Electric Vehicles & Cars - Page 71

While everyone is expecting Elon Musk's 'unexpected announcement' on Wednesday, Tesla Motors confirmed to Electrek they will host an event at Tesla Gigafactory on January 4th, 2017.

The event will be the first one held at Tesla's Gigafactory in Nevada after its grand-opening on July 29th. It is expected that many investors will show up and see where their money is going, and it will certainly be interesting to see how the factory changed in the past few months.

Since July, the company started the construction on four additional sections so the factory, which is huge as it is, could be almost twice bigger. It will be the world's second-largest building by usable space, smaller than only the Boeing Everett Factory, and the world's largest building by physical area.

During the past two weeks, I ran two polls about self-driving cars. In the first one, I asked whether you would you put your trust in a self-driving car and 69% of the voters said yes. The second poll was a bit trickier and contained one of the biggest issues and moral dilemmas related to the self-driving cars - if an accident is inevitable, who should the self-driving car 'sacrifice' - the passengers or pedestrians? 53% of the voters think the pedestrians should be sacrificed to save the passengers, which is much lower percentage than the recent study showed. In that study, the participants got the same question, and 75% of the voters decided to sacrifice pedestrians for the well-being of the passengers.

There is also a question of who would spend money on a self-driving car which isn't designed to protect its driver and passengers.

If you ask Mercedes-Benz, they don't have that dilemma. Their self-driving car will be programmed to save the driver and the passengers, and not the pedestrians. That's the decision they are going to stick with and implement in they upcoming Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous cars. Instead of worrying about ethics, Mercedes will program its cars to save the driver and its passengers at all costs and in every situation.

Remember last week when we said Tesla Motors will unveil something unexpected on October 17th? Yeah, about that...

The revelation of something unexpected has been unexpectedly moved to Wednesday, October 19th. Elon Musk informed the public on his Twitter that they need a "few more days of refinement." The Tesla Motors CEO gave no indication of what they might reveal, but there are many ideas floating around - from a finished Model 3 design to improved Autopilot software.

BMW's new Motorrad Vision Next 100 concept motorcycle is straight out of a sci-fi movie.

With its new Motorrad concept futurebike, BMW has envisioned a helmet-less future for motorcyclists. While the bike isn't fully autonomous, it will balance itself at all times--whether at high speeds or stopped--and leverages a unique AI system called the "Digital Companion" that interacts with the operator.

Drivers also get a nifty AR visor that offers a full field of view with a heads-up display that scans and shows vital data like road conditions, weather, and incoming hazards. The bike also monitor's driver's eye movements and makes small adjustments while in transit to ensure a safer, smoother ride.

After the demonstration of power against the Tesla P90D and LaFerrari, Mate Rimac's Concept One, an all-electric hypercar, sparked the appetite of enthusiasts and the motoring press for more.

While the LaFerrari is an extremely impressive car, many called for a race against the Porsche 918 which is the most hybridized and only four-wheel driven member of the so-called Holy Trinity. It is also considered the fastest accelerating production car ever made.

The first to challenge the Concept One against the 918 was Alejandro Salomondrin on the Milan Raceway in Michigan. The Porsche 918 is a car that regularly dominates against McLaren P1 and LaFerrari, the other two members of the Holy Trinity.

A Dutch company RemetzCar, specializes in stretching luxury cars into limousines, did a little something different with Tesla's Model S. They turned it into a hearse. True, a hearse isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you mention Tesla, but here it is!

To make this happen, RemetzCar cut the Model S in half and extended it enough to fit a coffin.

A higher roof has been added, as well as huge windows. On their website, the company explained how the "zero-emission sedan proves it is the ideal vehicle for transport during the farewell ceremony."

On top of the SolarCity event on October 28th where Elon Musk should unveil a new product, a roof integrated with solar panels, Elon Musk just revealed that there will be a Tesla Motors event on October 17th. Musk posted this information on his Twitter profile, but he didn't go into specifics.

However, Musk said that the Tesla event on October 17th would reveal a product "unexpected by most". Although it isn't clear what Musk intends to show on this event, there are many ideas floating around - from finished Model 3 design to improved Autopilot software.

The latest electric bicycle coming from Greyp Bikes, whose founder is Mate Rimac, the CEO and founder of Rimac Automobili, will be able to go up to 240 km on one charge. Not surprising considering it has a massive 3kWh battery.

Greyp's current model, the G12S, has a shorter range but it can go faster at 70 km/h. The new model, the G12H will have a maximum speed of 45 km/h.

According to the company, the G12H will have noticeably longer range than anything you can find on the market.

The era of self-driving cars is right around the corner. Google is testing their autonomous vehicles for a while now, and Tesla Motors cars can drive around on their own, of course, under the surveillance of a driver. Other players like Uber have already launched their own self-driving car sharing service and GM is working with Lyft to enable the same.

The self-driving cars should bring better safety to our streets and many believe this is something that will happen within our lifetime. Mate Rimac, founder and CEO of Rimac Automobili, said our children won't have to learn to drive, meaning he believes the self-driving cars will be standard within next few decades.

However, before that happens and the self-driving cars become common, the experts have to solve some problems that are self -imposed.

Australia is a great country, but the states, cities, and towns aren't connected well enough - but this could all change with the introduction of Hyperloop, from Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Rob Lloyd, former Cisco boss, now runs Hyperloop One, with engineers from companies like NASA and Boeing, with them working on "passive magnetic levitation technology".

Hyperloop One is an LA-based company that secured $80 million earlier this year, publicly teasing its propulsion system, the closest yet that we've been to Musk's vision of transportation for the future. Hyperloop One's VP for Worldwide Business Development, Alan James, talked with The Australian, where he said: "We're very keen to explore the potential for doing proof of operations in Australia and the reason for that is there's a clear long-term need for ultra-fast transport on the Australian east coast".

Hyperloop has been teased at taking passengers across distances that would otherwise take hours upon hours, at speeds of up to 621mph (1000kmph), all in freight pods that zoom across large distances in low-pressure tubes. James continued: "Melbourne to Sydney is the third busiest air corridor in the world and we can give you Melbourne downtown to Sydney downtown in 55 minutes. So we would be looking, either in NSW or Victoria, or possibly in ACT, to develop the first section of that route, to prove the operation of Hyperloop, to get regulatory approval".