Yes, the Model S can fit eight… just not legally. Meanwhile, those are some pretty small kids in the old-school, rear-facing jumpseats (they’re only approved for passengers under five feet tall). But hey, it’s Elon Musk’s party, and he’s free to say whatever he likes until the car is actually on sale.

Speaking of which, it seems that the multiple versions of the Model S will not only be differentiated by range (with 160,230 or 300 miles of range) but Autocar reports there will be a performance version of the 300-mile car as well, which will hit 60 MPH in 4.6 seconds instead of the standard 5.5 seconds. The 160-mile version is reported to cost around $50k, the 230-mile version about $60k, the standard 300-mile version around $70k and the performance version will hit $80k. For a taste of the Model S’s performance, hit the jump for a brief, chauffeured test ride video.

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Now that’s a nice sale: Renault sold 15,600 EVs that don’t even exist yet. In one fell swoop, Renault most likely overdelivered its near term business plan for electric vehicles in Europe. According to Reuters, Renault scooped up most of the 25,000 electric car contract awarded by the French government. Read More >

From the “how did we miss that?” file comes this Automotive News [sub] story, filed at the beginning of the week, which asked GM Europe boss Nick Reilly about plans for Volt-based variants. Reilly replied

We won’t do it with this generation, and that will run to 2015. You’d have to wait until after that until you see it.

Which is peculiar, considering GM just announced that it will build a Cadillac Converj-style Volt variant at some point. GM has also shown a near-production-look Volt MPV5 Concept, although that has never been confirmed as a future production model. But Reilly explains that current Volt’s slow ramp-up and “expensive technology” have doomed any possibility of a Volt family of vehicles before the next generation drivetrain launches.

Last year, tensions ran high – about dirt. Emotions were whipped up about a Chinese embargo on stuff most people never had heard of: Rare earth.The stuff is used to make magnets that go into anything from hard drives to generators and electric motors. Cooler heads tried to point out that rare earth is not rare at all, and that China has as much a monopoly on rare earth as it has on sand. Nobody listened to the cooler heads, and rare earth prices went stratospheric. Step aside, those rare earth prices are crashing down.

Says Bloomberg: Read More >

The main tool for the government’s crusade to get one million plug-in cars on the road by 2015 is the “Qualified Plug-In Electric Vehicle Tax Credit,” a credit that returns between $2,500 and $7,500 to purchasers of a qualifying vehicle. To qualify for the minimum $2,500 credit, a vehicle must have a traction battery with a minimum of four kW/h, and the credit adds an additional $417 in credits for every kW/h above the minimum. Why? Well, you might think that it’s because the DOE has done its research and determined that larger battery packs deliver more social benefits… at least until the 16kW/h limit (the exact size of the Chevy Volt’s battery), where the credit tops out at $7,500. But according to new research by Carnegie Mellon’s Jeremy Michalek, that basic assumption doesn’t appear to be true at all. In fact, his latest paper argues that the government would actually be better off subsidizing smaller, not larger, battery packs.

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Manufacturers are racing to enter the largely non-existent market of electric cars in China. After Nissan, Daimler, GM, and possibly Ford, Volkswagen has been caught doing it with SAIC. Reuters found that an electric car called Tantus, “which will be produced by Shanghai Volkswagen, is already on a list of approved new vehicles, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.”

This is not Volkswagen’s first Chinese EV-to-be. And it’s not surprising. Read More >

The Detroit News‘s David Shepardson has a way of being on hand with a microphone whenever GM CEO Dan Akerson lets loose with a memorable line, and today he has Akerson telling a Bloomberg News Forum that the green star of the American auto turnaround, the Chevy Volt, could be built in China within a few years. Said Akerson

We’re going to export into China for probably a year or two and see if it gets a take … if customers set the right usage patterns. If it does, we may manufacture it there.

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When Lansing Senator Debbie Stabenow sent her most recent routine letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, complaining that the nasty Chinese want to get their greedy hands on the super-secret electric vehicle know-how of Ford and GM, both manufacturers protested. Against the assistance from Ms. Stabenow. Ford and GM said that “they have no plans to build electric vehicles in China.” At least that’s how the Detroit News heard it. Either the DetN was misinformed. Or GM and Ford quickly changed their minds. Or they just wanted Debbie off their backs. Ford and GM both want to make EVs in China. Read More >

If you have ever traveled through Europe, you know that electrical plugs are a mess. European carmakers want to avoid the same mess when you travel with your electric vehicle, say from Germany to Italy via Switzerland. It’s enough that you will have to charge early and often. It’s enough that places to plug in will be scarce in the beginning. But at least the plug should fit your car. To promote that noble cause, the European Automobile Manufacturer Association ACEA has defined “a comprehensive set of recommendations to standardize the charging of electrically chargeable vehicles. The joint industry proposal will enable the use of one type of plug independent of car make, electricity provider or country.” So what will they use? Read More >

Conventional wisdom and Senator Stabenow have it that the wily Chinese are after precious Americans secrets of how to make new energy cars. Never mind that Ford and GM loudly deny that they have any current plans to build or sell electric vehicles in China. That appears at least half true in the case of GM. GM doesn’t have plans. Its plans are made in China. GM completely outsourced the development of electric vehicles – along with other future technologies – to China. Read More >

Two days ago, we told you that Senator Debbie Stabenow was barking up the wrong tree when she again fingered China for “attempting to pressure American automakers, including General Motors and Ford, to transfer core technologies of their electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles to Chinese companies, in order for those vehicles to qualify for China’s clean energy vehicle incentive program.” Both Ford and GM quickly and as diplomatically as possible said it isn’t so, simply because neither of them has any plans to build electric vehicles in China. Now it turns out that Stabenow was barking up the wrong forest: Nissan will export its Made in Japan Leaf to China. And the Chinese clean energy incentive program looks like a non-starter. Read More >

Just as Automotive News [sub] failed to cite Bertel’s ahead-of-the-game reporting on Terry Mcauliffe’s GreenTech Automotive firm as the inspiration for its coverage, McAuliffe himself has decided to ignore TTAC’s leadership in order to lash out at the leading industry paper’s write-up on his highly suspect venture. In response to AN [sub]’s piece titled When you do the math, promoter extraordinaire Terry McAuliffe’s grand hybrid vehicle plan just doesn’t add up, the former Clinton fundraiser and DNC chair has written a feisty letter to the editor [sub], in which he argues

The Sept. 5 article about our efforts at GreenTech Automotive (“Real deal?”) stands in stark contrast with the Aug. 28 article in which you reported on partnerships between Toyota and Ford, Tesla, Aston Martin, Lotus and Salesforce.com (“Doing deals, Akio style”). The latter story says Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda “is breaking tradition to transform his ossified giant into a nimble competitor.”

Nimble competition is a key to success in our modern age of change and innovation. Yet you seem to take GreenTech to task for attempting just that. We aren’t trying to be GM, and we never plan on being bailed out by the U.S. government. We are embracing a different, leaner business model in which our world-class partners will play a key role in our success, and we are doing it with private capital.

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It is a regular occurrence. Every few months, the Lansing Senator Debbie Stabenow rushes to the aid of GM and Ford and defends them against the nasty Chinese. The problem is: GM and Ford don’t want or need her help. Read More >

If you want to charge your Nissan Leaf in 30 minutes, Nissan will (at least in Japan) sell you (reluctantly) a pricy quickcharger.  It costs about half of what a U.S. Leaf costs – before incentives and rebates: The current quickcharger sets you back 1.47 million yen, in today’s dollars, that’s about $19,000. Soon, this will get considerably, well, more reasonable. Nissan today announced a quickcharger with the same performance, but at half the size and half the price of the old one. Read More >

Remember Bertels’ stranger-than-fiction write-up of former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe’s Mongolian EV /Visa plant? Charles Child at Automotive News [sub] has looked at McAuliffe’s scheme and comes away less than entirely impressed, noting that

even casual scrutiny of his vision reveals overwhelming obstacles. Let’s be plain: His plan is dead on arrival.

You won’t find a zinger like that in Bertel’s piece, but only because he keeps his head down detailing the entire bizarre history of McAuliffe’s venture, its roots as the “Hybrid Kinetic Motors” visa scheme, its ties to a couple of notorious former Brilliance boys and its money-first, product-later approach. Child’s takedown isn’t as well researched (nor does it contain anecdotes about former a Ambassador driving a lawnmower into a swimming pool), but the few remaining folks out there who think the former Democrat fundraiser might be on to something big should probably read on. After all, McAuliffe has put so much hype out there, this story is something of a target-rich environment for truth-tellers.
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