Elon Musk and the Future of Green Energy
By Brandon Engel. Although anyone can easily point to the failures of green energy investments over the past decades, such as Solyndra, the green energy industry is fortunately not listening. In the United States last year, 45 percent of new power production came from wind turbines and 34 percent from solar cells. Both of these […]
Geraldine High School gears up to defend title
By Natasha Thyne. Geraldine High School students are gearing up to defend their title in EVolocity, but they might have some other local competition to contend with. Last year a team of students from Geraldine High School came home with a swag of awards at the inaugural electric motorsport contest, EVolocity. The competition sparked the […]
Electric rubbish trucks on the cards for NZ
By Adrien Taylor. The Kiwi co-founder of Tesla says although the company has done wonders to change the public perception of electric cars, there are more gains in electrifying something a little less glamorous – rubbish trucks. It is not just for the environmental benefits, but the numbers stack up too. Wrightspeed, a company that […]
NZ Post tight-lipped on Postman Pat cars
By Lois Cairns. New Zealand Post is keeping quiet about when its electric delivery vehicles could be introduced into Christchurch, saying it does not want to create uncertainty for its workforce. The company fronted up to a meeting of the Christchurch City Council’s infrastructure, transport and environment committee on Thursday to ask for permission to […]
Council in NSW leads way
A council across the Tasman is pleased with the performance of electric vehicles (EVs) in its fleet. Chris Binns, manager of strategy and assets at the City of Sydney, was one of the keynote speakers at Drive Electric’s plug-in fleet day on April 30. He told Autofile Online the council made a commitment to support […]
Batteries included: Ambitious gambit by Tesla
By Juha Saarinen. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s latest house and business battery venture is an interesting but also very ambitious gambit. Most of the reporting has been on the Tesla Energy PowerWall 7 and 10 kilowatt-hour house batteries, but the business model, the 100 kWh PowerPacks are equally interesting. The PowerPacks are designed to supplement […]
Prius C – likeable entry-point Toyota hybrid
A colleague laughed like a drain when a Prius C was offered as a test car recently. Toyota, to their credit, neither named nor mentioned the gender of the chuckler, but evidently the car was beneath them, it seems. Perhaps they have the luxury of being able to accept performance cars only as test vehicles. […]
EVs: Variants will be arriving
The chairman of Drive Electric believes many marques are likely to have electric variants in all of the segments that they have models in the near future. Mark Gilbert says the marketplace of the future will be petrol, diesel and electric. “Many manufacturers have said that in every sector they compete in they could have […]
Tesla’s $3,000 Powerwall Will Let Households Run Entirely On Solar Energy
By Jon Russell. You almost certainly associate Tesla with cars — very cool cars — but the company has an even grander vision beyond that. Today, CEO and founder Elon Musk unveiled ‘Tesla Energy’ — a new business arm that is focused on ending our dependence on grid power and switching instead to solar energy. […]