Model 3 Teardown Says “It’s Revolutionary”, World’s Largest Electric Vehicle and Mystery Car To Use Wireless | 22 April 2018

VW Pikes Peak Challenger | Image Of New Roadster Leaked From Tesla | Model 3 Teardown Has Munro In Love | Mystery Car To Use Witricity Wireless Charging | Record EV Sales Lasts Month In Germany | World’s Largest Electric Vehicle | Subaru Could Make The Evoltis EV

Sunday 22nd April 2018.

VW PIKES PEAK EV CHALLENGER

• Volkswagen are moving forward with their fully electric Pikes Peak car, the all when drive challenger for the famous hill climb in June, which will see it tackle the 156-turn and 20km test in Colorado Springs.
• Today, Sunday 22nd April, VW will unveil the prototype in Paris. The car is said to be a testing ground for cutting edge technology which could make it’s way into the ID series road cars they’ll be selling in 2019. A full report on tomorrows show, and yes I’ll be tuned into the livestream!

 

IMAGE LEAKED FROM TESLA R&D LAB

• A leaked image from inside Tesla shows the new roadster parked next to two Tesla Semi Trucks. It was first leaked on @TheTeslaLife twitter feed.  The Roadster looks like Midnight Silver in colour but the whole picture itself is a slightly odd hue, definitely taken in a hurry on a smartphone and perhaps the lighting in the Tesla R&D lab wasn’t ideal for the camera.

 

MODEL 3 TEARDOWN HAS MUNRO IN LOVE

• The team who work with car veteran Sandy Munro haven’t always been the most complementary about Tesla. In fact with the Model 3 when they first got it, they were scathing about build quality. He called it miserable. But what’s this? A new video from them following a Model 3 teardown shows a bit of a turn around. In fact at time, Mr Munro seems to be Elon Musk’s biggest fanboy. Jeez get a room already! He says Tesla are on a completely different level to anything else he’s seen with battery technology, particularly how well balanced all the modules are.
• You can watch the full show on Autoline After Hours but check out the part where he says the Model 3 electronics are comparable to a flight controller found on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth multirole fighter.
• He raves about not only the electronics, but also the battery, and suspension. According to Simon Alvarez at Teslarati who spotted the video: “According to Munro, the Model 3’s Automatic Drive Modules are a class above the industry, featuring a design architecture that is usually found on high-end electronics and government-grade machines. Munro even compared the Model 3’s drive module to the flight controller of the F-35, which he is familiar with due to his company’s work for the US military.”
• “If you look at this thing, this is cell phone technology. This is the technology we would see in really high-end computers, normally for the government. When you look at this, you’re looking at the same kind of technology you’d see on a flight controller for an F-35, and we kind of know a little bit about that too. We do work for the military. Everything here smacks of cell phone technology and defence technology,” Munro said. ““This is big stuff. This is not inching up. This is revolutionary, and everybody else is sitting there twiddling their thumbs.”
• He's still adamant things like fit and finish are below par but, now Elon is in charge and focussed on quality, he says even Toyota would be craping their pants.

 

MYSTERY CAR MAKER TO USE WIRELESS CHARGING

• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has 39 societies, each one focused on a certain knowledge area. They provide specialized publications, conferences, business networking and sometimes other services.
• So now we know that, let me tell you why! IEEE.org say “an unnamed manufacturer will bring an electric car to market that offers wireless charging from WiTricity, Alex Gruzen, the company’s chief executive, tells IEEE Spectrum. "There’s often a misconception that somehow plugging in is 100 percent efficient," Gruzen says. "But a plug-in is from just 88 to 94 percent efficient; WiTricity's wireless system runs at 90 to 93 percent. The resonance also gives you a certain leeway in aligning the car and the charging plate. The vertical clearance can be as little as 10 centimetres (4 inches), for a sports car, and as much as 25 cm, for an SUV. The left-to-right positioning need be only within 10 cm of dead centre.”
• “Gruzen says it costs US $800 for a complete set—that is, for the receiver on the car, the transmitting pad, and the charging unit that connects to it. And, if the product comes to be offered as a standard feature in cars, it might add just $300 or so to the price of the car.”
• But what is that unnamed car? Let me tell you about the Geneva Motor Show, where a Hyundai Kona was on show in cutaway form, showing off…you guessed it, WiTricity tech fitted to it.

 

RECORD EV SALES IN GERMANY LAST MONTH

• A quick sales report for Germany from CleanTechnica: “Electric vehiclefever has definitely caught on in Germany, with March coming in as a record month and echoing France’s record electric car sales month. Germany had over 6,700 electric car registrations last month, a 52% increase year over year (YoY). The plug-in vehicle share of the overall car market was 2%. But more important than the plug-in niche are the seismic changes happening in the fuel mix of the mainstream market: diesel sales continue to sink (-25%!) YoY, to the benefit of all other fuels”.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/21/record-electric-car-sales-month-in-germany-while-diesel-dives-march-electric-car-sales-report/

 

WORLDS LARGEST ELECTRIC VEHICLE

• The world’s largest EV was unveiled this week, and it’s a monster. The cement works in the Swiss town of Bienne will be home to the e-Dumper. It weighs 58 tonnes, the tyres are a huge 2 metres in diameter, and the driver climbs up 9 steps to get to the cab. However whereas these would normally be diesel, spewing out thousands of tonnes of CO2 over it’s lifetime and using hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel, electrons do the heavy lifting.
• It will be carrying limestone and rock downhill, so it’s descending with a full load, where all the regen happens. And because the driver takes Lynx back up the hill with no load, all the power needed comes from the regen before. Therefore, energy consumption is zero.

 

SUBARU EVOLTIS

• And finally a little update on Subaru. They are part of the Subaru Corporation in Japan and have a rich heritage in making bonkers fast rally and road cars. They’re still around and were the 22nd largest auto maker at the last count.
• Thanks to Toyota owning a 16.5% stake in their parent company it makes sense for Toyota to loan them a few bits, and the most obvious donor vehicle is the Prius Prime PHEV. How about if Subaru maintained their reputation for all wheel drive in cars like the Impreza with an ICE driving the front wheels, and electric motors driving the rear wheels?
• Add in the recent filing from Subaru registering the name Evoltis and we could be looking at their first EV.

 

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