What Drives Us

1) EV sales reach 8% market share in Switzerland

2) A look back at the Tesla Power Pack system in South Australia

3) A new electric motorcycle in the UK

4) The affects throughout the EV world from the coronavirus

Special guest, eminent mobility journalist. John Voelcker, joins the panel for a discussion on the GM’s EV announcement. They spend the hour digging into the details and what they think will happen.

1) The Union of Concerned Scientists have completed their study and concluded that ride sharing (such as Uber and Lyft) introduce almost 70% more pollutants than the rides they are replacing. Not only the rides they are replacing but taking people off mass transit.

2) A study of vehicles interacting with pedestrians at a crosswalk showed that there is a direct correlation between how aggressive the vehicle is towards the pedestrians and how much that vehicle costs. So yeah, rich drivers are bigger jerks and the data backs it up!

3) The coronavirus is impacting the supply lines of vehicle manufacturing along with other appliance manufacturing. Couple this with Ford’s continuously declining stock price and market share and we’re starting to wonder whether Ford can avoid a bankruptcy or total liquidation.

4) Continuing our discussion about Tesla’s Buffalo, NY, factory, the state of New York is looking to sell some manufacturing equipment it had purchased for Tesla but was never used.

Fuel cell engineer and sustainable energy expert Matthew Klippenstein comes on One on One to discuss the Nikola merger and what it means for Nikola, fuel cell and BEV semi trucks. A little aside on GM’s new announcements but mostly, why a diversified energy sector is a stronger one.

* The guys get into a tussle over Tesla’s Gigafactory in Buffalo New York now that Panasonic has pulled out of the location. Will there ever be Solar glass?* After 40 years of trying to figure it out, scientists have finally figured out why solar panels experience a 2% efficiency drop within the first hour of operation.* Hyundai released images of a concept vehicle that is supposed to serve as inspiration for their upcoming EV vehicles.* Ford allows drivers to sign up for insurance and use their connected cars to track their driving habits. Spoiler: if you’re being paid, you’re the product.

1) Special Guest Edward Neidermeyer joins the panel to discuss his recent appearance on Bloomberg TV regarding Tesla. We also discuss autonomy (of course, in relation to Tesla).

2) Mark gives his report on attending the Toronto Auto Show.

1) Russell has just returned from a Toyota event in which he was driving their brand new AWD systems they are introducing in their sedans.

2) Tony and Jon B spent two days at the Chicago Auto Show and provide their impressions of what they saw.

3) Jon B provides speculative insights as to what the upcoming RAV4 Prime might reveal about possible changes coming to the Prius Prime.

4) Jaguar is having to temporarily stop production of the I-Pace due to a battery shortage.

5) Why is it extremely possible that ICE vehicles are not going away anytime soon?

1) Russell teases that he’s been invited to a Toyota AWD event. More details in a future show.

2) Simon Wecker, a guy in Berlin, Germany, pulled 90 cell phones – all with Google Maps active – through empty streets. Why? Because Google interpreted all that data to mean that the streets were congested with 90 cars, all barely moving along. The result was empty streets thanks to Google routing everyone around Wecker and his wagon of phones.

3) Hyundai is doubling their Kona EV production be adding a second factory. This is in response to the Kona’s massive demand, which Hyundai is not able to keep up with.

4) The new US Building Codes will call for new homes in the US to be manufactured “EV Ready”.

5) Rivian and Amazon are designing and building a custom EV Amazon delivery van. It’s kind of cute.

6) We’re relatively excited to see that there are EV trucks coming to market. Americans love their trucks so if we want to win them over we’re going to need electric trucks.

7) Toyota is introducing new technology to safe stupid people from themselves. This new software will detect when someone mashes the accelerator rather than the brake and make sure the car doesn’t surge forward. Because, let’s face it, unexpected acceleration was really human error all along.

It all started so calmly. Russell just finished filming his review of the Lexus ES300h and promised to have that posted within a week or so. That transitioned to his and Tony’s very different opinions of the Lexus UX250h (spoiler, Tony’s right). From there, it went South: Mark mentioned the Tesla Earning Call. Paul questioned their profitability. Tony got hung up on the term Autopilot and the phrase “Full Self Drive”. Patrick insists that not enough people have read the official FAA definition of Autopilot and we try to figure where Tesla is in Autonomous Driving (Levels 1 – 5).

Fortunately, we ran out of time and had to call it a night before any punches were thrown.

Michael Klippenstein joins us for a deep-dive into hydrogen: a new initiative in British Columbia, the growth in the hydrogen sector, and the hydrogen-rich future. Additionally, we discuss that 2019 saw more coal-fired power plants shut down and replaced with renewable sources.