04 Jan 2019 | Polestar 2 Set To Follow The Tesla Blueprint, Audi Will Push Electric Vehicles In Super Bowl Ad and Hyundai Plan For EVs To Charge Themselves
Polestar 2 Set To Follow The Tesla Blueprint | Audi Will Push Electric Vehicles In Super Bowl Ad | Hyundai Wants Every Electric Vehicle To Charge Itself | Tesla Model 3 Orders Now Open To General Public In Europe & China | Kia Updates The Optima Sportswagon Plug-In Hybrid For 2019 | Tesla Leaks Info About New Self-Driving Computer In Latest Software Update
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Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Friday 4th January 2019. It’s Martyn Lee here and I’ve been through all today’s EV stories and picked out the news you need.
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Weekend Watch: Jaguar Going Electric on Amazon Prime, and TeslaBjorn on YouTube says the LEAF Rapidgate is fixed with new software update.
2020 POLESTAR 2
- I want to start today with a fair bit about the Polestar 2. The 'affordable' little sister to the sumptuous 600bhp, $150k, hybrid Polestar 1. Created by Volvo parent company Geely, Polestar is all about performance and luxury.
- "Over a year after showing off the Polestar 1 flagship sports car, the Swedish brand is finally providing details about the rest of its upcoming line-up. We got some information last summer, and now we get our first look at the Polestar 2 sedan. It's a teaser of the tail end of the car, and while it doesn't seem to reveal much, there are interesting design details we can glean." reports Joel Stocksdale for Autoblog: "For one thing, it's going to have a sleek fastback shape. The trunk lid is very short with the rear window coming almost to the edge. The rear window leans way forward and looks close to being flat in the teaser image."
- "Built on a modular platform, its battery pack will hold enough electricity to deliver roughly 300 miles of range, and its electric motor will zap the drive wheels with 400 horsepower." says Digital Trends: "The Android-powered, touchscreen-based infotainment system announced by Volvo will make its debut in the 2 and later spread to other Polestar and Volvo models. The in-car version of Google Assistant will appear in the 2 for the first time. Polestar will fully reveal the 2 in the coming weeks. Production will begin in late 2019 or early 2020, though Polestar hasn’t revealed where it will build the model. The firm will offer its first electric car through a more upmarket evolution of the Care by Volvo subscription service. Motorists who don’t like the idea of subscribing to a car will be able to buy it for roughly the price of a Tesla Model 3, a statement that clearly announces Polestar’s intent."
- Ollie Kew for Topgear.com: "It’ll be followed by – go on, guess – a Polestar 3, which will battle the likes of the Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-Pace and Mercedes EQ C. Yep, of course Polestar’s going to do an SUV. Interesting though, isn’t it, that a cash-cow faux-by-four wasn’t priority number one? Polestar wants to be taken seriously as a performance car brand, and went first with a low-slung classic coupe, and is following it up with what’s set to be a sporting saloon. Albeit a silent one."
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/01/03/2020-polestar-2-teaser-geneva
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/polestars-electric-rival-tesla-model-3-coming
AUDI WILL PUSH ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN SUPER BOWL AD
- "Audi is coming back to the Super Bowl after sitting out last year. The luxury auto brand will use a 60-second spot in the second quarter to spotlight its electric vehicle ambitions." reports the industry publication AdAge: "No creative details were released. Audi is making the pricey media buy as it prepares to launch three battery electric vehicles in the next three years, starting with the Audi e-tron SUV. It has begun taking reservations for the vehicle, which has a $74,800 starting price. Electric vehicles remain a niche market today, but Audi projects that nearly 30 percent of its U.S. customers will go electric by 2025."
- Loren Angelo, VP of marketing for Audi of America: ""We're returning to the biggest advertising stage to let America know that electric has gone Audi, Last fall, Audi introduced its first all-electric production e-tron SUV followed by the e-tron GT concept debut at the LA Auto Show, signaling an aggressive push into electrification. The big game is a perfect platform to continue the momentum."
https://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/audi-push-electic-vehicles-super-bowl-ad/316139/
HYUNDAI WANTS EVERY ELECTRIC VEHICLE TO CHARGE ITSELF
- "In the future, every single vehicle will require recharging instead of refuelling, but how will that be handled away from our charging points at home? If Hyundai gets its way, our vehicles will be intelligent enough to drive off and recharge themselves." according to PC Mag: "Hyundai thinks electric vehicles should be intelligent enough to know when they need to charge and be capable of driving to a charging location without the owner being present. I don't think anyone would disagree with this idea, and in fact it really should be extended to smart parking, which will become a thing once 5G networks are fully operational. The charging solution will be wireless (magnetic induction) allowing for a completely autonomous process, and the whole system needs to scale to ensure a busy car park prioritizes which cars to recharge first based on how low their batteries are and how quickly the owner will return if known."
https://www.pcmag.com/news/365750/hyundai-wants-every-electric-vehicle-to-charge-itself
TESLA MODEL 3 ORDERS NOW OPEN TO GENERAL PUBLIC IN EUROPE & CHINA
- "Tesla announced today that the Model 3 configurator has been opened in Europe (left-hand drive countries) for all customers. Reservation holders had the opportunity to configure the cars and place orders several weeks earlier than the general public." reports InsideEVs.com: "At first, only top of the line versions are to be offered – Long Range All-Wheel Drive and Performance – as Tesla’s priority is to sell as many AWD Model 3 as only possible, which is the most profitable and handy from a production standpoint. Opening the orders book for the general public suggest also that the number of orders for AWD cars wasn’t that big in comparison to current production capacity."
https://insideevs.com/tesla-model-3-orders-europe-china/
KIA UPDATES THE OPTIMA SPORTSWAGON PLUG-IN HYBRID FOR 2019
- "Kia has updated the Optima Sportswagon plug-in hybrid for 2019, With a range of up to 33 miles in all-electric mode, the Optima Sportswagon plug-in hybrid is able to complete many regular urban commuter runs with no tailpipe emissions. The Optima Sportswagon plug-in hybrid combines a 152bhp 2.0-litre direct-injection petrol engine with a 50kW (66bhp) electric motor powered by an 11.26kWh lithium-ion polymer battery pack"
https://electriccarsreport.com/2019/01/kia-updates-the-optima-sportswagon-plug-in-hybrid-for-2019/
TESLA LEAKS INFO ABOUT NEW SELF-DRIVING COMPUTER IN LATEST SOFTWARE UPDATE
- Finally today from Fred Lambert at Electrek: "Tesla is working on its new Autopilot Hardware 3, which consists of a new neural net computer that they claimed will be the ‘world’s most advanced computer for autonomous driving’. Interestingly, they found the visualization to be very similar to GoogleNet and it’s not the first time Tesla’s neural net showed strong similarities with Google’s GoogLeNet, which the tech giant uses to recognize and index images. Tesla’s Director of AI and Autopilot Vision, Andrej Karpathy, was behind the GoogLeNet neural net when he worked at Google. The automaker aims to bring the new Hardware 3 computer to production during the first half of 2019 and gradually deploy new software to those vehicles through over-the-air software updates."
https://electrek.co/2019/01/04/tesla-leaks-hardware-3-self-driving-computer/
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