Tesla Model 3 has Over 115,000 Preorders in 24 Hours

Tesla has brought in more than $115 million in preorders on the new Model 3 today, according to company CEO Elon Musk. That's 115,000 cars worth more than $4 billion at the base price of $35,000 — but expect many of those cars to sell for considerably more than the base price.

He revealed the numbers at the end of the special event for media and current Tesla owners, though we don't know much more about the car other than the base price, the fact that it will go at least 215 miles on a charge, and that it'll ship at the end of next year.

Considering the fact that most of those preorders came before the car was revealed, Tesla might just have a hit on its hands, even though the car won't begin shipping until late next year.

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Is Faraday Future in Trouble?

(color me not impress)

Startup Faraday Future hopped onto the electric-vehicle scene with a straightforward mission -- beat Tesla Motors at its own game. With the backing of a Chinese billionaire and a growing Web presence, the company is set to unveil its first concept at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. But the concept launch could be disrupted by the departure of a vital employee.

Porter Harris, Faraday Future's chief battery designer, left the company after 15 months of employment. Bloomberg reports that Harris lists his current employer as Lotus Research and Development LLC. Prior to Faraday Future, Harris worked for Elon Musk's SpaceX.

This could have serious ramifications for Faraday. Its first concept is set to debut at CES, and it's already working to build a manufacturing facility in Nevada. The company did not immediately return a request for comment.

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Is Volkswagen Going to Make the Ultimate Hippie Bus? An Electric VW Bus?

Nothing like hippie nostalgia to sweep away the bad vibes from that epic emissions scandal.

That, at least, appears to be the thinking behind a new, all-electric Volkswagen Microbus that, according to reports, has a prototype slated to be unveiled at CES, formerly called the Consumer Electronics Show.

VW has kept mum about the rumored new “camper,” whose lithium-ion battery packs will boast a range of up to 310 miles, according to a report from UK-based Autocar.

Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Technology Association — the sponsor of the show — says the new car will be a “groundbreaking electric vehicle that will further illustrate the synergy between the Internet of Things and the automotive industry.”

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Nissan Designing Wireless Charging Road for Electric Cars

Nissan has big plans for electric cars and the cities in which they reside. A partnership with the architects at Foster + Partners will yield the automaker's idea of "The Fuel Station of the Future," which doesn't actually involve any actual stations whatsoever.

Instead, the future of fill-ups is all about wireless induction, where batteries can charge without requiring a physical cord between energy source and battery. Last month, Nissan unveiled a 7-kilowatt-hour wireless charger, which can charge a 60-kWh battery (like the one Nissan is currently developing) overnight, no plug required.

The concept goes beyond the home, though. In Nissan's idealized future, wireless induction will be built into a city's infrastructure, offering juice to EVs on the go. That could render even home charging potentially unnecessary. "Independent infrastructure could be a thing of the past," said Richard Candler, Nissan's manager of advanced product strategy.

Currently, wireless induction is a bit of a plaything, not exactly ready for prime time. Some cell phones are capable of wireless charging, but concerns over charging speed and waste heat (signaling less-than-stellar efficiency) prevents the technology from gaining too much momentum.

Nissan will unveil its full concept next year, likely at the Geneva Motor Show. The second-generation Leaf, which should pack the aforementioned 60-kWh battery (range is estimated around 300 miles), is posited to arrive next year, too.

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Ford to Invest $4.5 Billion in Hybrid & Electric Vehicles to Bring to Market by 2020 (and compete with Uber)

Ford Motor Co will develop 13 new hybrid and electric vehicles by 2020, announcing on Thursday plans to invest $4.5 billion in the programme that aims to make 40% of the company’s fleet electric or hybrid, up form 13% today.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields also said the company will attempt to compete in the ride hailing industry, with the likes of Uber.

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Where's the self driving capability, Mr Fields?

Electric Car Maker Faraday Future Picks Nevada in the Las Vegas Area

A Chinese-backed electric carmaker plans to build a $1 billion manufacturing plant outside Las Vegas.

A letter to Nevada officials that The Associated Press obtained Wednesday says the company will build in North Las Vegas. The letter is signed by billionaire Chinese investor Jia Yueting (ZHAW' YOO'-weh-ting), a major financial backer of California-based Faraday Future.

Nevada officials scheduled a news conference Thursday to formally announce the deal.

Lawmakers still would need to authorize tax incentives as part of the deal. Last year, the Legislature did so to secure a massive battery factory by another upstart electric carmaker, Tesla Motors.

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Porsche Going to WAR With Tesla, to Produce Mission E Electric Sports car

Porsche committed to making its first all-electric vehicle, taking on Tesla Motors Inc. with a model that’s set to accelerate faster than the German company’s 911 sports car and recharge in 15 minutes.

Porsche green-lighted a 1 billion-euro ($1.09 billion) project to produce the battery-powered sports car, which will be manufactured near division headquarters in Stuttgart and create 1,000 jobs, the Volkswagen AG unit said Friday in a statement. The model, based on the low-slung Mission E concept unveiled in September at the Frankfurt auto show, will enter showrooms at the end of the decade, it said.

“With Mission E, we are making a clear statement about the future of the brand,” Chairman Wolfgang Porsche said in the statement. “Even in a greatly changing motoring world, Porsche will maintain its front-row position with this fascinating sports car.”

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Car Dealers Hate Selling Electric Cars

More than seven years ago, President Obama called for one million electric cars to be on the road by this year, and the vehicles have gained a large fan club. Environmentalists promote them as a smart way to cut dangerous emissions. Owners love their pep and the gas money they save. Apple and Google have jumped into the race to build next-generation battery-powered cars.

So why are only about 330,000 electric vehicles on the road? One answer lies in an unexpected and powerful camp of skeptics: car dealers. They are showing little enthusiasm for putting consumers into electric cars.

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Electric Car Startup Faraday Future Gets Billion Dollar Investment, Claims 3 Years to Production

Faraday Future, a mysterious electric-car maker looking to take on Tesla, said Thursday it plans to invest $1 billion in a new US factory that will produce its first cars in 2017.

The Gardena, California-based startup, which launched 18 months ago, said it is considering several locations for the factory, including sites in California, Georgia, Nevada and Louisiana. A decision about the factory's location will be announced "in the coming weeks," Faraday Future said.

"Selecting the right location for the future FF manufacturing facility is critical to our overall goals," Nick Sampson, senior vice president of Faraday Future, said in a statement. "Producing our forward-looking and fully-connected electric vehicles not only requires the latest technology, but the right community partner."

The startup hasn't divulged where its funding is coming from, but Bloomberg noted that Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting is backing the company, though it doesn't state whether some or all of the money comes from the online video magnate.

Faraday Future's plans to begin manufacturing its first vehicle in a little more than half the time it took for Tesla to get its first car out the door. While Faraday plans to make cars just three years after its launch, its Palo Alto, California-based competitor launched in 2003 but didn't produce its first car, the Lotus-based Roadster, until 2008. It took an additional four years from there to build its own car from the ground up.

"We are quite far along in the design and engineering process," said Stacy Morris, a Faraday Future spokeswoman. "We just released data for manufacturing prototypes, as well as initial long-lead tooling data for production."

While technology has advanced since Tesla was born, Faraday's three-year timeline for production still faces challenges, experts warn.

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British Electric Supercar Maker has Started Manufacturing SP:01 Roadster

Detroit Electric has announced that the first SP:01 battery-electric sports roadster has rolled off the assembly line, now located nowhere near Detroit. Today, the company is based in the United Kingdom and is aiming for sales in the European and Asian markets. It's taken pre-orders and is soon to begin shipping to fill those.

Billed as the world’s fastest two-seat electric car, the SP:01 is impressive and, by all accounts, picks up where the Tesla Roadster left off. When it was first announced in its final form, which we covered previously, the Detroit Electric SP:01 was something of a dream. Although steadily working towards reality, the numbers underneath this Lotus body are phenomenal.

The two-seat roadster has a stated 0-60 mph time of just 3.7 seconds, doing 0-100 km/h in only 3.9 seconds. Its top speed is 155 mph (249 km/h). It does all of this thanks to the massive output of a 285 horsepower (210 kW) electric motor with 280 Nm (207 lb-ft) of maximum torque through a single-speed automatic transmission. A twin-speed automatic or even a six-speed manual transmission are also available.

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Tesla to Deliver up to 2,000 More Electic Cars by Year's End Than Originally Planned

If you're on the waiting list for a new Tesla, you may get it sooner than you thought.

Tesla Motors said Tuesday that it plans to build 15,000 to 17,000 of its Model S and Model X electric cars before the end of the year, and deliver 17,000 to 19,000 by then. That puts the company on track for 50,000 to 52,000 deliveries in 2015.

While that total would fall at the low end of a revised forecast Tesla gave in August, it seemed to please investors, who sent shares up 10 percent in after-hours trading.

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Robopocalypse Report #12: Attacking the Drones, Hacking the Car and the WTF Econonmy of the Internet of Compromised Things

Last time we dodged having the drone in the report.  This time, however, the drone wins the internet. The largest contingent of of drone news is about how to kill them though!

The US Navy practiced killing drones from helicopters during its Black Dart exercises (seen above).  

Boeing also demonstrated its 'man portable' Compact Laser Weapon System (2 kw) to shoot down a drone. 

Think tanks are starting to wonder what it means to operate in the era of persistent UAV surveillance.  

For us civvies, Popular Mechanics has an article on what to do to shoot down a drone.  Shotguns are best but supersoakers (if you can hit the drone) and sling shots work pretty well, too.  However, BB and paintball guns do not.

The drone which was shot down in Kentucky apparently only hovered with 22 seconds over the property before the owner took a shotgun to it.  There was a video out to 'prove' this, but the owner has changed the viewing to private.

Even mother nature has got it in for the drones!

The European Regions Airlines Association has continued to call for more regulation of drones in European airspace.

Shifting away from the anxiety sectors of drones, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross just dropped a $1 million investment in the Drone Racing League.

Switching to the self driving car, we don't have articles which deal directly with the technology iself, but ones which will act in a supporting role.   Or terrify us.  Hackers remotely cut the brakes on a Corvette and the Brits are considering testing technologies which will allow electric cars to charge while driving on the highway.  The fear from the hackers and self driving cars is pretty obvious.  The promise of robo taxis which recharge as they drive around town, never having a down time to charge, is exciting.

Bar tenders!  MIT wants the robopocalypse to come for you, too!

A George Washington University professor is working on robo flippers based on sea lions. 

Microsoft, those traitors! has helped develop an AI able to spot jokes in cartoons.

Jeff Atwood writes about the thing which actually scares me more than the Robopocalypse, the internet of things, more specifically The Internet of Compromised Things.

Tim O'Reilly worries about dealing with the Robopocalypse in his article called "The WTF Economy."

Rumor: Apple to Produce Electric Car by 2020?

Apple Inc., which has been working secretly on a car, is pushing its team to begin production of an electric vehicle as early as 2020, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The timeframe -- automakers typically spend five to seven years developing a car -- underscores the project’s aggressive goals and could set the stage for a battle for customers with Tesla Motors Inc. and General Motors Co., both of which are targeting a 2017 release of an electric vehicle that can go more than 200 miles on a single charge and cost less than $40,000.

“That’s the inflection point -- the proving ground -- that brings on the electric age,” Steve LeVine, author of “The Powerhouse,” a book about the automotive battery industry, said on Bloomberg TV Thursday. “Now you have Apple coming in and this is critical mass. Was GM really going to be able to match Tesla? Apple can.”

Apple, which posted record profit of $18 billion during the past quarter, has $178 billion in cash with few avenues to spend it. The Cupertino, California-based company’s research and development costs were $6.04 billion in the past year, and Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is facing increased pressure to return cash to shareholders. The CEO has been pushing the iPhone maker to enter new categories to further envelop users’ digital lives with Apple’s products and services.

Apple’s possible foray into cars follows a similar path it’s taken to break into other industries. The company wasn’t the first to make a digital-music player or smartphone, and only entered those markets once it had a product that redefined those categories.

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I wonder if the same sort of derogatory comments will be made about Apple drivers as they used to for Miatas.  The name which obviously comes to mind for the drivers is 'Apple Tarts.'  Then again, it might be taken as a badge of honor by the young folk, given their decided enjoyment of irony.

There  is some interesting support: battery maker A123 is suing Apple for poaching employees.

New Tesla Roadster Able to Drive 400 Miles on Single Charge

Car nerds, you just got an extra present under the tree.

Tesla announced Friday an upgrade for its Roadster, the electric car company’s convertible model, and said that the new features significantly boost its range -- beyond what many traditional cars can get on a tank of gasoline.

The company is installing three retrofits for the vehicle. First up is a battery upgrade that marks a 31 percent increase in capacity. Next is an “aero kit” that’ll alter the car’s profile slightly, producing a 15 percent reduction in wind drag. Finally, the Roadster will be getting new, more efficient tires.

The result is an electric vehicle that can reliably travel about 350 miles before needing a recharge, and possibly more in ideal conditions. That’s pretty similar — or even better — than many conventional gasoline-powered cars. The University of Michigan estimates that the average fuel economy of a new car in 2014 was about 25 miles per gallon. With a 12- or 13-gallon tank, that gets you about 325 miles on a single fill-up.

“There is a set of speeds and driving conditions,” Tesla said in a blog post, “where we can confidently drive the Roadster 3.0 over 400 miles."

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Tesla Model X Coming in Early 2015

Tesla Motors says it should start deliveries of its long awaited Model X crossover vehicle early next year.

The electric car company sent out e-mails to customers Monday saying that it expects prototypes of the Model X to be built by the end of this year, with deliveries starting early in 2015. The company's most recent statements on timing of the Model X called for deliveries in spring of 2015.

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Electric Cars: Tesla Model S Getting Battery Upgrade? And how Will we Charge all These Cars?

Back in 2011, President Obama set the ambitious goal of having 1 million electric vehicles on US roads by 2015. Whether automakers will hit this target is the subject of much debate. But the possibility of the widespread adoption of electric vehicles raises an interesting problem.

It’s easy to imagine the number of electric cars increasing but it’s much harder to see the electricity generating capacity increasing the same rate at the same time. Generating capacity will eventually catch up with this extra demand. But in the meantime, how can all these cars be charged?

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Having a friendly chat with a group of Tesla owners in Norway, brand CEO Elon Musk intimated that more-powerful batteries could be on the way for the Model S. The most potent battery pack currently offered in the Model S holds 85 kWh of juice, or enough for 265 miles of driving.

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Toyota Squares off Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car Against Tesla's Eletric Cars

In an escalation of the auto industry's war of words over future green technologies, a senior Toyota Motor Corp executive singled out Elon Musk and other rival executives on Tuesday and made a bold prediction for its hydrogen car.

Bob Carter, Toyota's senior vice president for automative operations, said in a speech that he believed a hydrogen fuel cell car it plans to launch next year could eventually be as successful as its pioneering Prius gasoline-electric hybrid.

Carter said "naysayers" who have spoken out against the technology would be proven wrong and referred to Elon Musk, founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc, Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan Motor Co, and former Volkswagen executive Jonathan Browning by name.

"Personally I don't really care what Elon and Carlos and Jonathan have to say about fuel cells. It's very reminiscent of 1998, 1999 when we first introduced the Prius," Carter said at a conference held in conjunction with the Detroit auto show.

The comments underscore just how big the stakes are in the race to take the lead in the next generation green car.

While Toyota is investing heavily in fuel cells, others such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Tesla are betting on electric vehicles as the next big thing while publically questioning whether hydrogen could ever develop into a practical automotive fuel.

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Tesla Nod

New Electric Car Sex Appeal is...Performance

Already noted for saving gasoline and having zero emissions, electric cars have quietly taken on an unlikely new dimension –– the ability to reach blazing speeds that rival the 0-to-60 performance of a typical Porsche or BMW, and compete on some racecourses with the world's best gasoline-powered cars, an authority said here today at a major scientific conference.

Speaking at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, electric vehicle pioneer John E. Waters said that relatively recent advances in engineering and use of lithium-ion batteries are producing electric vehicles (EVs) capable of leaving traditional internal combustion engine race cars in the dust.

"Experimental electric cars already have achieved sustained speeds of more than 180 miles per hour, and established world speed records above 300 mph," Waters said. "Electric cars have inherent advantages in efficiency and torque over gasoline-powered vehicles. Energy storage-to-torque on an EV platform is above 90 percent efficient, compared to less than 35 percent for internal combustion engines. I have no doubt that battery-powered race cars will be attracting race fans in the immediate future."

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umm.  At least for motorcycles, he's a day late and a dollar short.

South Koreans Make Another Armadillo Fold