Electric Vehicles & Cars - Page 24

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is starting 2021 off well, with news floating around that it will be making chips for Intel in the near future, record products for 2020, an expanded $28 billion spend on advanced chips in 2021 -- and now TSMC will solve global auto chip shortages.

Volkswagen announced last month that it was worried about the low supply of chips coming in from China would disrupt production for the German automaker, while Honda said it would be closing its UK plant temporarily because of global auto chip shortages.

Never fear, TSMC is here!

Uh, I don't even know what to say -- no car that I ever drive again will come anywhere close to how amazing this new Digital Cockpit 2021 concept that Samsung has made. Check it out:

The big star of the show there is the huge panoramic 49-inch QLED display that can be used for entertainment, think future 8K content over Netflix or YouTube being blasted to your car over 5G -- all with surround sound speakers that pop out from next to your ears attached to the headrest. Awesome stuff, Samsung.

Samsung co-developed the Digital Cockpit 2021 concept with Harman, with Samsung explaining that it is "transforming vehicles into places where passengers would love to stay" with its main goal of "simplifying communication and delivering fun on-the-go experiences".

Well, it looks like Apple is making its autonomous electric cars with Hyundai -- with Reuters reporting that Apple and Hyundai will "start production around 2024 in the United States" according to local newspaper Korea IT News.

The new Apple Car will either be made at Kia Motors' factory in Georgia, or alternatively a new factory somewhere in the US that will produce 100,000 vehicles around 2024 -- Kia Motors being an affiliate of Hyundai Motor. The full capacity of the plant is expected to eventually reach 400,000 and I'm sure Apple and Hyundai will only build more plants as production (and sales) ramp up.

Interestingly, Reuters reports that Apple and Hyundai have plans to release a "beta version" of the Apple cars next year... a beta version car. Alright. We do know that Apple's new Car is meant to have "next level" battery technology, which will "radically" reduce the cost of the batteries inside of the car and increase the range that it can drive on a single charge.

Chinese electric vehicle startup NIO has just unveiled their new electric car, the new NIO ET7 being a fully autonomous, massive battery beast that can take on Tesla.

NIO has been referred to as "the Tesla of China" where it has been selling electric SUVs in the Chinese market for a while now, but at NIO Day 2020 in Chengdu, China yesterday -- the company unveiled their new NIO ET7 vehicle which has a list of great features, power, and technology.

We're looking at a 480 kW dual motor drivetrain with a battery pack that scales up to 150 kWh, with up to 621 miles (1000km). You'll probably never get close to it, but you should get upwards of that -- so expect around 500 miles of driving on a single charge in the NIO ET7.

Elon Musk has shared some gorgeous new drone footage of the nearly-ready Tesla Gigafactory that is located in Brandenburg, about 20 miles south-east of Berlin. Check it out:

The new facility might not look tall from that eagle-eye view, but Musk confirms that the new Tesla Gigafactory is a 5-story tall building. The new Gigafactory in Germany will open up 10,000 jobs for the economy and make 500,000 vehicles per year.

Tesla will be manufacturing the Model Y electric vehicle for Europe, which should begin rolling out in the coming months and flooding into the European market.

Tesla delivered 500,000 vehicles throughout 2020 -- but now we have Deutsche Bank analysts saying they expect Tesla to deliver around 800,000 vehicles in 2021.

Deutsche Bank is optimistic about Tesla estimating 775,000 vehicle deliveries in 2021, increasing those expectations by around 3% or so. The bank also expects Tesla will earn around $46 billion in revenue in 2021, up from the $31 billion in revenue for 2020 -- an increase by a hefty 48%.

The demand coming out of Europe and Asia for Tesla electric vehicles has given Deutsche Bank some of those hairs standing on their arms, so they consider 2021 a big year for the electric car giant in other markets outside of their success in the US.

Tesla might have its Autopilot Full Self-Driving (FSD) in beta but that doesn't mean people aren't trying it out... with one Tesla EV owner taking their FSD-capable Model 3 vehicle and driving from SF to LA without a single intervention.

This is the first video that I've seen with a full trip using the Full Self-Driving (FSD) ability, without making any adjustments or human-intervention. The only time the owner puts his hands-on the wheel, is when he explains: "there was one tiny intervention where a giant piece of debris on the road popped up suddenly after a car moved out of the way. To be cautious I couldn't wait to see if FSD would avoid it and had to make sure to move over myself. But besides that one second of grabbing the steering wheel, there were no interventions from start to destination".

You can read more about his adventures, and watch the full 15-minute video (sped up of course) here.

Tesla shipped a record 499,550 vehicles throughout 2020, just 450 electric cars short of Elon Musk's own goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles in the year. Tesla has said these numbers could shift by as much as 0.5% which would rip Tesla over the 500,000 mark, so there's that. There's also this:

Elon Musk himself tweeting that he is "So proud of the Tesla team for achieving this major milestone! At the start of Tesla, I thought we had (optimistically) a 10% chance of surviving at all". It's funny how far it's come from "oh yeah, this business venture might survive" to the heights that Tesla is at now.

The thing is, Elon Musk predicted that back in 2014 -- yeah, check him out saying it in the video above during an interview with Fox Business in 2014.

Tesla has just opened up and turned on the world's largest Supercharger station located in Shanghai, China -- as seen by @JayinShanghai on Twitter.

The new Tesla Supercharger station in Shanghai has 72 stalls for Tesla EVs which is much bigger than the 56-stall facility in Fresno County, California. The Supercharger station in California is outdoors, while the new one in Shanghai is undercover.

You'll find the new Tesla Supercharger station at the Jing'an International Center in Shanghai, with the 72 stalls using V2 Superchargers that are capable of delivering 150 kW. The ones in California use 250 kW V3 chargers, so the Tesla Supercharger station definitely charges Model 3 and Model Y EVs (they support V3 charging) faster in the US.

Volkswagen is showing off a prototype EV charging robot, something that helps bridge the gap of the now -- with the future of charging cars. Check it out:

VW can be enabled by an app or it can be done through communicating with your car, where it will then grab the battery trailer and bring it over to your car. Once the EV charging robot has the battery trailer next to your car, it will plug it in for you and your VW electric vehicle will begin charging -- the EV charging robot will then be free to do other duties with other EVs.

The new EV charging robot could be used to charge other EVs, but that hasn't been confirmed yet -- and I'm sure we'll know more before this thing becomes a reality. This could be very useful in certain situations where charging an EV isn't an option -- as it could drag a battery trailer to the VW electric vehicle and get it up and charged in no time.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have released their new drone regulations, new regulations that will go into affect in early 2021 in the US.

The new rules will allow licensed drone operators to fly their drones at night, as long as they have completed their required additional training -- and added anti-collision lights to their drones. This step isn't just for regular or enthusiast drone pilots, but for drone delivery services like Amazon and Alphabet's Wing.

Starting in 2022 the FAA's Remote ID requirement is that every single drone sold in the United States weighs more than 0.55 pounds -- to include a feature to allow broadcasts of its location and identification. The FAA wants to know about your location, at every second you're flying -- and have it sent to local authorities.

Tesla has pushed out a new holiday update to its EV owners that provides the new feature of a Boombox mode, allowing to broadcast custom audio on the outside of your car. Check out the video below:

If you own a Tesla then you'll know you can already play fart sounds and the like inside of your car -- something Tesla provided in December 2018 -- but now you can do that outside of your car with the new 2020.48.26 firmware update. But now the new Boombox feature lets you use the built-in speaker to blast custom audio out of the built-in speaker.

Tesla vehicles made after September 1, 2019 have a built-in speaker as they were a new requirement by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that required that electric cars that were silent to be capable of emitting some form of noise to alert pedestrians.

Apple Car rumors are hot right now, with rumors flying that production on the Apple Car will begin in Q3 2021 -- unveiled at the same time, and released in the years after sometime near 2024.

Reuters is now reporting from unnamed sources that Apple is developing a next-generation battery design that could not just "radically" reduce the cost of the batteries, but increase the range that the Apple Car can drive on a single charge. Apple is working on a "monocell" design that will see more battery cells packed together, ope

The site reports: "Apple plans to use a unique "monocell" design that bulks up the individual cells in the battery and frees up space inside the battery pack by eliminating pouches and modules that hold battery materials, one of the people said".

Apple has been working on a car-related project for over 5 years now, something that started as an autonomous car -- morphed into AI for autonomous cars, and then it kinda just disappeared.

But the Apple Car is back in the headlines with Taiwan-based Economic Daily News reporting that Apple is planning to launch its new Apple Car in Q3 2021. The news is coming from components suppliers in Taiwan who said that production is being scaled up for the Apple Car in Q2 2021.

Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that the Apple Car would be out somewhere near 2024-2025, so if this did happen we're looking at Apple being many years ahead of schedule. We could see Apple unveil the new Apple Car towards the end of next year, with a roll out of vehicles in the years to come.

Tesla has announced that it will be shutting down of its higher-end EVs in the Model X and Model S for 18 days, with production re-starting on January 11, 2021.

CNBC has the news with an internal Tesla email stating the news, with the company noting in another email that demand for its cars was "quite a bit higher" than supply for the quarter -- with lots of sales of the cheaper Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

Tesla workers receive a full week pay, a few paid holidays and "limited paid opportunities" to work in other teams within the company. Once it's all said and done there will be 5 unpaid days for Tesla workers who can't find other work inside the company, or use their own time off.

Palmer Luckey has well and truly moved back into reality after almost single-handedly creating the VR market as we know it as the founder of Oculus, which was sold to Facebook for $2 billion. Now he heads up Anduril Industries, which just unveiled their first AI-powered Ghost 4 drone.

Anduril's new Ghost 4 drone are (very importantly) made in the USA. The new AI-powered drones are the first generation that can perform reconnaissance missions, according to Luckey, where the drones will fly out and search areas of land for objects of interest. This would include weapons, people, hardware (spy equipment), and more.

The new AI-powered drones are the first generation that can perform reconnaissance missions, according to Luckey, where the drones will fly out and search areas of land for objects of interest. This would include weapons, people, hardware (spy equipment), and more.

Amazon is officially allowed to begin its first commercial delivery trials in the US, where the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granting Amazon with an "air carrier" designation. Welcome to Amazon Prime Air.

This means the company is open to kick starting its drone delivery trials in the United States, but Amazon hasn't detailed when and where they will be. Bloomberg does report that Amazon has test sites for possibly drone delivery trials in the Northwest, and in the Vancouver area.

Amazon vice president, David Carbon, said: "This certification is an important step forward for Prime Air and indicates the FAA's confidence in Amazon's operating and safety procedures for an autonomous drone delivery service that will one day deliver packages to our customers around the world".

Tesla Motors continues to go from strength to strength, with the Elon Musk run company now looking to expand its Full Self Driving technology.

The company is reporting teaming with Broadcom to make a new 7nm processor, something known as HW 4.0 -- which will power its next-gen Full Self Driving (FSD) computer. The new 7nm HPC chip will be made on TSMC's 7nm node and will be made later this year -- and put into cars in 2022 and beyond.

Mass production on the new Tesla Motors FSD chip will begin in late 2021, which is mostly because TSMC is absolutely flooded with orders for its 7nm node. AMD is building its entire Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU families of products on the 7nm node by TSMC, the next-gen Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles and their semi-custom APUs are being made by TSMC, and so much more on 7nm.

Bugatti has just released something I'm sure you didn't expect: the Baby II, which is a 75% scale electric replica of its Type 35 car. Check out the video:

The company will have a 1.3HP Novice mode and 1.4kWh battery, which should provide enough juice to let children or an adult to drive around in for a while. There are higher-end versions of the Baby II if you have more money, want more status, or just don't care.

Bugatti's base version of the car is made with a composite body, while the Vitesse models receive a nicer carbon fiber battery and 2.8kWh battery upgrade -- as well as a special "Speed Key" liek the higher-end Chiron. There's also the Pur Sang edition which has been crafted for collectors.

If you remember, Tesla revealed the Tesla Semi back in November, 2017, and since then we haven't really heard much about it being in production, until now.

A leaked internal email from Tesla revealed that the Tesla Semi is about to enter large scale production, and while 'leaked' emails can sometimes be faked, who better to ask if it's real than the CEO Elon Musk. So, that's exactly what a fan did, and Musk replied with a simple "yes". The email stated that "It's time to go all out and bring the Tesla Semi to volume production. It's been in limited production so far, which has allowed us to improve many aspects of the design".

Originally, the planned release for the Tesla Semi was 2019, but now a revised date has been set for 2021. The email also stated that battery and powertrain production would take place at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, with other part work likely being handled by other factories in other states.