Chris M.

Faraday Future (FF) unveiled their FF91 electric car at CES 2017 in Las Vegas this past week. Some of the highlights from their presentation: 2.39s 0 - 60 mph, faster than the Tesla Model S P100D 130 kW battery (Tesla's largest is 100 kWh) Autonomous driving. And they demoed parking in this video: Here is their booth on the floor of the show: There were quite a few FF employees attending the show. Normal attendees were kept away from the car but some people were let inside of the area and able to get up close and take a look at it. My take on Faraday future I'm an engineer and an owner of a Tesla Model S. I'm also an investor in Tesla. I'm not skeptical of FF because they are competing with Tesla or claim to be building a better car. There is plenty of room in the EV market for well built vehicles. Due to the growth in the EV market FF could sell tens of thousands of vehicles per year without much impact on Tesla's sales. I'm a fan of E...

Tesla announced an upgrade to their autopilot sensor suite on October 19th, to be installed on all cars produced as of that day. This new sensor suite is being called Autopilot 2.0, or AP 2.0 for short, on forums. AP 2.0 adds several additional cameras and improves the ultrasonic sensors. It's also a big improvement in the visual processing hardware required to process the sensor data. You can read about it on Tesla's Autopilot page . Tesla's claim is that this system will be able to achieve "Full Self-Driving capability". The description of the systems capabilities matches the highest SAE vehicle automation level of 5 where the human has only to set the destination and activate the system. The increase in capabilities between AP 1.0 and AP 2.0 has caused a significant emotional response across the range of existing Tesla owners, especially as Elon has confirmed that there is no option for retrofitting. Should mention that retrofitting to full self-dr...

I've had a Tesla Model S for a few months now. How much does it cost me to drive it each day? Electric vehicles are more efficient than gasoline vehicles. fueleconomy.gov says : " Electric vehicles  convert about 59%–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels—conventional  gasoline vehicles  only convert about 17%–21% of the energy stored in  gasoline  to power at the wheels." Given an electric vehicles (EVs) increased efficiency, current electric rates, and gasoline prices, are you saving money on a per-mile basis when driving an EV? Tesla provides a calculator on their website to help people estimate the cost and cost savings between electric and gasoline cars. Tesla's calculator says it would cost $3.41 for electricity and $7.52 for gasoline for my typical daily commute of about 84 miles round trip. The text at the bottom of the calculator explains the criteria used to calculate those two costs, an electric rate of $0....

Karma automotive is making its second entrance into the automobile market, officially debuting the Revero in a couple weeks time. Summary Marketing and selling the Revero is going to be tough given the quality, performance, and features of cars on the market today. Given this competition I'm surprised Karma automotive has received funding to continue development of the Fisker Karma , now renamed to the Revero. I'll present a few reasons why the Karma Revero isn't likely to make a noticeable impact on the automotive market as well as some ways they can improve their chances by making changes to the Revero. Note that the Revero's full specifications haven't been released yet. For the purposes of this analysis I'll assume the Revero is more similar to the Fisker Karma than not. The Revero is likely to improve upon these specifications but from what information has been released about the Revero it doesn't appear that these changes will significantly c...

I got a Tesla Model S at the beginning of June and we recently took our first long-ish range trip, a visit to my parents house in Connecticut. Electric vehicles are still relatively limited in range and more importantly in locations where you can charge. Normally I charge in the garage each evening after commuting to and from where I work in New Hampshire. I'm still new to trips that require a mid-destination charge. To mitigate some worry about where to charge I did some planning that I wouldn't consider if we were driving a gasoline or diesel fueled car. Tesla Model S P90 Tesla has a series of Supercharger locations  to allow long distance trips with their electric cars. If you do need to charge during your trip you'll want to route through these or other locations where you can charge. Picture by Jeff Cooper (jecoopr) [ CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons There are other options for charging your EV, both free and fee based charging locations, but these typ...