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Among the notable accomplishments of the company, Tesla extended this year’s Model Y lineup to over 400 miles per charge – this is a 20% improvement over the 2019 model – as well as increasing its acceleration and lower its price. Tesla also started delivering its new Y model in March (including the company millionth vehicle) and deployed a three-row, seven-seat option early December. Unfortunately, the company’s long-awaited Semi Electric will not see the light of day in 2020; Musk announced in April that its release has been delayed until 2021. However, Semi’s production is already starting to ramp up ahead of this target.
“It’s time to pull out all the stops and bring the Tesla Semi to series production. Production has been limited so far which has allowed us to improve many aspects of the design, ”Musk wrote in a leaked email seen by CNBC.
Tesla grabbed additional headlines in September at its Battery Day event when the company announced plans to develop a new generation of cheaper, better performing batteries. in the next two years or so, which could lead to Teslas costing as little as $ 25,000. Even more exciting, Musk took the opportunity to unveil a new Model S “checkered” of 1,100 HP as well as. It will go on sale in 2021.
The price of FSD will continue to increase as the software approaches full autonomous driving capability with regulatory approval. At this point, the value of the FSD is probably over $ 100,000.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2020
2020 has also seen a number of pricing shenanigans for some of Tesla’s most popular features. For example, in May, Musk announced via Twitter that the company’s next “full autonomous driving” package would be available in July for the whopping $ 7,000 – a big more than the company had originally announced. And, true to Musk’s word, this price increased again in October to reach $ 10,000 once the feature entered beta. Musk claims that when complete, FSD package could be worth up to $ 100,000 – despite its capabilities be criticized by Consumer Reports and earn mediocre scores of the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP). Tesla too swivels its used car warranty and eliminated his seven day return policy for new vehicles with no real explanation as to the reason. This is partly due to the fact that Tesla also cut its entire PR department this year, opting instead for Musk to tweet through.
Because what could go wrong.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2020
Tesla also helped found the Zero emission transport association, or ZETA, a 26-member lobby group tasked with promoting and advocating for further adoption of EV technologies and services to legislators. We have already seen a significant move towards EV technology at the state level with California decides to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles by 2035.
“This is the single most important step our state can take to fight climate change,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a press conference in September. “For too many decades, we have allowed cars to pollute the air our children and families breathe. You deserve to have a car that doesn’t give your children asthma. Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse and create more smoky air-filled days. Cars should not melt glaciers or raise sea levels, threatening our cherished beaches and coasts.
Washington, New York and Hawaii are considering similar regulations, but the influence that ZETA exerts could allow these and other pro-EV proposals to win faster at the federal level. Similar ideas went unappreciated under the Trump administration, which waged an all-out war on environmental protections and vehicle emission standards since four years. However, Biden’s incoming administration has previously signaled that such actions would no longer take place once sworn in, prompting at least an automobile manufacturer to abandon of the current administration’s ongoing legal battle over emissions.
2020 also saw the introduction and debut of a myriad of electric and hybrid models from the world’s leading automakers. Volkswagen continued its post-dieselgate EV push with the unveiling of its $ 40,000 ID.4 EV SUV in September as the company’s response to the Kia Niro EV and Hyundai Kona EV. In an interesting twist, VW decided to mainly sell their EV IDs online, using local dealers as facilitators rather than vendors.
Volvo has been deeply involved in the EV game throughout 2020. Its Polestar subsidiary launched the Polestar 2 sports car in August with the world’s first infotainment system to run on the new Android Automotive operating system. Unlike the existing Android Auto app, AAOS doesn’t just mirror content from a mobile device, it is integrated directly into the infotainment system itself. Volvo’s upcoming XC40 Recharge will offer a quieter, simpler iteration of AAOS when it hits dealerships in Q1 2021.
While Toyota has just started to embark on the manufacture of electric vehicles in 2020 with a mysterious SUV scheduled for release next year, the Hyundai Motor Group (made up of the Kia, Hyundai and Genesis brands) embraced electric vehicles like fish in water. Earlier this month, HMG presented its new E-GMP Electric Vehicle Platform on which the company plans to base nearly two dozen new all-electric models starting with the release of the Ioniq 5 next year. Unlike the Nero EV or the Kona EV, both of which have been adapted from existing ICE models, these upcoming brands will be built from the ground up as pure EVs.
Trucks have become bigger, more energy and space intensive, more polluting, and much more deadly to everyone around them, including children. Not because most of us actually need bigger vehicles, but as the ego grows stronger, status symbols and “male virility indicators”. HT @PickledEntropy pic.twitter.com/vnE08Hxhgk
– Brent Toderian (@BrentToderian) December 13, 2020
American SUV and truck makers have been surprisingly receptive to the idea of ​​electrification this year, after decades of building ever bigger, heavier, and thirstier work vehicles. GM was perhaps the most surprising with its Unveiling in October of the new Hummer EV “Supertruck”. Once synonymous with gas-hungry inefficiency, the Hummer is reborn in the form of a 1000 hp green off road adventure machine. And this is only the beginning. GM plans to produce 30 new EV models by 2025 using the newly developed company Ultium battery technology. Although if you like the GM vehicle that you already own but want it to run on electrons, the company has also announced plans to sell EV retrofit kits from 2021.
Ford is also committed to electrifying its fleet of vehicles, starting with the most iconic; the Mustang Mach-e. The half-muscle car / half-SUV, all-electric Mach-e is available in five trim colors with an optional semi-autonomous ADAS and will hit dealer lows by the end of the year. the 1,500 CV Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 prototype (look at the!) unfortunately will not. What else, Ford’s planned EV F-150 trucks and transport vans won’t be on the road until 2022 – just in time to potentially compete with rivals from RAM and Chevrolet.
Many luxury brands have also spent the year committing to expanding their lines of electric vehicles. Mercedes plans to develop six new EV models (beyond the existing EQC) in the coming years, starting with the EQS and EQC in 2021. An SUV version of the EQS is expected to be released in 2022. BMW, for its part, has finally managed to produce the iNext concept that we have covered for a few years now – say hello to the beaver tooth iX. same Bentley and Maserati are getting into the action, with the former promising to sell only hybrids and plug-ins by 2026 and the latter converting its entire product line to hybrids or BEVs within the next five years.
Startups in the EV space also made commendable progress in 2020. Lucid Motors unveiled its Lucid Air in September, a $ 169,000 luxury EV sedan capable of a top speed of 217 mph and under 10 second quarter mile. EV pickup maker Rivian has had a more difficult year, revise its price estimates a few thousand dollars for the R1T and R1S SUVs. This follows the April news which Lincoln had canceled his Rivian-based EV due to the COVID pandemic. In better news, Rivian recently announced that he is working on an extensive network of charging stations, dubbed the Rivian Adventure Network, to keep electric off-road vehicles at their peak.
It’s not just the vehicles themselves that have improved over the year, but also the infrastructure and technology they need to operate efficiently. In June, announces Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. that he created a battery formulation that would last up to 1.24 million miles before breaking down – given that the average American drives about 14,000 miles a year, an electric vehicle would last 16 years without needing to replace its battery. We have also seen the emergence of new 800V electrical architectures in both Hyundai E-GMP platform and clear-headed, allowing vehicles to recharge at 350 kW. This is more than double the conventional 400V EV 150 kW architectures. This will dramatically reduce the time it takes for drivers to refresh their power supplies while on the road.
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