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Daimler Truck North America announced a $650 million joint venture to develop charging and hydrogen-fueling infrastructure for medium-duty and heavy-duty commercial trucks. Called Greenlane, the joint venture was started in 2022 by Daimler, utility NextEra Energy Resources, and investment firm BlackRock Alternatives. It plans to add charging stations and hydrogen stations along “various freight routes,” along the coasts and in Texas, starting with a Southern California site, according to a Daimler press release. The exact location and opening date will be revealed at a later time, but it may be no coincidence that the company announced this intent to “forge…
An electric sedan prototype developed by failed Saab savior NEVS, showcasing in-wheel motors, has surfaced in the wake of the company’s shutdown. NEVS bought the remains of Saab after the Swedish automaker went bankrupt in 2011. It once planned to launch a series of four electric vehicles for China, all built on the Phoenix platform that was going to underpin the next-generation Saab 9-3, plus an electric version of the existing 9-3 using that model’s legacy General Motors platform. The latter, along with a model based on the old Saab 9-3X, was shown in 2017. The car just revealed, a…
For 6 months my wife and I have been using various FSD Beta V10 versions. Recently, we’ve been hearing about Tesla working on a big upgrade to V11. This upgrade would incorporate big improvements, including putting the local driving stack together with the long-distance driving stack into a unified whole. We heard reports of people downloading it for weeks. Finally, we got our upgrade, so here’s my report on what I have observed so far. In a nutshell: The upgrade does show noticeable improvements in smoothness and earlier lane changes. However, I’m still seeing some of the most nagging failures…
The Ride1Up Revv1 represents a sharp deviation from its formula to date for Ride1Up with a completely new build that’s *almost* a full-blown push into electric mopeds. Ride1Up admits as much in the description, calling it a “moped ebike”. Technically it’s an electric bike with pedals and the like, but is also packing moped-style tires, a set of blinkers, a horn, motorcycle headlight, all built on top of a motorcycle-style frame. It definitely looks more like a motorcycle than your mom’s beach cruiser of yesteryear. Let’s dive in. The Bike If we’re to read a book by its cover on…
My aunt and uncle just bought a Volkswagen ID.4. It’s their first electric car and they are over the moon about it. While they were excited to get it, they’ve come to find that they love it even more than expected, including several features they were initially going to pass up. The thing that surprised me is that I also like the ID.4 much more than expected. Additionally, it has several features I wish I had in my Tesla Model 3, some of which I didn’t realize it had. Overall, I don’t think the ID.4 gets enough credit for what…
I read the book titled Killing Sophia — Consciousness, Empathy, and Reason in the Age of Intelligent Robots by Thomas Telving, with whom I discussed autonomous cars some time back, and with a smashing title like that, I thought I would dive into it. Sophia is not a car, “she” is a human-like android, but Thomas also touches on the subject of autonomous vehicles, so I thought I would give my own car, “Colin,” a place in the spotlight on this occasion. Crushing Colin The book surprised me on a fundamental level. Well, it did not surprise me that Thomas…
Glenn Groves from regional Victoria shares his journey from a V8 Chevrolet IROC-Z Camaro to a fully electric Nissan LEAF via a Toyota Prius hybrid. He contacted me through the Nissan LEAF Facebook page. I have written about people’s love of the V8 Camaro previously. Glenn covers it from a previous owner’s perspective, and now an EV owner’s perspective. The rest of this article is by Glenn Groves (with only minor edits). By Glenn Groves Hi, I saw your post on the Nissan LEAF page. I drove an IROC Chevy Camaro for 15 years; then a comfortable but gutless early…
Harry and Sue have had their Nissan Leaf for over 12 months now and are more than happy with it. In fact, they told me that if they had to replace it, they would definitely buy another Leaf. The Nissan Leaf stands out as one of the early electric pioneers, alongside the BMW i3 and the Renault Zoe. I don’t know why, but I have never gotten around to driving one, so it was refreshing to hear their story. It is wonderful that it is still on the market. My main interest has been the importing of used Leafs from…
The Lectric eBikes XPedition Series represents a step forward for the Phoenix-based company and brings a ton of new capability, power, range, and hauling capacity into the Lectric lineup. We were impressed after our first ride of a few pre-production builds and eager to see what the final version looked like so when they sent one our way, we were eager to get out onto the streets with it. The Build When assembling a bike, you get to know it at a more intimate level. The quality (or lack thereof) is more evident and the amount of thought put into…
Last year, we reviewed the Snapcycle R1, a fat tire e-bike. I’ve been in touch with the company since then working on a minor user-caused issue (I didn’t secure a bike rack properly), and the team offered to send out two more bikes for us to review. One of these new bikes was the Pegasus, a step-thru model with all of the bells and whistles. I know everybody doesn’t read the whole review, so I’ll sum it up real quick here. It’s a pretty decent bike, with good features and parts, but there’s one thing readers should watch out for:…