Electric Vehicles & Cars - Page 21

The plane is powered by Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), which is typically derived from cooking oil or other waste fats.

An Airbus A380 jet dubbed MSN 1 made a three-hour flight beginning at Blagnac Airport in Toulouse, France, on March 25th. The plane is powered by a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine fueled with 100% SAF. On March 29th, a second test take-off and landing was executed, marking the third Airbus aircraft to use 100% SAF in the last year.

Previously, Airbus flew its A350 aircraft in March 2021 using SAF and its A319neo single-aisle aircraft in October 2021. The A380 flown this March used 27 tons of unblended SAF sourced from the petroleum firm TotalEnergies, which comprised cooking oil and waste fats.

Elon Musk has finally confirmed when the long-awaited Cybertruck will enter production and become available.

Musk answered questions at Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory during its opening ceremony, stating that Tesla will be increasing the production of its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles. He also said that Cybertruck development is due to finish in 2022, with production beginning in 2023, with Musk saying, "we want to complete the development of Cybertruck this year and be ready for production next year."

The Cybertruck was originally revealed in 2019 with promises of availability in 2021. Since then, the Cybertruck has suffered delays, affecting over a million people with pre-orders. In contrast, other electric models such as GMC's Hummer EV and Rivian's R1T have become available for purchase, and Ford prepares its competitor in the F-150 Lightning.

Videos from a nearby mining CCTV camera and a car dashcam show a plane rapidly nosing diving into the ground before smoke is seen in the sky.

The plane is China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735, and it crashed in southern China on Monday after what seems to be an extremely fast nose dive. China's state-owned media have reported that of the 132 onboard, there were no survivors at the wreckage, marking China's worst air disaster in nearly three decades.

US Federal Aviation Administration investigator Michael Daniel, who has previously worked on cases where planes have seemingly nose-dived into the ground, said that at the top of his list to begin an investigation would be "foul play". Daniel noted that the plane had power while it was descending, "So, that kind of rules out a catastrophic type of failure".

A Chinese company has announced the construction of a new supersonic jet that is designed to travel from China to New York in just 60 minutes.

The company behind the project is Space Transportation, and according to its announcement, the company will be building a "rocket with wings" that will be much cheaper than the rockets used to take satellites into low-Earth orbit, while also being much faster than a commercial plane. Space Transportation has posted a demonstration video to its website, and the showcases four individuals getting aboard the jet that then orientates vertically and then launched.

Several seconds pass, and the boosters release from the body of the jet, falling back down to Earth safely and landing on the launchpad for future launches. The jet continues to climb and then travels to its destination in either New York or China, where it will arrive only 60 minutes after launching. Space Transportation expects it will be conducting ground tests by 2023, the first flight on the supersonic by 2024, and the first crewed flight in 2025.

Elon Musk has been requested to disable the Tesla vehicles of everyone in Russia, with users tweeting to Musk to deactivate all Tesla vehicles in the country over its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's huge "special military operation" on Ukraine has seen Musk provide the country with SpaceX Starlink satellites and user terminals, with Ukrainian leadership welcoming Musk's help. Musk has been also helping Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country with free charging for both Tesla, and non-Tesla vehicles in neighboring countries.

But then there are the tweets demanding Musk and Tesla disable all vehicles in Russia, with comments like this "Please turn off and deactivate all Tesla's in Russia. It's absolutely disgusting what Russia is doing and Putin has to be stopped". I don't know why you'd punish innocent Russian civilians -- by disabling the vehicle they've paid for -- as a punishment for what their leader has done.

Tesla is one step closer to having its Gigafactory in Germany being a reality, with local officials approving the facility on Friday.

From here, the electric car giant will have to walk through the usual requirements before the Gigafactory in Germany can be operational: the biggest part of it seems to come from the water consumption of the plant. Tesla's construction of the Gigafactory is nearly complete, but it wasn't without hiccups as there were many issues with environmental groups complaining of water use and the potential issues with local wildlife.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that there would be "relatively little" water used by the Gigafactory in Germany and that the forest that was cleared before the plant was built was "not a natural forest". The forest itself, was actually planted for cardboard.

President Joe Biden had many things to say at his State of the Union speech today, but it also pissed off SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk.

It all started with Joe Biden, who tweeted out: "Ford is investing $11B to build electric vehicles-creating 11,000 jobs across the country. GM is making the largest investment in its history-$7B to build electric vehicles, creating 4,000 jobs in Michigan".

Musk replied, saying: "Tesla has created over 50,000 US jobs building electric vehicles & is investing more than double GM + Ford combined [fyi to person controlling this Twitter]". Someone then tweeted "just do everyone knows, you're the only one who controls your Twitter, right" -- to which Musk replied simply -- "Well, I do have multiple personality disorder, but they're all technically in the same head".

Elon Musk has teased that his team is working on getting Steam games working inside of their Tesla cars.

In a reply tweet to Ryan McCaffrey asking when we'd see Cyberpunk 2077 on the Tesla Model S/X electric vehicles, Musk replied: "We're working through the general case of making Steam games work on a Tesla vs specific titles. Former is obviously where we should be long-term".

Musk did get asked another (funnier) question: would Cyberpunk on Cybertruck be a guarantee, or is it a wish long-term to which the Tesla and SpaceX founder simply replying with the "100%" emoji. It's good to see that Tesla is working on getting ALL games on Steam to work, rather than having to make specific titles Tesla-friendly. Now we just need to see Cyberpunk 2077 running inside of a Tesla Cybertruck, with Musk smiling out of the window.

The DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) uploaded the teaser to Twitter just before the Super Bowl.

The announcement tweet, reading "The Future was never promised. Reimagine today.", includes a teaser video that features the iconic gull-wing doors, one of the memorable features of the original DMC DeLorean. You can sign up for updates on the DeLorean website, allowing you to receive information about the company's journey toward electrification ahead of a premiere sometime in 2022.

In addition to showing that the upcoming vehicle will be electric, the accompanying hashtags also suggest it will have a higher-end, luxury focus. Made infamous by the "Back to the Future" movie trilogy, the DeLorean was already out of production when the first of the movie was released in 1985.

The design of the Electric Batmobile is based on the Tumbler design from Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy.

Nguyen Dac Chung is a 23-year-old graduate from the Hanoi University of Architecture, who along with a team of designers, architects, mechanics, and engineers, brought to life the iconic vehicle. The frame is built from tubular steel, with ABS, carbon fiber, and steel being used for the armor panels and the rest of the construction, for a total weight of 600 kilograms (1323 pounds).

The Batmobile features an automatic transmission, hydraulic doors operable via remote control, and four cameras that provide an almost 360-degree view to the driver and passenger via four monitors. It has a lithium-ion battery to power its electric motor, which allows it to reach a top speed of 65 miles per hour (105 kilometers per hour).

The new capability was achieved by the Toyota Research Institute (TRI).

TRI researchers modified a Toyota Supra to operate autonomously and drift around obstacles on a racetrack at Thunderhill Raceway without any human input. The TRI states that the objective of its work is to make autonomous vehicles more capable, and therefore safer, in scenarios such as driving on black ice or avoiding sudden obstacles.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that Tesla will be recalling a selection of its vehicles ranging from 2016 - 2022.

Reports indicate that Tesla announced last week it would be rolling out its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software to an thousands of more vehicles, bringing its total 60,000 from what was only a couple of thousand back in September, 2021. The car manufacturer is currently testing the FSD beta on tens of thousands of vehicles that are driving on public roads, while simultaneously the NHTSA and Tesla have said that the software doesn't make the are "autonomous".

Back in October, 2021 Tesla said to the regulator that it has rolled out a feature called "rolling stop". Tesla stated that this feature would only work if the car was travelling below 5.6 miles per hour and there was no moving cars, pedestrians, or cyclists detected in the area. Reports indicate that this new feature violated state laws as the affected vehicles didn't come to a complete stop, resulting in the regulator issuing a recall.

It was only at Tesla's recent Q4 2021 earnings call just last week, that CEO Elon Musk updated the timeline in which the full self-driving "safer than human" release would happen. Musk said he'd be "shocked" if we didn't see it before the end of 2022.

Musk said: "I would be shocked if we do not achieve Full Self-Driving safer than human this year. I would be shocked".

But now, Tesla is recalling 53,822 of their cars to remove the "rolling stop" feature that is causing issues. Tesla's current flock of Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X electric cars running firmware version 2020.40.4.10 or newer that are in the "full self-driving" beta program.

It looks like Tesla's exciting new Cybertruck has hit a speedbump, with production reportedly delayed and now 2022 shipping is out the window and 2023 is when Cybertruck's will start rolling off the production line.

Reuters reports from the usual "person familiar with the matter" that the Tesla Cybertruck delays are because of the "changing features and functions" that the company is introducing into the vehicle to make it even better, now that the company faces competition in the electric pickup truck market.

Tesla's official Cybertruck website previously said: "You will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in 2022" but now it reads "You will be able to complete your configuration as production nears". The thing is, the internet records everything and archives show that the reference of 2022 for the Cybertruck was removed at the end of December 2021.

Elon Musk's Tesla has absolutely decimated the competition when it comes to electric vehicles and has since become one of the United States' largest companies despite the number of vehicles it has sold compared to other car manufacturers.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk clearly has been holding the leading spot in the electric vehicle industry, and with the apparent growth of the company, other automobile manufacturers are looking to step into the new energy-efficient market of transportation - Electric Vehicles (EV).

Manufacturing giants such as Volkswagen and Toyota are two of the world's largest automakers, and for context on how big both companies manufacturing is - for every Tesla that Elon Musk sold last year, Volkswagen and Toyota sold around 10 cars. Both Volkswagen and Toyota have outlined a $170 billion spending plan that will be spread out over the coming years to enter the new market and retake an aspect of the car industry that they have lost dominance in.

Tesla updated its higher-end Modle S and Model X vehicles with their RDNA 2-based chips for infotainment systems, with Navi 22, Navi 23, and Navi 24 GPU designs used to replace Intel chips in Tesla EVs... now it's time for Model 3 and Model Y.

In a new tweet, Teslascope explained that Tesla's first Model 3 and Model Y vehicles with the new MCU3 Infotainment Computer "with AMD Ryzen" are now being produced and delivered in the US. Tesla's new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles will also include the new 12v battery, as well as a new front camera housing.

The new Ryzen chip has 4G internet access blasting to the car as well, and will replace the Intel Atom A3950 chips that Tesla has been using in the previous-gen MCU infotainment systems in its cars.

Tesla is pushing out a new holiday software update, and with it comes a slew of new features -- including Sonic the Hedgehog, the actual game -- and so much more.

There's around 15 new features and changes in the Tesla holiday software update, with all Tesla vehicles supported and FSD Beta 10.8 is expected to drop this week sometime. Your Tesla can now run you a choreographed light show in its new Light Show feature inside of the Toybox.

There's a new customizable app launcher, which lets you tweak your favorite apps into a particular position along the bottom bar -- similar to Android. You can adjust climate change controls from the touchscreen, where you can tap the temperature or swipe up from the bottom of the screen. Simplified controls, and very welcomed from Tesla.

Ford has just announced upgraded battery capacities for its Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup, with the Standard Range model packing up to 230 miles of range while the Extended Range version has up to 300 miles of range.

The Ford F-150 Lightning Standard Range model has a 98 kWh battery pack, while the upgraded Extended Model packs a huge 131 kWh battery. Ford will install the Standard Range package on 3 of its 4 versions: the fleet-focused Lightning Pro, the XLT, and the Lariat. The higher-end Extended Range will be optional for the XLT and Lariat, and will come as standard for the flagship Platinum model.

Ford explains that the "F-150 Lighting Pro model will be available with the standard-range battery to retail customers". There's also power fold mirrors in the Lariat and Platinum models, while the Tough Bed spray-in bed liner isn't standard -- but now an option available on all trims.

Tesla has announced that it is making some of its Supercharger stations free during off-peak hours, between the hours of 7PM to 10AM local time between December 23 and December 26, 2021.

These stations are close to major US routes and urban centers, with Tesla only making some of their Supercharger stations free in 11 states. I've got a list of those below, but what is the reason? Tesla says its Supercharger stations are overwhelmed at times, so it is trying something different to take away the load (by offering free charging during off-peak hours).

The more Tesla vehicles that are sold, the worse this gets -- Telsa is having trouble keeping up with charging demand as it is -- let alone in the future. We should see more of the free off-peak charging if things continue like this, and if Tesla sees a change in their Supercharger use across those 11 states in the US between December 23-26.

GM has just announced that it has made its first GMC Hummer EV pickup trucks, ready for customers' personal deliveries -- the second electric pickup truck to enter the market. Check it out:

The new GMC Hummer EV is an all-electric "supertruck" with up to 350 miles of range, with the base version of the car costing $80,000. There's a bunch of cool features inside, with a great range for an electric vehicle the size of the GMC Hummer EV. It's no Tesla Cybertruck, but that's exactly what GM needs to do.

GM is also using its new Ultium battery and drivetrain technology inside of the new GMC Hummer EV, with the company aiming for production of the electric vehicle before the end of 2021 and now we're here. GM said that Factory Zero produced the first few GMC Hummer EV pickup trucks for customer deliveries.