2,082 ARTICLES
28 Feb 2023, 10:43 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Sergio Marchionne once said that only a carmaker that was able to make more than six million vehicles per year would survive. This is why he tried so hard to merge FCA with another automaker while he lived. Stellantis only came into existence years...
24 Feb 2023, 11:20 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ethos as “the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution.” If anyone were to establish Tesla’s ethos based on the EV maker’...
22 Feb 2023, 08:47 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Automakers can test new vehicles under the bodies of entirely different models. These early prototypes are called mules. Most of them use “clothing” from older cars from the same manufacturer, but Tesla produces only four vehicles. That...
20 Feb 2023, 22:36 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / When Lightyear said its first vehicle was canceled and that it was going bankrupt, things seemed really hard for the startup. The Lightyear 0 was a limited-series vehicle with a price tag starting at €250,000 ($267,175 at the current exchange ...
19 Feb 2023, 23:31 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Tesla fans and advocates were still complaining about the Full Self-Driving (FSD) recall when a Model S struck the back of a fire truck on I-680 at 3:54 AM on February 18. The driver died at the scene, and a passenger had to be extricated and taken...
18 Feb 2023, 23:52 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / When we discuss anything that bothers us, we frequently fall into the temptation to say things were once better. I will avoid that in this text because I have no idea when people forgot what journalism was supposed to do. It was probably before I s...
18 Feb 2023, 12:13 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Germany is currently a country of paradoxical events for Tesla. While fighting in court with customers who wanted to return its electric cars, the EV maker’s lawyers said they do not last more than 210,000 kilometers (130,488 miles). However,...
16 Feb 2023, 23:43 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Anyone checking the Part 573 Safety Recall Report 23V-085 or the letter Tesla sent the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will say the EV maker decided to make the recall they refer to. Talking to the safety agency, autoevolutio...
16 Feb 2023, 20:24 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / One of the breakthroughs the Tesla 4680 cells were supposed to have was dry battery electrode (DBE) coating. This process would eliminate N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), a highly toxic organic substance that most batteries have to use as a solvent in...
16 Feb 2023, 12:05 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / On Tesla Autonomy Day on April 22, 2019, Elon Musk stated that “the current battery pack is about maybe 300,000 to 500,000 miles.” That is equivalent to a mileage between 482,800 kilometers and more than 804,600 km. It was enough for Ge...
15 Feb 2023, 11:12 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Several cultures tell a story of a little bird that tried to put out a fire carrying water in its even tinier beak. When asked what it was trying to do, the bird said it was doing its part. That represents taking action, which is how people should ...
14 Feb 2023, 10:18 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / I have been warning about battery pack prices and how difficult it will be for battery-electric cars to age, for quite some time. Their main component is so expensive that its failure will render the vehicle useless – even if everything else ...
13 Feb 2023, 19:36 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Stellantis announced in its Super Bowl LVII ad that its first electric truck could already be reserved. However, it did so by making an interesting parallel between customers’ concerns with electrification and one of the most common sexual co...
11 Feb 2023, 22:20 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / In November 2020, Transport & Environment (T&E) analyzed three plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) to determine how much they truly helped prevent pollution and carbon emissions. The results were disappointing: the SUVs were 28% to 12 times dirtier tha...
7 Feb 2023, 17:10 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Mario Zelaya helped us discover several unpleasant things about used Tesla Model S units. A few months after its battery pack warranty expired, his 2013 Tesla Model S Performance stopped, demanding a new battery pack to keep working. Zelaya also pr...
6 Feb 2023, 11:33 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Lightyear was pretty confident about the future. It traveled to CES with the Lightyear 0 and the first prototype of the Lightyear 2. Production had started in November, and it was abruptly interrupted. Sono Motors is on the same path, and even Apte...
4 Feb 2023, 08:19 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / In October 2022, I wrote an editorial to discuss how the idea of “computers on wheels” can be a massive issue for cars. Most people crave over-the-air (OTA) updates and think they are an asset, forgetting about bugs and how often it is ...
2 Feb 2023, 15:04 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / When Aptera disclosed that it would try to raise more than $20 million by gamifying the process, it also pointed out its investment page. Apart from the leaderboard that reveals daily information on how many people have invested more than $10,000 i...
31 Jan 2023, 20:09 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / When Akio Toyoda stepped down and became Toyota’s chairman, people thought that Toyota was probably going to invest billions in developing battery electric vehicles (BEVs). However, the company has demonstrated that it will not change course ...
31 Jan 2023, 11:30 UTC · By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo / Geely controls several brands: Volvo, Polestar, smart, Lynk & Co. The latest one is ZEEKR, but it was born as a spin-off of Lynk & Co, with its first production car being a badge-engineered Lynk & Co Zero Concept. Curiously, the company...