Here is the perfect way to fight a brewing PR disaster from boiling over: Fire your CEO! Fisker Automotive named the former head of the Chevy Volt, Tony Posawatz, as CEO today, “marking the second time the green car start-up has replaced its top executive this year,” as Reuters can’t help to remark. Read More >
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After reports of a Fisker Karma going up in flames in Woodside, California last Friday, we published comments that EV expert Jon Bereisa had made about an earlier Karma fire. Bereisa had said that the tight packaging of the engine and putting the entire exhaust system under the hood and exiting out behind the front wheels compromised the heat shielding. Putting that together with photos and video of the latest fire, that showed the firefighters concentrating their water spray behind the front wheel, I speculated that Bereisa’s criticism was warranted. Now Fisker has issued a statement, specifically absolving the engine compartment and “unique exhaust routing” of involvement in the Woodside fire: Read More >
Tesla’s 10 minutes test drives have received a lot of flak in the press. The Fourth Estate (at least parts of it) is trying to get to the core of that car, and that is its stellar battery performance. What is wrong with the tried and true practice of having the car for the day? A weekend? This would give a tester time to find out when the battery runs out. 300 miles as per Tesla? 265 miles as per EPA? How much as per reality? Until journalists drive the Model S more than just a few times around the block, we have to go the unorthodox route of asking an inferential statistician. Read More >
Fisker responded quickly to the fire that left a Fisker Karma a clump of smoldering sheet metal last Friday. Fisker issued a statement saying that Fisker engineers, working with independent investigators from Pacific Rim Investigative Group, have started examining the Karma. What they found so far does not support speculation put forth on major car blogs: Read More >
Fisker Karma Fire, Woodside, CA – Photo Courtesy of Aaron Wood
A second Fisker Karma has been reported by Jalopnik to have caught fire and burned yesterday. The owner returned with his groceries to find the car in flames in a Woodside, California parking lot. Interestingly, he first called Fisker who advised him, wisely, to call 911. Back in May, after a Karma started a house fire in Texas, engineer John Bereisa said that the proximate cause of that fire was likely heat, the result of tight engine packaging. The ultimate cause, he suggested, was the hybrid vehicle’s weight, which Bereisa said necessitated a larger, more powerful combustion engine to power the car’s generator that charges the batteries for extended range use. Bereisa is one of the world’s experts on building electric and hybrid cars. Read More >
In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said this to critics of his lavish green technology initiative:
“I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. “
Instead, battery manufacturers first get financed by double-green government handouts, then they are ceded. Read More >
In 2010, when everybody was going ecstatic about EVs, PSA Peugeot Citroen said to Mitsubishi: “send us some of your i-Mievs, with our badges. Say, 100,000 for starters.”
PSA sold them (as much as they could) as the Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero, the first car that sounds like sugar-free soda-pop. Now, PSA picked up the phone, called Japan, and said: “Hold the i-Mievs! We have enough!” Read More >
Troubled battery maker A123 is getting another lifeline. This time, from China. Wanxiang Group will invest as much as $450 million in the company, says Reuters. Wanxiang, one of the largest Chinese auto component makers. A123 will soon be Chinese. Read More >
With California’s Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate looming it is only a matter of time till we see an EV from each of the major players in the California market. Nissan has the Leaf, BMW has the Active E, GM has the Volt and Honda electrified a Fit and Ford has electrified everything that isn’t nailed down. That brings us to the elephant in the room: Toyota. To give us some insight into Toyota’s CARB (California Air Resources Board) compliance plans and to see the fruits of the unlikely Toyota/Tesla marriage, Toyota flew us to sunny Southern California to sample the 2013 RAV4 EV.
As we reported back on July 17th, there were reports of Nissan LEAFs “bricking” themselves while connected to GE’s WattStation home charging stations. Over the last 10 days, I have been on a number of conference calls, spoken with a number of Leaf owners, electrical engineers and battery charging gurus. As it turns out, the problem was exactly as I had surmised: bad utility power damaged the LEAF. The only involvement the GE WattStation had, was that it was merely the connection between the LEAF’s on-board charger and the utility.
While Arizona is battling its wildfires, Nissan is having its hands full dousing the flames of Leaf owners in the Grand Canyon state. There is a rash of reports about degrading batteries, and owners blame the scorching heat.
“When I first purchased the vehicle, I could drive to and from work on a single charge, approximately 90 miles round trip,” a Leaf owner, still an ardent fan of the car, told the Phoenix CBS affiliate. “Now I can drive approximately 44 miles on this without having to stop and charge.”
A TTAC reader reports: Read More >
Brokerage Wunderlich Securities downgraded Tesla to “sell” from “buy.” The reason: Tesla has downshifted its production plans, reports Reuters.
“While initially saying that it would produce and sell 1,000 cars in the third quarter, Tesla now says it will certainly be 500 cars,” Wunderlich analyst, Theodore O’Neill, said in a research note. Read More >
The GE Wattstation killed my Leaf! That’s the story being reported by the New York Times as well as PlugInCars.com. As the tale goes, 11 Leaf owners have had their chargers “damaged” while charging with GE’s Wattstation home charging station. The relative significance of only 11 failures aside, the Nissan Dealer in San Pablo, CA confirmed to PlugInCars.com that Nissan North America has notified dealers of a potential problem with the Leaf and the GE home charging station. TTAC contacted Hilltop Nissan and they have yet to return our calls. Rather than just parroting back the usual news reports we dug deep. We contacted GE and Nissan, consulted some professional electrical engineers and read though hundred of pages of boring SAE documents. Click past the jump to learn more about EV charging than you ever wanted to know. Read More >
Michigan utility Consumers Energy wants to have its share of the reluctant auto boom. For that, you need to buy an electric vehicle. What did you say? Range? Consumers Energy has an answer: An app for your iPhone. Read More >
A study by consulting firm McKinsey says that the cost of the lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles could tumble by as much as 70 percent by 2025, thanks to a combination of factors.
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