Coming up on today's show: Consumer Reports and Tesla argue over the reliability of the
Tesla Model 3, we see some of the concept cars from the Tokyo Motor Show, and a DIY
electric car conversion travels nine hundred and ninety-five point five miles (sixteen
hundred and two kilometers) on a single charge.
That's enough to drive from my studio to Los Angeles without stopping.
These stories and more, coming next on TEN.
This is TEN from Transport Evolved, the roundup show that takes the week's news in the world
of cleaner, greener, safer and smarter transport, and gives it to you in a bite-sized form just
in time for the weekend, so kick back and enjoy!
It's Friday October Twenty Seventh, Twenty Seventeen, I'm Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield,
and I have a little error from last week's show that I need to fix concerning the Netherlands
and the reported ban on internal combustion engines from twenty thirty onwards that I
reported last week.
When I covered it in last week's show I implied that the ban was already law -- when
it's actually just part of the policy documents released by the new Dutch government that
it hopes will become law by twenty thirty.
I'm sorry for the mixup, but when getting stuff wrong it's always good to apologize.
Last week, I brought you the news that Tesla had unexpectedly laid off somewhere between
two and seven hundred of its employees across the company, ranging from factory floor workers
and sales staff to engineers and management.
At the time, I said there appeared to be some dispute as to the reason, with Tesla officially
stating the layoffs were the result of annual performance reviews -- and those who had been
let off disagreeing quite vocally, as you might expect.
Well this week, it seems some of those dissenters -- and union workers at Tesla -- protested
the layoffs by walking through Tesla's parking lot and blocking off Supercharger access before
entering into the Tesla delivery center.
It's not clear how the protest ended, but Tesla did issue a statement denying workers
were laid off because they were trying to unionize the workforce, adding that seventeen
percent of its workforce were promoted after the same performance review that it says lead
to the mass firings.
I'll leave you to make up your minds as to who to believe.
It's official!
The Chevrolet Bolt EV is Chevy's most reliable vehicle on sale today -- at least, that's
the verdict of the annual Consumer Reports auto reliability study, which placed the Chevy
Bolt at the top of Chevy's reliability charts with a "very reliable" rating, reiterating
yet again that electric vehicles are usually more reliable than internal combustion engined
ones.
Overall, other plug-in cars did well in the reliability survey too.
Of note is Tesla, whose Model X continued to receive subpar reliability scores due to
a large number of reported problems with its falcon wing doors and other trim items but
whose Model S achieved its highest reliability score to date -- Above average.
This lead Consumer Reports to predict that the Model 3 would achieve average reliability
in its first year of production, something that upset Tesla and caused it to bitterly
complain, despite average reliability ratings being extremely hard for any new car in its
first year.
Consumer reports responded that Tesla doesn't appear to understand the ratings system, and
the war wages on.
Get out the popcorn.
Over the past few years, we've seen cities around the world pledge to either band internal
combustion engined vehicles from their streets completely, or ban the sale of new internal
combustion engined vehicles after a set date.
And this week, we heard about twelve cities who have just taken the next logical step
by committing to only buying electric buses for their mass transit systems from twenty
twenty-five onwards.
The twelve cities in question -- London, Paris, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Quito,
Vancouver, Mexico City, Milan, Seattle, Auckland and Cape Town, made the pledge as part of
the official C40 Fossil-Eufle-Free streets declaration, which includes a pledge to reduce
the number of polluting vehicles on their streets, increasing the rates of walking and
cycling, and work with public and private partners to lead by example to accelerate
the shift to zero emission vehicles.
So well done all twelve cities, and here's to hoping that this agreement is kept to!
With so much apparent ambition to take over the electric vehicle world and dominate it
by twenty twenty, Volkswagen has been pretty vocal over the last two years on its plug-in
strategy but -- to date -- has very little to show for it.
But as Car and Driver this week detailed, Volkswagen seems to be looking to recreate
the brand's image of the nineteen sixties by bringing back some of its older brand names
with an electric twist.
We've already heard the VW microbus is coming back as the I.D.
Buzz EV, and now it appears that Volkswagen is looking to its Modular Electrification
Toolkit platform as a way to bring back other classics like the Kubelwagen (or Thing as
it was called in the U.S.) as well as (perhaps) a dune buggy.
It's unclear if they'll ever see the light of day but while I love Volkswagen's sudden
nostalgic feel I'm getting a little fed up with the lack of decent long-range model.
How about you?
If you're watching this show in the U.S., you probably know that the Chevrolet Bolt
EV has had an interesting past year, first suffering some pretty unimpressive sales figures
after the initial launch rush leading to a bit of a glut of vehicles in certain key markets
in the U.S. before achieving a much higher sales figure across the U.S. in the last two
months.
Even today, some dealerships in key markets are literally throwing Bolts at customers,
while other dealerships can't get one for love or money.
Over in Europe, where the Bolt Ev is sold as the Opel Ampera-E, things are even weirder,
because this week Opel asked Norwegian dealerships to stop taking orders for the Ampera-E because
it just isn't getting enough Ampera-Es shipped over to Europe to satisfy demand -- and it
doesn't know when that will be fixed.
Even though Opel has now divorced from GM, GM is still obliged to provide Ampera-Es to
Opel for the lifetime of the model, so it almost feels like someone doesn't want the
Ampera E to succeed -- especially when there's still a healthy stock of Bolt EVs over in
North America just waiting for buyers…
Hmmm.
If you're a Tesla owner -- or you know one who has ever been visited by a Tesla Mobile
Service Technician -- you'll know they turn up to work up on Tesla's famous high-performance
electric cars in a gas-guzzling -- or diesel chugging-- van -- usually a Mercedes Sprinter
van.
And let's be honest, that's not the best for Tesla's rep as a super-green automaker
now, is it?
Well, at the end of last week we learned that Tesla is changing that from twenty eighteen
onwards after some of its clever engineers figured out how to fit everything a Tesla
Mobile service engineer needs inside a heavily modified Tesla Model X.
In other words, Tesla will soon be building its own service vehicles based on the Model
X to make its entire service fleet zero tailpipe emission.
Nice job, Tesla.
And way to cut costs too!
In case you didn't know, this week marked the start of the annual Tokyo Motor show,
and this year both autonomous and electric vehicles played a heavy part with concept
cars and teases of future production models from a wide range of automakers.
Following on from last month's second-generation NIssan LEAF launch, Nissan used the Tokyo
Motor Show to unveil its IMX crossover SUV, a long-range, high-performance concept car
capable of autonomous or manual mode driving.
As I'm sure you'll remember from last week's show, the hope was that we'd see
a production ready electric SUV, but sadly that didn't materialize and while the IMX
is a neat-looking concept, it's certainly not a car we'll see in production in its
current form any time soon.
What we did see however in its place was a NISMO concept of the all-new twenty eighteen
Nissan LEAF with the same kind of performance as a Ford Focus RS.
What makes this interesting however is that the NISMO LEAF looks like a vehicle which
I think could enter into production next year.
Indeed it could even be the higher-power, longer-range LEAF Nissan has been promising
us.
There was also a refrigerated version of the Nissan e-NV200 cargo van, but sadly, there's
no B-roll of that I can share here… hopefully however, that will enter production soon too.
Over at Toyota's booth meanwhile, Nissan's main rival was sticking to its guns with hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles, debuting two new concept vehicles that I previewed on last week's
show.
In addition, to those however, Toyota was pushing the Concept i-Trio that debuted at
the start of the year in Las Vegas at CES, as well as a segway-like personal mobility
vehicle called WALK. (yeah, I know… the irony…)
While these two vehicles aren't really worth getting super-excited about however, Toyota
has started to seriously talk up its solid state battery technology, and despite sticking
to its guns in backing hydrogen, says it now has "Game-Changing" solid state battery
technology that will soon be ready for market and allow it to do for the EV what it did
for hybrids.
Given Toyota's past love-hate relationship with EVs however, I'll believe it when I
see it.
Perhaps most interesting though was Honda's Sports EV concept car, a two-seat sports coupe
which seems to strike a nice balance between retro-inspired design and futuristic EV awesomeness.
Small and perfectly formed, it reminds me a little of the old thirteen hundred coupe
in terms of size, and, says Honda, will could it into production as early as twenty nineteen
to become the first model in a new family of electric vehicles for the brand.
Sadly, there's no word on specs, but if it makes production it could be the first
small, nimble EV sports car we've seen since the Tesla Roadster.
Alongside the Honda Sports EV concept, Honda also displayed the Honda Riding Assist-e,
a self-balancing electric motorcycle which uses the same technology found inside Honda's
uni-Cub personal mobility device and could help (perhaps) keep motorcyclists on their
bikes a little more.
As a biker though, i'm not sure I'd want the disconnect between handlebars and wheels
that this concept has…
I guess it's like power assisted steering, right?
Making a little detour from cars and motorcycles, Daimler Mitsubishi Fuso was in Tokyo unveiling
something a little larger this week in the form of the E-Fusio Vision One Concept, a
long-range heavy-duty truck capable of traveling up to three hundred and fifty kilometers (two
hundred and seventeen miles) per charge while carrying up to eleven metric tons of payload.
A preview of what the brand is working on for the near future, the E-Fusion Vision One
was also unveiled as a celebration of the foundation of a brand-new Daimler Mitsubishi
Fuso brand called E-Fuso -- a brand which will operate alongside Fuso's internal combustion
engine lineup but will only offer electric-only drivetrain options.
The first production vehicle?
The E-Fusio E-Canter, which is already entering service for Seven-Eleven, Yamato, UPS, Habitat
for Humanity, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the New York Botanical Garden.
Finishing up the Tokyo Motor Show coverage -- and yes, there are other vehicles I've
not covered in depth, like the weird-ass Yamaha MotoRoid autonomous electric motorcycle, the
Suzuki e-Survivor and the Daihatsu DN ProCargo (which is super-cute) -- I'm going to touch
base on the Mitsubishi e-Evolution Concept, a car that takes Mitsubishi's legendary
Evolution nameplate and adds a little spark of electricity.
Unlike its namesake, which was very much a gas-guzzler, the e-Evolution is a powerful
electric crossover SUV that makes use of onboard artificial intelligence (which concept doesn't
these days?) and, says Mitsubishi, will coach you on your driving style to help you become
a better driver.
The question: would you really want your car becoming a backseat driver?
No, me neither.
If there's anything that the last ten years has taught us about the startup transportation
world, it's that there are always people trying to revolutionize the way we get from
A to B, be it through capsules in tubes of partially-evacuated air, self-driving cars,
or even passenger drones.
And this week, Israeli firm Eviation aircraft hit our radar.
Calling itself a cross between Uber and Tesla in the sky, Eviation hopes to commercialize
autonomous electric planes that can carry up to nine passengers across busy cities,
revolutionizing the way people get from point A to Point B by completely circumventing those
nasty traffic jams that are becoming increasingly common in the world's megacities.
That's the Tesla bit, but what about the Uber?
Well, apparently the goal of Eviation is to create skiways of elevated travel tracks consisting
of hundreds of autonomous intelligent airplanes.
And if you want to use one, you just hail it with your phone, just like an Uber.
It's an intriguing prospect, but I'm not sure I want to trade busy streets for busy
skies.
What do you think?
If you've ever spent any time driving an electric car that isn't a Tesla, you'll
be familiar with the horror that is carrying around a dozen different RFID smart cards
that each give you access to a different charging network.
And you've probably got more than just a little jealously for Tesla owners, who just
have to turn up, plug in and charge.
No messing around with tags required!
Well, European charging manufacturer ABB EV has quietly unveiled AutoCharge -- a new technology
for its CCS quick charging stations this week that automatically bills you for your charging
sessions based on the unique vehicle identification code sent as part of the handshake that occurs
as part of every CCS quick charging session.
Sadly, it's only coming online in Europe for now -- and it's only for CCS quick charging
-- but it makes you wonder why automakers and charging providers didn't think of coming
up with such a simple solution a long time ago eh?
Anyway, if you're a European who has a CCS car let me know what it's like to charge
with no RFID tags if you happen to live nearby to an AutoCharge-equipped ABB CCS quick charge
station.
Here's a quick question for you.
Last month, which automaker sold the most plug-in vehicles globally?
Nissan?
Renault?
Tesla?
If you answered any of the above you'd be wrong.
That's because the answer is BMW, which proudly proclaimed that during the month of
September it totalled more than ten thousand plug-in vehicle sales globally -- that's
far more than any of its rivals in the plug-in marketplace.
Bear in mind that this total includes both all-electric vehicles like the BMW i3 as well
as plug-in hybrids across the various BMW brands.
But still, ten thousand new plug-in vehicles on the road in one month.
That's pretty impressive, plug-in hybrid or pure EV, right?
And finally,
You may remember back in the Summer, I covered Eric Lundgren's Phoenix project -- a self-converted
all-electric BMW 5-series which covered an impressive seven hundred and forty-eight miles
on a single charge with help from the lovely Jehu Garcia.
Well, at the time, I said Eric was looking to see if he could break the one thousand
mile per charge barrier, and just before last week's show the team managed to cover nine
hundred and ninety five point five miles (that's sixteen hundred and two miles) on a single
charge of the car's one hundred and thirty-three kilowatt-hour battery pack at the Auto Club
Speedway of California in Fontana.
To put the distance in perspective, that's further than the iconic John O'Groats to Lands
End route in the UK, and further than the distance from my studio in Portland to Jehu's
office in LA.
So well done guys…
Sure you didn't hit the magic 1k but that's still really impressive, even if you had to
drive at thirty miles per hour or so for some of the attempt!
And on that note, it's time to say goodbye for the week.
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As usual, I'll be back next week with more Transport Evolved goodness -- but until then,
thanks for joining me, I'm Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, That was TEN, have a great weekend and until
next time, Keep Evolving!
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