Electric Cars

The family of a Tesla Model 3 owner who died in a fiery crash is suing the company, alleging that Tesla knowingly sold a product it knew to be defective. That product is Autopilot, the advanced driver assist system that is at the core of Tesla’s efforts to make a fully autonomous vehicle. The Washington Post spoke to legal experts about why this trial is so important:

“For Tesla to continue to get its technology on the road, it is going to have to be successful in these cases,” said Ed Walters, who teaches autonomous vehicle law at Georgetown University. “If it faces a lot of liability from accidents … it is going to be very hard for Tesla to continue getting this tech out.”

I asked Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe how long it might be until we get to a truly affordable EV, and he thinks it could happen in a not-to-distant future.

Right now, many EVs are very expensive, and a huge part of the cost is because of the batteries. The company launched its vehicles at the higher end of pricing, and Scaringe says that the company hopes to keep driving down costs over time.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said that the forthcoming switch to NACS will not only mean that Rivians can charge at Tesla’s Supercharger stations, but Teslas can also charge on Rivian’s own charging network. Hadn’t thought about that — nice perk!

CEO RJ Scaringe says that a vehicle without a steering wheel has a “relatively constrained” set of use-cases. It can also create a feeling of “steering anxiety,” which is an incredible term.

Even though Rivian has a big commercial deal to make electric delivery vans for Amazon, consumer cars represent about 80 percent of Rivian’s business, he said.

I don’t get the sense that Rivian is going to move to a one-wiper system.

But he’s happy that there’s competition. “I think it’s great that a product like that exists in the world.”

The hotel chain announced a new deal with EV Connect to install branded electric vehicle charging stations at its hotels in the US and Canada.

Renting or traveling with an EV will be an easier choice if you know there’s somewhere to charge it, and Marriott may also need to compete with Hilton, which just announced a new charging deal with Tesla.

I’ll admit that I’ve been curious to see the inside of one of these, and Marques Brownlee did a full tour on his Auto Focus channel. It looks like, well, a delivery van, but clearly a very highly-engineered one. (He shot the video on the iPhone 15 Pro, if you are curious about how video footage looks from that phone.)

In new US EV charging news, the automaker will adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) port in its next-generation EVs starting in 2025. Current and future I-Pace customers will also get adapters to use the 12,000-plus Tesla Superchargers beforehand, but there’s no timeframe for availability.

Jaguar is joining the likes of Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Fisker, and Honda on essentially the same deal to get on Tesla’s winning connector.

The electric automaker is reportedly in talks to build a new manufacturing facility in the oil-rich nation, according to Wall Street Journal. But any deal would need to overcome a lot of hurdles, including Elon Musk’s contentious relationship with the Saudis (they declined to take Tesla private back in 2018) and the country’s majority stake in rival EV maker Lucid Motors. Much of the talks seem to center on Saudi Arabia’s desire for Tesla’s help securing more cobalt from Africa, which has been linked to human rights abuses. All in all, a tangled mess of foreign relations, late stage capitalism, and bruised billionaire egos!

A simultaneous strike at Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler’s parent company, Stellantis, has never happened, until now. The UAW is demanding pay increases, shorter working days, and stronger pensions. The US automakers claim they can’t transition to EVs and compete with the likes of Tesla, and its cheaper non-union workforce, due to high labor costs.

You can read what’s at stake at the link below.

Dashcam footage of a pre-production model shows a plastic wheel cover being flung into busy highway traffic. Concerning for a company plagued by initial quality issues and the first production Cybertruck deliveries expected any day now. 

GM is recalling 9,423 chargers that came with the Chevy Bolt EUV to repair a glitch in the software (Recall number: N232407300). The charger might not stop the flow of electrons when the ground connection is lost, possibly causing a brief shock when unplugging.

Chevy has plenty of time to make sure the next Bolt comes with better chargers.

Reddit user Touchwiz worked their way into running Firefox in their XC40 on Android Automotive even though it’s not a Google-sanctioned app, and yes, it can play YouTube videos (via Mishaal Rahman).

It doesn’t “just work,” however. To pull this off, you’ll have to compile the open-source browser as another app and upload it to the Play Store using an active developer account.

Maybe don’t drive around while using it, though.