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California electricity bills are among the highest in the nation and are set to continue skyrocketing, putting state and national green ambitions in the spotlight. The surging prices could act as an impediment for the electric vehicle industry in the state. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in 2021 banning new traditional gas vehicles by 2035 while President Joe Biden outlined a nationwide goal of having electric vehicles account for half of total car sales by 2030. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has repeatedly said Americans should buy electric vehicles to avoid the fluctuating costs of gasoline. “It’s a...

Conservatives have enjoyed Elon Musk's behavior in recent weeks, blasting Elizabeth Warren, opposing lockdowns, and insulting CNN, but the giddiness spewing from conservatives about Musk is foolish. To those embracing Elon Musk's political conversion, remember that Musk has been one of the most prominent advocates of the continuous scam known as climate change. Like Bill Gates and Al Gore, Musk is an extremely wealthy man who fattens his own pockets through propagating climate change. And like those other rich guys, Musk doesn't refrain from using private jets to fly around the world to save it. In 2018, Elon Musk reportedly...

Germany, as we well know with its Russian gas capers, is a highly industrialized society in need of a lot of energy. Fine and dandy. But how they get it presents increasingly bad options. They got rid of their nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown after a big earthquake in Japan, (despite Germany not being in a quake zone), driving themselves to dependency on foreign suppliers. That's presented problems for them what with Russia filling that role, so their other recourse has been the one Joe Biden is touting for America: Green energy -- like...

The president commended General Motors and Ford for "building more electric vehicles here at home than ever before" - Musk was also snubbed in August when he wasn't invited to the electric car summit - It was insinuated by the press secretary that he wasn't invited because his workers are not unionized

Quantum batteries could one day revolutionize energy storage through what seems like a paradox – the bigger the battery, the faster it charges. For the first time, a team of scientists has now demonstrated the quantum mechanical principle of superabsorption that underpins quantum batteries in a proof-of-concept device. The quirky world of quantum physics is full of phenomena that seem impossible to us. Molecules, for instance, can be become so entwined that they begin acting collectively, and this can lead to a range of quantum effects. That includes superabsorption, which boosts a molecule’s ability to absorb light. “Superabsorption is a...

Musk's finally ready to admit that government subsidies distort markets and that government actors are terrible at capital allocation."Say tomorrow, you get a phone call from Joe Biden," asked Wall Street Journal tech columnist Joanna Stern to Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a Monday night forum. "And he asks: What are your needs from this [$2 trillion spending] bill? How do you answer him?" "We don't think about it at all, really," Musk said, channeling Don Draper to the tune of the audience's uneasy laughter. "It might be better if the bill doesn't pass," Musk added. "The federal budget deficit...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold a massive stake in his company over the past several weeks. And yet he owns 564,000 more shares than he did at the start of the selling spree...That's because at the same time he is selling shares, he's also exercising options to buy additional stock. And he's doing so at a bargain exercise price of $6.24 a share, well below 1% of Tesla (TSLA)'s current share price. Since Musk's Twitter poll on November 6, he has exercised options to buy 10.7 million shares of Tesla. To be clear, he would have done so with or...

<p>Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, says he will sell $6 billion worth of Tesla stock and donate the proceeds to the United Nations’ food agency if it could show how the money would solve world hunger.</p><p>His statement came after U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley challenged Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and other billionaires in a CNN interview last week, calling on them to step up on “a one-time basis” to help end starvation.</p>

CNN tried to sell a false headline alleging that a fraction of the world’s richest man’s wealth could solve world hunger. CNN’s story was headlined, “2% of [Tesla co-founder and CEO] Elon Musk's wealth could solve world hunger, says director of UN food scarcity organization.” The lede paragraph asserted that “A small group of ultra-wealthy individuals could help solve world hunger with just a fraction of their net worth, says the director of the United Nations' World Food Programme [David Beasley.]” But the story’s lede offers a completely different context than what the headline suggested. Saying the rich could “help”...

Last week, the director of the United Nation's World Food Programme said if the world's top billionaires just donated a fraction of their worth, millions of people who are at risk of starving to death can be saved. Elon Musk, the second wealthiest person in the world, said he'd give up some of his wealth – only if he knows exactly where the money is going. Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX who has an estimated net worth of $151 billion, according to Forbes, replied to a tweet questioning the group's figures. "If WFP can describe on this Twitter...

The Lavo home hydrogen battery is not a battery, it's an electrolysis system, hydrogen storage array and fuel cell power system rolled into one attractive cabinetLavo VIEW 3 IMAGES To get off the grid with home solar, you need to be able to generate energy when the Sun's out, and store it for when it's not. Normally, people do this with lithium battery systems – Tesla's Powerwall 2 is an example. But Australian company Lavo has built a rather spunky (if chunky) cabinet that can sit on the side of your house and store your excess energy as hydrogen. The...

Walmart sued Tesla for "gross negligence" on Tuesday, claiming that the electric car company's energy division installed solar panels that went up in flames on its store rooftops. The fires caused millions of dollars in damage, the lawsuit alleges. The retailer said fires broke out at seven store rooftops between 2012 and 2018. One location in Ohio had to be closed for eight days, Walmart said in the complaint. The lawsuit claims Tesla never provided Walmart with an explanation for the "root cause" of the fires. "The number of defects, however, is overwhelming and plainly indicative of systemic, widespread failures...

(Reuters) - The “great majority” of solar cells being produced at Tesla Inc’s factory in upstate New York are being sold overseas instead of being used in the company’s trademark “Solar Roof” as originally intended, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. The exporting underscores the depth of Tesla’s troubles in the U.S. solar business, which the electric car maker entered in 2016 with its controversial $2.6 billion purchase of SolarCity. Tesla has only sporadically purchased solar cells produced by its partner in the factory, Panasonic Corp, according to a Buffalo solar factory employee speaking on condition of anonymity. The rest...

Future investments from the battery maker in U.S. and overseas facilities are reportedly in question, making stock prices suffer in the early hours. Tesla and battery manufacturer Panasonic will freeze investments into the automaker's Nevada-based battery plant over weakening demand concerns, reports Japanese publication Nikkei. Both the automaker and Panasonic had reportedly considered raising production capacity by more than 54 percent by 2020 (from 35-gigawatt hours to 54 GWh), however, due to apprehension surrounding financial and demand problems, the partners will not proceed with the expansion as planned, halting further construction of the Gigafactory barring further consideration. Tesla shares have...

The so-called V3 Supercharger operates at 250 kilowatts -- approximately twice that of the older stations -- and can charge some of its cars at a rate of 75 miles every five minutes, which Tesla is promoting as “1,000 miles per hour,” without explaining the math. (75 x 12 = 900, doesn't it?)(Following the publication of this article, a Tesla representative clarified that the "1,000 mph" speed is a peak rate that is only sustained for a portion of the initial five-minute period on batteries at a low state of charge. Average speeds over longer charging times were not...

Tesla Inc. (TSLA) said Monday it will buy Maxwell Technologies Inc. (MXWL) , a battery technology firm based in San Diego, for around $218 million. Telsla will pay $4.75 for each Maxwell share, the company said, a 54.7% premium to its closing price Friday of $3.07, and bring the company into the corporate fold as a wholly owned subsidiary. "We are very excited with today's announcement that Tesla has agreed to acquire Maxwell. Tesla is a well-respected and world-class innovator that shares a common goal of building a more sustainable future," said Maxwell CEO Franz Fink. "We believe this transaction...

A team of engineers led by 94-year-old John Goodenough, professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, has developed the first all-solid-state battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage. Goodenough’s latest breakthrough, completed with Cockrell School senior research fellow Maria Helena Braga, is a low-cost all-solid-state battery that is noncombustible and has a long cycle life (battery life) with a high volumetric energy density and fast rates of charge and discharge. The engineers describe...

Tesla reveals $5 billion Gigafactory, the world's largest battery plant By Justin Hyde 6 hours ago Motoramic   .View photo Tesla Motors No automaker has quite the momentum that Tesla Motors enjoys today. It sells every car it builds easily, with customers queuing around the globe. It's considered the best car for sale in America by several critics, and Wall Street has bought into Elon Musk's vision with a fervor rarely seen outside riverside baptisms. And yet everything Tesla stands for today and wants to accomplish in the future rides on a single stubborn, expensive piece of technology — the...

New York State managed to draw significant national media attention this week when Amazon decided to cancel its plan to open a new HQ in Queens. AOC, who apparently now runs the Democratic Party, immediately declared victory, having ensured that a caravan of tens of thousands of new, well-paying jobs wouldn’t invade the area. But as difficult as it may be to believe, that wasn’t the worst economic news New Yorkers had to face.The less reported story had to do with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to save the upstate region by investing in “green technology” companies, presumably also bringing...

UCLA researchers have designed a device that can use solar energy to inexpensively and efficiently create and store energy, which could be used to power electronic devices, and to create hydrogen fuel for eco-friendly cars. The device could make hydrogen cars affordable for many more consumers because it produces hydrogen using nickel, iron and cobalt — elements that are much more abundant and less expensive than the platinum and other precious metals that are currently used to produce hydrogen fuel. “Hydrogen is a great fuel for vehicles: It is the cleanest fuel known, it’s cheap and it puts no pollutants...