Tesla Announced Affordable Electric Car Model 3 to be Released Next Year

As Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, announced the company earnings on Wednesday, on top of that, he also announced that the Tesla Model 3 will be released in March 2016. Tesla Model 3 is an affordable electric car which is going to cost about $35,000 before the government subsidy. It faces competition from other car manufacturer such as Nissan Leaf which costs about $29,000 and Chevy Bolt which costs about $30,000.

Elon Musk also mentioned that the date could change. He expects the car to be on sale by mid 2017, although the real date could be later that year.  Chevy Bolt by GM is expected to be released on the road in 2017.

The cheapest Tesla car is the Model S 70D which costs $75,000. Currently, the average of buying car in U.S. in 2013 was about $32,086 according to Kelley’s Blue Book.

Tesla Model 3 will be made from steel instead of aluminium which is easier and cheaper to work with. Aluminium also need to be handled more carefully than steel as such steel is chosen as the car body material.

Musk also mentioned the progress with Tesla Model X which is expected to be the company’s electric SUV. The pre-order for the model will start in July 2015 and the shipment should be starting in Q4.

Tesla Announced Affordable Electric Car Model 3 to be Released Next Year

This Tiny EO2 smart car is flexible and can drive sideways too!

Modern day cities are getting too crowded. Driving in heavy traffic or parking your car during rush hours can be quite challenging. This tiny flexible robotic car EO2 developed by a team of researchers at the DFKI Robotics Innovation Center in Germany can be the answer to all these problems.

The EO2 is a small comfortable electric car ideal for single individuals as big cars take up so much space. The car is white in color with butterfly doors and big windows. All it’s four wheel can rotate by 90⁰ becoming perpendicular to the body. These wheels allow the car to spin in a circle and even drive sideways. This feature could help tremendously while parking as even an expert driver many times finds it difficult to park in small spaces.

The EO2 weighs about 1,653 lb and its body can compress from 2.5 m to 1.5 m (from 8.2 ft. to 4.9 ft.) because its panels can slide up over each other slightly, keeping its 4 wheels on the ground.  It can slide sideways into parking slots somewhat like a crab.

Check it out in the following video:

EO2 smart car also has an auto-navigation system and many other functions to assist the driver. Its auto-pilot can drive the car safely and it can even park autonomously on narrow or congested roads.

The researchers are also developing the ‘Platoon’ concept to connect several such smart cars to each other on the road forming sort of a train of cars. The driver in the platoon can choose the autonomous mode and take his hands off the wheel. He can relax or read something while the car drives itself.

You can see it in the video below:

The car is still in the prototype phase and there is no word from the research team about when the EO2 smart car will become commercially available to consumers.

This Tiny EO2 smart car is flexible and can drive sideways too!

Satellite Pictures Revealed Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in Nevada Desert

Tesla’s gigafactory construction has been underway since last July. It is located in the middle of Nevada desert which is difficult to access to public. As Elon Musk mentioned in the interview with Forbes in 2013, the gigafactory will be a giant facility which is capable of producing all the lithium-ion battery production in the world in one factory. Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors.

When the gigafactory has finished, it will be measured at a total of 5 million square feet which are comparable to the size of a football field and Boeing 747. It is also worth about $5 billion.

Tesla is planning to manufacture its lithium-ion battery from renewable energy from a variety of sources like solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric plants which aims to power about 500,000 electric cars by the year of 2020. Electric cars are another project by Tesla Motors.

Based on satellite image provided by Mashable by CartoDB in February, it is hinted that the site will be blocked off by a security gate and the roof is covered by solar panels. This is consistent with Tesla’s preliminary mockups image which is released beforehand.

The visualization is made possible due to collaboration of map-editing software CartoDB and satellite imager DigitalGlobe.

Satellite Pictures Revealed Tesla’s “Gigafactory” in Nevada Desert

Apple reportedly planning to begin its electric car production by 2020

A few days back there were reports that Apple was secretly working on a new car. We now have Bloomberg revealing that the Cupertino giant is indeed working on an electric car which could enter production as early as 2020. This is quite fast considering that auto companies normally take 5 to 7 years to develop a car.

Apple’s electric car could pose a threat to Tesla and General Motors, both of which are planning to unveil their respective new electric car models that can cover over 200 miles on a single charge and they would cost less than $40,000.

As Steve LeVine, author of the book “The powerhouse” told Bloomberg TV, “That’s the inflection point — the proving ground — that brings on the electric age. Now you have Apple coming in and this is critical mass. Was GM really going to be able to match Tesla? Apple can.”

With a record $18 billion profit during the previous quarter and holding a whopping $178 billion cash, Apple is currently in a very strong financial position to easily spend money to build a car speedily if it so desires. Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly keen for the company to pursue new lines of products.

According to a source, Tesla’s success has shown that overcoming the traditional barriers to enter the automotive industry are not as difficult as thought earlier. Several companies are now investing to bring technological developments in automobiles.

Apple already has about 200 employees in its car team, the company has been hiring many techies expert in batteries, robotics and other fields related to car manufacturing, in the past couple of months. Apple has poached about 50 people from Tesla and recently a battery maker A123 Systems has filed a lawsuit against Apple for “aggressive campaign to poach” its employees.

Apple has been known to scrap some of its secret projects so it may very well scrap its car project or delay it if the progress is not satisfactory. Tim Cook himself had said back in 2014 that although Apple has several projects in development which are not in public knowledge, the company may not release them all. So there is no guarantee that Apple’s electric car will arrive in the market by 2020.

There is no official word from the company itself about the project.

Source Bloomberg

Apple reportedly planning to begin its electric car production by 2020

Apple working on a new iCar?

Apple manages to always stay in the news for some reason or the other. Latest rumor says Apple is working on its own iCar. A mysterious black camera-mounted van has been spotted moving around the streets of San Francisco which apparently belongs to Apple. This has sparked rumors that the Cupertino giant may be developing a self driving car.

It is a known fact that Steve Jobs wanted to build his own iCar and now the company may be working to fulfill “Steve’s dream”. There have been fresh rumors that Apple has been poaching employees from Tesla Motors, the maker of electric cars.

A newly employed person at Apple told Business Insider that “Tesla employees were jumping ship to work at Apple”. He said, “Apple’s latest project is too exciting to pass up. I think it will change the landscape and give Tesla a run for its money.“

Apple has hired around 50 employees who were previously working with Tesla and many of them are engineers and designers. These people have good experience in building cars leading to speculation that the Cupertino company might indeed be building a car.

Of course, it is also likely that Apple is working on improving its CarPlay infotainment system. CarPlay allows you to control the car’s entertainment system through your iPhone, make calls or listen to voice mails while driving. It also has Apple Maps and other options so that navigation of the car becomes easy.

Well, some may think what does Apple know about building a car, but they forget that Apple is one of the leading companies in the world for software and it can easily use its expertise to build an electric car. What do you think?

 

Source Redmond Pie

Apple working on a new iCar?