Electric Vehicles & Cars - Page 25

The Matrix 4 is currently in production, with a current release date of May 21, 2021 -- which coincidentally is the same day John Wick 4 opens, with Keanu Reeves the star of both movies.

Well, during an interview with Empire for their Heroes Issue, The Matrix star Carrie-Anne Moss said: "I never thought that it would happen. It was never on my radar at all. When it was brought to me in the way that it was brought to me, with incredible depth and all of the integrity and artistry that you could imagine, I was like, 'This is a gift.' It was just very exciting".

As for Keanu, he added: "Lana Wachowski wrote a beautiful script and a wonderful story that resonated with me. That's the only reason to do it. To work with her again is just amazing. It's been really special, and the story has, I think, some meaningful things to say, and that we can take some nourishment from".

The future of Tesla Motors is near unlimited at this point, with the electric car company rolling out its new feature to Tesla EV owners called "Car Access".

Car Access is a new feature for Tesla owners that lets them grant permission for another driver to access their car, letting the owner of the vehicle add an additional person to the vehicle and all Tesla app features. The only thing they'll be locked out of is being able to request roadside assistance, or (of course) purchase upgrades.

While this might seem like a nifty short-term feature, the long-term implications of Car Access are unlimited. Rewinding the clock back to April 2019, where Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk, said he saw a future of Tesla where they would be competing against Uber and Lyft, letting people use their car to make money through sending their Tesla vehicles into a robo-fleet.

The coronavirus pandemic around the world has hit automakers extremely hard. Automakers, such as GM, Ford, and others have been forced to shut down production around the world. Demand for new vehicles has also plummeted, leaving many automakers losing vast sums of money. Lincoln parent company Ford invested heavily into electric auto firm Rivian, and the investment landed it the right to use the skateboard platform for a future electric vehicle.

Lincoln announced only a couple of months ago that it would build an electric vehicle using the Rivian skateboard platform. That announcement was before the coronavirus pandemic, and Lincoln has now reportedly told dealers that it had canceled that electric vehicle. Lincoln blamed the "current environment" for the cancellation of the vehicle, insisting that its commitment to electrification and Rivian will continue.

The Lincoln electric vehicle on the Rivian platform was scheduled to launch in 2022. The skateboard platform will be used by Rivian with its R1S and R1T electric vehicles. The coronavirus pandemic has stopped construction on the assembly plant where those vehicles will be built in Illinois. While Lincoln won't be making a vehicle on the skateboard platform now, it says it still plans to build an electric vehicle.

Tesla has patented a new type of electrode to be used inside of the battery cells that builds in house. The goal of the new battery electrodes is to be longer-lasting and cheaper to produce. The new NCA electrode in the patent is expected to be used in those battery cells.

Tesla previously patented an electrode using a new generation "single-crystal" NMC 532 cathode and a new advanced electrolyte. The team was able to show over 4000 cycles in battery cells made using the novel cathode. Tesla believes that the battery cells could last for over a million miles when used in electric vehicles.

Tesla's new patent is titled "Method for Synthesizing Nickel-Cobalt-Aluminum Electrodes." The inventors have devised a two-step synthesis process pairing single-crystal nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) electrodes. The patent says that in certain embodiments, the two-step synthesis process includes two lithiation steps. As with most patents, much of it is heady science that doesn't make a lot of sense to those outside of the industry.

Ford has a very cool, one-of-a-kind drag racing car that needs nothing but electricity to make it down the dragstrip. The vehicle is called the Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 and is the first factory fully electric dragster from Ford. The automaker says that the Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 is capable of running the quarter-mile in the low 8-second range at over 170 mph.

The electric motors used in the drag racing car deliver over 1400 horsepower and 1100 pound-feet of torque. "Ford has always used motorsport to demonstrate innovation," said Dave Pericak, Global Director, Ford Icons. "Electric powertrains give us a completely new kind of performance and the all-electric Cobra Jet 1400 is one example of pushing new technology to the absolute limit. We're excited to showcase what's possible in an exciting year when we also have the all-electric Mustang Mach-E joining the Mustang family."

Ford sees the Cobra Jet 1400 project as an opportunity to begin the development of electric powertrains in a racecar package. Ford already has lots of experience with that racing car package, it produces Cobra Jet race cars with supercharged V-8's for drag racing and has for several years.

Lots of automakers and companies who aren't automakers want into the electric vehicle market. A new SUV has turned up from a privately-held solar company called Triton Solar based in New Jersey. The company is making a massive leap from the solar power world into the electric vehicle world with a new EV that it calls the Triton Model H SUV. The company has shown off some renderings and made some bold claims about the vehicle.

Triton says that it is using proprietary 200 kWh battery packs that allow the full-size SUV to offer a 700-mile driving range on a single charge. Being able to drive 700 miles on a charge would give it the longest driving range for an SUV powered by batteries currently available. Triton says that it can seat eight adults and still accommodate 200 cubic feet of cargo. The Model H looks very similar to the Chevrolet Silverado or GMC Yukon.

Other than the large 200kWh battery pack, the company promises that the vehicle will use four wheel-attached motors to give the Model H 1500 horsepower. It will also have the ability to haul heavy loads and cruise comfortably around the city. The vehicle has a 130-inch wheelbase and a curb weight of 5300 pounds.

If you're a health care worker or law enforcement officer in bunch of cities throughout the US and the world, e-scooter company Lime is reactivating a bunch of its scooters and offering them for free. Lime is the largest e-scooter-sharing company in the world, with 120,000+ scooters in 30 countries.

The new Lime Aid initiative is aimed at essential workers like police officers and health care workers with some easy-to-use transportation all with social distancing given the coronavirus pandemic. Lime is offering 30-minute rides for free, which would be enough to get around the city and even to-and-from work given you're an essential worker.

Lime is offering the 30-minute rides for free in the following cities at first: Austin, Baltimore, Columbus, Dallas, Nashville, Norfolk, Va., Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C. in the US; Berlin and Cologne in Germany; Paris, France; Rimini, Italy; and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Now that most sport is canceled, or at least can't have fans at the place of which the sport is conducted, sport's operators are looking for different ways to keep fans engaged.

FOX Sports, and NASCAR, and iRacing have announced a new way to keep the racing going with the first-ever eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series that is scheduled to be held on Sunday, March 22, at 1:30 p.m. ET on FS1 and the FOX Sports app. This new series will replace traditional racing with "simulation-style" eSports competitions that will involve top competitors such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bobby Labonte, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and more.

Before you raise your concerns about whether or not this will just be another opportunity for the coronavirus to continue to spread, FOX has said that they are "following CDC guidelines" to make sure the race is safe. The races will go for 90 minutes each, and will be commentated by Jeff Gordon. It will be interesting to see whether or not this decision to hold virtual NASCAR races will continue after the coronavirus has been contained and things go back to normal. I'd imagine the idea would be quite popular, or perhaps not? Who knows.

Electric vehicles are becoming all the craze right now, but some long-term car enthusiasts don't want to make the jump because they will loose out on that precious engine rumble that they love so much.

While electric vehicles do have the more modern technology, they don't quite have that satisfying engine sound that a V12 or a V10 has when you press down hard on the accelerator. That sound is what keeps a lot of car enthusiasts using traditional motors, but what if that sound could be added to an electric vehicle? Would that be enough for some people to make the jump to EV's?

U.K based Milltek Sport, a company who is known for its work on high-end exhausts is taking that chance, and might even have the solution that everyone is after. Milltek has created a new system that mimics the sound of an internal-combustion engine both inside and outside the car. The sound that is emitted is so well done that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if you were blind tested. In the above video the new system is demonstrated on a Tesla Model 3 Performance, and judging by what is heard in the video and the hosts reaction, it sounds fantastic.

Since the fruition of the company, Tesla has been hard at work manufacturing and pioneering electric vehicles, but now is a time for celebration.

According to a recent Twitter post by Tesla CEO and Founder, Elon Musk, Tesla has officially manufactured its 1,000,000 car. This is quite an achievement for the electric vehicle manufacturer and should not go understated, considering the company's market cap value recently hit an all-time high. It should also be mentioned that throughout 2019, Tesla sold 367,000 cars, yet still managed to exceed German car manufacturer Volkswagen's market cap despite Volkswagen selling 11 million cars.

Tesla is on a roll, and there's no doubt that 2020 will be another big year for the company as well. The company has a lot of public support behind it, as it's pioneering the new age of electric vehicles. Other vehicle manufacturers are following in Tesla's footsteps and are attempting to create competitor vehicles, which is great for the consumer. So I can imagine that the electric vehicle market for 2020 and beyond is only just getting started, as more and more companies get on board with alternative electric vehicles.

During this year's Super Bowl, we saw a lot of technology-related ads, and one of those ads were for Jeep's ebike.

Jeep has now initiated pre-orders for its e-bike, and it won't be coming cheap... at all. Jeep's e-bike will cost consumers $5,899 and will sport a 750W motor, Fire-Link suspension, and a maximum range of 40 miles. Jeep has also partnered with QuietKat and has said that the new off-road mountain bike is the "most powerful" mountain bike yet.

Originally, Bill Murray was spotted in the e-bikes Super Bowl advertisement, and if you want to check out that video, it can be seen above. It seems that Jeep is following the likes of Tesla by transitioning to more electric-related vehicles. I won't be surprised if other vehicle manufacturers follow the same path, as consumers are now looking for clean alternatives. Jeep will begin shipping out their e-bike sometime in June.

If you didn't know, a Tesla driver was recently killed in a fatal crash while using the Tesla Autopilot feature. This disaster sparked an investigation into what the driver was doing right before the crash and driving feature itself.

Firstly, the driver that was killed in Silicon Valley on March 23rd, 2018 was 38-year-old Apple engineer and game developer, Walter Huang. Huang was driving his Tesla Model X in Autopilot mode, collided with a safety barrier, and then was struck by two more cars. Before the crash Huang had reported issues with his Tesla's Autopilot feature to his family and close friend, but it was later discovered that he did not report it to Tesla themselves.

The National Transport and Safety Board (NTSB) conducted an investigation into the crash, as Huang's family are attempting to sue Tesla for a malfunctioning vehicle that they say ultimately killed Huang. The NTSB investigation was extensive, and took quite some time to formulate results. What the NTSB found was that Huang's vehicle was travelling at 70mph when it crashed into the safety barrier, and that Huang experienced the same "glitch" in the same spot on the road with his vehicle multiple times before his death.

Daniel Pearce, aged 20, pinged Tesla founder and CEO, Elon Musk on social media asking him to help track down the women who attacked his fathers brand new Tesla.

The car, which is a Tesla Model 3 Performance and valued at $110,000 AUD, and was parked at Westfield Penrith shopping center, Sydney, Australia. Pearce said to local news that was at the shopping center to grab some lunch with his family, and when his family returned back to the car to leave they noticed the scratch. "It's a pretty deep scratch all along the rear panel and two doors. Dad was pretty gutted. He's in love with his car, it's the first expensive car he's ever owned."

Pearce also said, "We just thought 'how could you do that to someone's car?' We've never seen this lady before in our lives." So, Pearce and his family downloaded the footage from the cars Sentry Mode, and the video showed a women walking up to the car and running her key from panel to panel. It has since been revealed by New South Wales Police that this women has been identified by the police and charged with malicious damage and issued with a court attendance notice for March 16th.

Tesla might have had fans excited for its electric Cybertruck, but now you can get your hands-on one for just $20 or $400 -- the Hot Wheels RC Cybertruck, that is. Tesla has had over 500,000 orders for its new Cybertruck already, too.

Hot Wheels recently unveiled a new 1:64 scale RC Cybertruck that it will be selling for $20, while the larger 1:10 scale RC Cybertruck costs $400. Both of the new RC Cybertruck's will begin shipping in December 2020, they will be limited editions, and will be available until they're sold out -- which is happening very quick.

The smaller 1:64 version of the Tesla Cybertruck is the size of a normal Hot Wheels car, with two driving speeds and less moving parts -- both of the new RC Cybertruck Hot Wheels cars were designed with the assistance of Tesla. Better yet, the larger 1:10 RC Cybertruck even includes something special -- a "cracked window vinyl sticker", a laugh at the on-stage slip up that saw a shattered Cybertruck window during its unveil and detailing of how strong the car was.

Tesla shook the entire world when it unveiled its electric Cybertruck in late 2019, but since then we don't know how many orders Tesla Motors have received.

But now, according to the latest information from the Cybertruck Owners Club -- with information current to February 18, there are around 535,000 orders for Tesla's exciting new Cybertruck. This breaks down to 5873 orders per day, which is a pretty damn large amount of orders.

How does the Cybertruck Owners Club work out this information? Easy: it plays around with Tesla's own reservation numbering system which is easy to work out as members hare their Cybertruck reservation number. Cybertruck Owners Club explains: "Your order number is just a sequential number, starting at about 112744100 (the number that reservations began). So subtract that from your number for your (approximate) place in line".

We live in a world where subscription services are starting to replace virtually everything, but now Japanese auto giant Nissan wants to see us live in a world where car subscription services are a thing.

Nissan is testing out its new Switch service in Houston, which will let you swap your Nissan vehicle through a mobile app. You can order a new car at the time, where a Nissan dealership staffer will drive the vehicle out to you, and run you through how to use your new car. Awesome stuff!

Nissan starts off the pricing for its new Switch service at $699 per month, something it calls its "Select" plan -- which offers you up 4 different cars: Altima, Rogue, Pathfinder, and Frontier. For $899 per month you can be upgraded to the Premium plan, which offers up 6 more cars: the Leaf Plus, Maxima, Murano, Armada, Titan, and even the 370Z. If you want to get your mits on the Nissan GT-R then you will pay $100 per day on top of that, but you'll only get 7 consecutive days with that.

Just imagine driving around through a 35MPH zone and some hacker manipulates your Tesla electric car and its Autopilot mode, tricking it into seeing that 35MPH speed sign and making it think it was an 85MPH sign.

Yeah, so a group of McAfee researchers did just that -- manipulated a speed limit sign that tricks the Autopilot self-driving technology that Tesla is a leader in. The researchers put a small sticker on a 35MPH speed limit sign, tricking both a 2016 Tesla Model X and Model S in Autopilot mode, into thinking it was an 85MPH sign -- both vehicles then began accelerating up to 85MPH.

MIT Technology Review says that this isn't the first time researchers have been able to manipulate Tesla in Autopilot mode, where they report: "In an 18-month-long research process, [McAfee researchers] Trivedi and Povolny replicated and expanded upon a host of adversarial machine-learning attacks including a study from UC Berkeley professor Dawn Song that used stickers to trick a self-driving car into believing a stop sign was a 45-mile-per-hour speed limit sign. Last year, hackers tricked a Tesla into veering into the wrong lane in traffic by placing stickers on the road in an adversarial attack meant to manipulate the car's machine-learning algorithms".

There has recently been quite a lot of controversy surrounding Tesla's Autopilot feature, and a new level of hostility and division arose after Walter Huang's death on March 23rd, 2018.

Huang's vehicle experienced an Autopilot glitch that caused it to get lanes mixed up as it approached a left exit on US Highway 101. The vehicle was traveling at 70 miles per hour, but since then, new information has surfaced in multiple new documents released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The documents confirm that Huang experienced this same glitch in this very same spot, multiple times before his death. What isn't confirmed is that if Huang told Tesla about this issue.

The documents state that on the last two times Huang drove over the same spot on highway 101 he noticed the glitch and grabbed the wheel to correct it. This evidence was gathered from the SD card that is inside every Model X (Huang's vehicle). A friend of Huang, Hans Ting, also asked Huang in a private message on March 19th how his vehicle was doing, a screenshot has been provided below. Huang's family claims that Huang notified Tesla of this Autopilot issue and said that Huang visited Tesla in regard to it.

Just imagine your $150,000 new Porsche Taycan electric car exploding while parked, stationary and turned off, in your garage. I can't imagine it, and it is a scary thought but it has happened to one Porsche Taycan owner in Florida.

There are only 130 of them in the US so far, with the German premium car maker seeing one of its Taycan electric vehicles exploding, catching on fire and burning to a crisp in a garage in South Florida on February 16. Electrek reported with a video from Twitter, saying that "the electric car was burned down to the some parts of the frame, and the garage sustained significant damages".

Porsche has confirmed with Electrek that they are "aware of the incident and that no one was hurt". There's also one fact that Electrek drives home, and that's the bit where they say "Electric car fires often get a lot of attention from the mainstream media, despite the fact that they happen far less frequently than gasoline car fires".

Well, well, well... what do we have here? Oh, just the Tesla Motors self-titled 'Anti-Handbook Handbook' for new employees which is actually ridiculously awesome. Check out the Tesla Anti-Handbook Handbook right here.

The purported Anti-Handbook Handbook is filled with regular-sounding explanations of everything, and not a bunch of stuff that is corporate speak. It's actually very refreshing, with Tesla starting off the Anti-Handbook Handbook with: "We're Tesla. We're changing the world. We're willing to rethink everything. We're different and we like it that way. Being different allows us to do what no one else is doing; to do what others tell us is impossible".

Tesla also says that anyone at Tesla can and should email or talk to anyone else "according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company". Tesla staff can talk to their managers, their manager's manager, to a VP in another department, or even Elon Musk himself -- the Anti-Handbook Handbook adds that "you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens".