WASHINGTON — Pete Buttigieg, President Biden’s choice to lead the Department of Transportation, vowed to make climate change a top priority during his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. But that raises a question: How much can a transportation secretary realistically do to reduce emissions from America’s vast fleet of cars, trucks and airplanes — all […]
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Another big trend reshaping the auto industry is autonomous cars. On Tuesday, Cruise, a unit of G.M. that is working in that area, announced it had raised $2 billion from Microsoft, G.M., Honda and other investors. Rivian and Tesla are also working on automated-driving technology. Rivian is different from Tesla in several respects. Tesla so […]
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The Mustang Mach-E and the Volkswagen ID.4, which is due in dealerships in March, go about 250 miles on a full charge — about the same as the cheapest version of Tesla’s Model Y — and start at about $43,000 and $40,000. The base Model Y starts at about $42,000, but the Ford and Volkswagen […]
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He added, “Our exclusivity won’t be jeopardized because we have new members of the family.” Consider the Ferrari Roma a flirty letter to those prospective buyers — perhaps wrapped in a “Blu Corsa” bow, like the model I recently drove in upstate New York. If I squinted, the cliff-hung curves overlooking the Hudson River, including […]
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Tesla, the world’s most valuable automaker by far, said on Saturday that globally it sold 500,000 cars in 2020, up 36 percent from the year before. The company does not break its sales down by country or continent. Updated Jan. 5, 2021, 6:31 p.m. ET Ford Motor and most other automakers are expected to report […]
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The electric carmaker Tesla reported on Saturday that it had produced more than half a million cars in 2020, a milestone that seemed unreachable just three years ago. In a news release posted on its website, the company said it had delivered 180,570 cars in the fourth quarter, bringing its total for 2020 to 499,550, […]
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Next year, Mercedes, a division of Daimler, will introduce the EQS, a battery-powered counterpart to the company’s top-of-the-line S-Class. The EQS, which will cost more than $100,000, will be the first vehicle built with Mercedes’s so-called electric vehicle architecture, the same idea as Volkswagen’s modular toolbox. Daimler says the EQS will be able to travel […]
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Bringing hydrogen vehicles into wide use on the East Coast strained even Mr. Strizki’s talent for invention. On the West Coast, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former California governor, who owned a hydrogen Hummer, cleared regulatory barriers with a pen stroke in 2004. The East has a series of bureaucracies to navigate. For instance, hydrogen is not […]
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“He refused to take the meeting,” Mr. Musk tweeted of Mr. Cook. Though the timing of the offer isn’t clear, it may have been in mid-2017, when Tesla was struggling to produce its Model 3 cars and came within a month of bankruptcy. An acquisition then would have been a steal, according to Mr. Musk: […]
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A fleet operator might spend about $300,000 to own and operate a diesel truck over 20 years, but the cost of owning an electric truck may be less than half that, according to Workhorse. Between its founding in 2007 and 2019 Workhorse delivered 365 vehicles, mostly diesel trucks retrofitted to operate on batteries. Some were […]
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The stock market has never seen anything quite like Tesla. Led by the mercurial celebrity billionaire Elon Musk, the electric-car maker’s shares have soared roughly 14,000 percent since it went public a decade ago. Even amid an economy-roiling pandemic it’s up roughly 700 percent this year. And now, a company that has provoked years of […]
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With the coronavirus rapidly disrupting American life in mid-March and organized labor pressuring carmakers to ensure worker safety, Bill Ford reached out to the competition. Mr. Ford, the chairman of the Ford Motor Company, brokered a conference call with the leaders of General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, the United Auto Workers and key Michigan politicians. The […]
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But its chief executive, David Lamp, said the government’s role in subsidizing renewable diesel made it an inherently unstable business. Federal and state incentives could encourage the industry to produce more fuel than is needed. On the flip side, he worries that Congress or California could abruptly pull the plug on incentives. “Take one of […]
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General Motors and Nikola, a high-profile start-up aiming to produce electric trucks, said on Monday that they had reached an agreement to work together only on hydrogen fuel cells, replacing a broader alliance they originally outlined in September. The new agreement calls for G.M. to sell fuel-cell technology to Nikola. Gone are provisions for G.M. […]
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WASHINGTON — General Motors abandoned President Trump’s battle to nullify California’s fuel economy rules meant to curb global warming, the strongest sign yet that corporate America is moving on from Mr. Trump and adapting to an incoming Democratic administration. The company also signaled that it was ready to work with President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., […]
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Weather: Gusty all day, with early rain followed by clearing skies. High around 60 is in the morning, but it’ll drop off to the mid-40s by evening. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Thursday (Thanksgiving Day). ImageCredit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Pedestrians might begin to see a surge in two-wheeled riders swerving down the streets […]
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General Motors is gearing up an all-out push to catch up to Tesla in electric vehicles. The automaker said Thursday that it was accelerating plans to introduce electric cars and trucks over the next five years, and that it expected to spend $27 billion by 2025 on the effort, up from a previous budget of […]
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LONDON — Five years after deciding to phase out the use of coal, Britain took steps on Wednesday to address some of the country’s largest remaining sources of greenhouse gas emissions, announcing plans to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade and change the way people heat their homes. The […]
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IRVINE, Calif. — Since President George W. Bush fueled a minivan with hydrogen 15 years ago, the promise of cars and trucks powered by the fuel has come up mostly empty. That hydrogen pump, in Washington, closed long ago. But in California, the beginnings of a hydrogen economy may finally be dawning after many fits […]
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The school bus rolled through Beverly, a Boston suburb, early last month. The city’s fleet of buses and minivans makes similar trips every weekday, but here two things were different. First, the ride was eerily quiet because there was no noisy diesel under the hood, and second the socially distanced passengers were not students but […]
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In 1967, the Ford GT40 was one of the fastest cars on the planet. This was the street-legal version of the American underdog that won at Le Mans, memorably canonized in “Ford v Ferrari.” Packed with a 306-horsepower V-8, it could scorch to 60 miles an hour in just over five seconds. How quaint: Today’s […]
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More than 60 years ago, Volvo introduced the world to the three-point seatbelt, a safety feature so standard now that it’s almost an afterthought. Over the ensuing years, Volvo, the Swedish maker of bland, boxy sedans, gained a reputation for safety above all else. To be in a Volvo meant riding in a warm, protective […]
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They only look like conspicuous polluters. A new breed of electric performance cars, including Porsche’s Taycan and the Tesla Model S P100D, shows how environmentally minded fans of horsepower might square their circles. A supercar with a carbon footprint that seems closer to a jet engine’s than to a Prius’s may feel irresponsible in the […]
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When the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to close this spring, the auto industry was hit particularly hard. North American auto plants that typically churn out more than a million cars a month produced fewer than 5,000 in April. While airlines and other industries continue to struggle, automakers are now enjoying a clear upswing. Last month, […]
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Listen and subscribe to ‘Sway’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS Elon Musk has a vision of the future, and — as one of the world’s richest men with four corporations under his reign — the means to try to manifest it. In a conversation with Kara Swisher, he outlines his theory of, well, […]
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California plans to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars statewide by 2035, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday, in a dramatic step aimed at accelerating the state’s efforts to combat global warming amid a deadly and record-breaking wildfire season. In an executive order, Governor Newsom directed California’s regulators to develop a plan that would […]
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Tesla is working on cheaper, more powerful batteries for its electric cars, but many of the required innovations are still works in progress, its chief executive, Elon Musk, said Tuesday at a much anticipated presentation at the company’s California factory. The advances could ultimately cut battery costs more than 50 percent and increase the distance […]
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FRANKFURT — An electric Volkswagen ID.3 for the same price as a Golf. A Tesla Model 3 that costs as much as a BMW 3 Series. A Renault Zoe electric subcompact whose monthly lease payment might equal a nice dinner for two in Paris. As car sales collapsed in Europe because of the pandemic, one […]
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Start with a $500 car. Cheaper is fine, but no higher. Then decorate it outrageously. Maybe with a giant rubber ducky, or a flying pig. Now put it on a racetrack with scores of other half-broken art-cars — and drive it fast as hell for 14 and a half hours. That’s the formula for 24 […]
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Steve Burns pulled together several pieces of a business venture over the last year: His company, Lordstown Motors, designed an electric pickup truck, acquired a plant and machinery from General Motors, and racked up thousands of orders. Yet Mr. Burns was still struggling to raise enough capital. This month, he nailed down that critical piece […]
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Metal. Rubber. Leather. When it comes to motorcycles, the materials used to make them are as elemental as the experience of riding them. Pineapples, flax seed and algae? They sound more like the ingredients for a vegan salad than a two-wheeler, but a new Brooklyn start-up hopes to change that. It’s called Tarform. What Tesla […]
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