by BusinessInsider, which details some internal changes to Tesla throughout North America. According to Musk, it's now "mandatory" to install and activate Full Self-Driving (FSD) V12.3.1 and take customers on a "short test ride before handing over the car". The reason for these changes is Musk believes "almost no one actually realizes how well (supervised) FSD actually works".

Musk went on to acknowledge that he is aware that these changes will "slow down the delivery process, but it is nonetheless a hard requirement." According to the BusinessInsider, Musk followed up with another companywide email that requires staff to give customers a demo of the vehicle after they are returned from service centers. Musk wrote, "This is very important".

During a recent interview with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the long-awaited Tesla Roadster will feature "rocket technology".

The contentious interview with Musk covered various topics that the billionaire is involved in, with one being the highly anticipated release of the Telsa Roadster, which was originally unveiled back in 2017. The Tesla Roadster is the company's most-delayed vehicle, originally being unveiled as a concept back in 2017, slated for release in 2020, and now we are in 2024. Musk has said these delays can be attributed to production issues.

However, Musk recently said in February that the EV sports car was going to arrive next year and would feature a second-generation design that will be "something that's never existed before". Notably, Tesla's CEO said the new design will enable the Roadster to achieve 0-60mph in under 1 second. Furthermore, the new Roadster will be designed jointly between Tesla and SpaceX to create "something that's not really a car" and also features "rocket technology."

You'd think a team working on Formula 1 cars would be using advanced software, but nope... it's been discovered that an F1 team has been using Microsoft Excel for the Williams car build workbook.

James Vowles and Pat Fry took over the team principal and chief technical officer roles for the Williams F1 in 2023, discovering the team had been using Excel to manage the car. The Race reports that this was just one of the features that the "team's outdated working practices and systems" that was holding back Williams, according to Vowles.

Vowles recently worked for Mercedes before joining the Williams F1 team, where he aimed on two parts of focus for his first year with Williams. The car's technology would need to be upgraded, with some sections of the vehicle needing a 10x increase in custom-made parts, while the second was the Excel spreadsheet that couldn't handle tracking parts, and be replaced with a completely new digital parts system.

Since the release of Tesla's Cybertruck, we have seen many owners put Tesla's toughness claims to the test by firing bullets at its stainless steel exterior, burning it, breaking windows, and more.

Wes Morrill, the lead engineer for the Cybertruck has had enough of these durability tests and has taken to X to ask owners to stop breaking the new EV as it has already lived a "tortured life for entertainment". Morrill wrote that Cybertruck has already been jumped on, kicked, burned, and shot at multiple times, which the engineer says is enough to soundly say "we've confirmed its tough".

Morrill is right. There have been many toughness tests popping up on YouTube, with my personal favorite being YouTuber JerryRigEverything deciding to fire a .50 caliber bullet at the metal exterior. Notably, most people who are purchasing a $100,000 vehicle aren't going to be doing a durability test, which means that the vast majority of owners aren't trying to break their new Cybertruck for entertainment - it's just the few who want to benchmark the vehicle for reviewing/reporting purposes.

Porsche has just finished launching its new Taycan Turbo GT electric vehicle, and the company had a surprise for Apple Vision Pro users close to the end of its presentation.

The livestream was predominately dedicated to the new Taycan Turbo GT EV but also featured a surprise appearance from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who congratulated Porsche on its new EV lap record and overall progress in the EV market. The Apple CEO commented on the demonstration by Porsche CEO Oliver Blume, who can be seen using the coming Apple Vision Pro app called Race Engineer Cockpit.

The new app is designed to allow Vision Pro users to experience different angles of the race all at once; this includes driver-facing camera angles, over-the-shoulder road perspectives, TV coverage angles, and real-time driving data such as the speed of the vehicle, lap time, battery levels and more.

It was only a few weeks ago that Apple axed its secretive electric vehicle project internally called Project Titan, and now we have received more details about what the company was working on.

Rumors surrounding an Apple Car have been circulating the internet for 10 years now, with as many as 5,000 employees working on the project at its height of development to 1,400 recently being given the choice of finding a division of the company to enter or laid off. Throughout those 10 years of development, hardly any details about Project Titan were leaked, but now the project is officially canceled Bloomberg's Apple insider Mark Gurman now has many details about it, including what the secret EV would have looked like.

According to the insider, Apple's EV 2020 design was similar to a Canoo Lifestyle Vehicle, or a futuristic minivan that featured adjustable window tint, an all-glass sunroof, a white exterior, whitewall tires, an identical front and back, and full self-driving optimizations. In Apple fashion, the design of Project Titan was completely unique, with its interior echoing Apple's iconic minimalistic design approach, which is seen across all its products. The report states its interior would have featured "seats you'd normally see on a private jet or limousine," and when seated, it felt like sitting in a "contoured bubble."

A YouTuber has decided to pull Tesla's claims about the Cybertruck being bulletproof to the test by firing various rounds at its stainless steel exterior.

YouTuber "JerryRigEverything" has gone from testing the durability of tech products, such as the latest mobile phones and the Apple Vision Pro, to now firing a .50 caliber rifle at a Tesla Cybertruck. Firstly, the YouTuber fires a 9mm handgun at the Cybertruck with 115-grain full metal jacket bullets. The Cybertruck's stainless steel alloy prevented each of the shots from going through the metal, proving Tesla's claims that the Cybertruck is "bulletproof".

However, two of the test shots landed in the same spot, cracking the metal exterior. Moving onto faster bullets, the YouTuber tests a 4.5 mm round, and an AR 5.56mm round, which both penetrated the metal exterior. The last test was easily the most interesting as a .50 caliber round was fired at the Cybertruck and unsurprisingly passing through both sides of the door.

It has only been a few weeks since the release of the Tesla Cybertruck and company CEO Elon Musk is already teasing the Roadster, a highly anticipated electric vehicle that was first announced back in 2017.

The Roadster is one of the most anticipated vehicles to come out of Tesla since it was announced in 2017 and supposed to go to market in 2020. However, the vehicle was delayed several times reportedly due to pandemic-related supply chain issues, but now we have a new release window per recent X posts from Musk. The company CEO took to his personal X account on Wednesday to state that the "design goals" for the Tesla Roadster have been "radically increased" and as a result "there will never be another car like this, if you could even call it a car".

Musk said that the new Roadster is just built by Tesla but is a collaborative project between Tesla and his rocket company SpaceX. It's currently unclear how or why SpaceX is involved in the production of seemingly Tesla's next vehicle release, but it could be something as simple as the design of the car and not so much what's under the hood.