Why BP should buy Tesla from Elon Musk
By Mark Gilbert. Executives at BP, which has a market value of about $130 billion and a family tree dating to an oil discovery in Persia at the start of the 20th century, are worried. It turns out that Royal DutchShell ran its slide rule over BP before pouncing on BG Group for $70 billion. […]
Power companies to become one-stop energy shop: Contact Energy
By Ellen Read. Imagine having the cost of recharging your electric vehicle, monitoring your home power use, and seeing how much money you made from selling solar power back into the national electricity grid, all on one bill. Customers will be able to do just that in five years, according to the bold prediction from […]
Nissan Australia CEO Puts Government on Blast – Aussies “Only” Country Not Promoting EVs
by Jay Cole. Richard Emery, CEO of Nissan Australia, has taken his government and its industry minister Ian Macfarlane to task over its apparent love of hydrogen – the “fuel of the future”, and Mr. Macfarlane’s promotion of the new Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell. In so doing, the Australian minister also took some serious shots […]
UK electric fleet passes 32,500 mark
Combining figures from the Department for Transport with new data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reveals that the total number of electric cars and vans registered in the UK now exceeds 32,500 vehicles for the first time. The latest statistics demonstrate the continuing growth in EV sales of high-quality electric cars […]
Free electric vehicle charger proving popular
Since last week’s launch of a free public EV charger at Vector’s Carlton Gore Road offices, there has been a steady stream of electric vehicles plugging in. From the head-turning, sleek lines of the BMW i8, to an EV SUV, all manner of cars have made use of the charging unit. “Vector is ideally positioned […]
Elon Musk had an $11 billion deal in place to sell Tesla to Google in 2013
By Jay Yarow. Elon Musk almost sold Tesla to Google in 2013, according to Ashlee Vance, author of a new book on Musk. At the time, Tesla’s Model S was new, and buggy. Tesla was losing sales, and it was looking like it might go bust. Google was Musk’s saviour. From an excerpt published on […]
Toyota plots Prius comeback as Tesla steals limelight
By Craig Trudell and Yuki Hagiwara. When Scott Fisher bought his 2006 Prius, there weren’t many other choices that give him use of the carpool lanes on his drive to work in New York. That changed last year when the Long Island lawyer traded in his car for a Honda Accord Hybrid. “It was starting […]
Car-share plan goes against grain
By Peter Calder. Deep pockets will be needed to make city commuters change their ways and sign up for scheme. Stand on any Auckland motorway bridge at morning rush hour and you can watch the stop-start bumper-to-bumper traffic throttling the city to death. What’s most noticeable about the cars jockeying for position in the motorway […]
Weekend Marked the Shell Eco-Marathon in Detroit
By Anil Dayal. The Shell Eco-Marathon which was organized in Detroit brought teams of student teams one hundred and fourteen high schools and universities from the North, South and Central America. The marathon was not about speed but mostly about fuel efficiency over seven laps. The distance to be covered was less than a mile […]