Madsen Pirie

The UK government (like me) thinks that internal combustion engines will not be powering cars by 2050.  Already there’s a free tax disc and a £5,000 grant towards purchase.  Now new measures include a £10m competition to invent a long-life battery and more charging points in stations and car-parks, with a £500m package allocated to encouraging Ultra Low Emission Vehicle technology.

In the USA, the Tesla-S has been rated the safest-ever car in official tests. Even though it’s a sedan, it beat out SUVs and minivans. The reason is that without a large engine in the front, it has a longer crumple zone to absorb impacts.  The motor is about a foot in diameter and located near the rear axle.

We all hope that Elon Musk will suffer no accidents that test this ability when he embarks on his cross-country drive from Los Angeles to New York using a Model S and Tesla Superchargers.  He plans to cover the 3,200 miles in 6 days, with a total of 9 hours (1.5 per day) allocated to charging, doing that mostly when stopping to eat.  There are only 19 working Supercharger stations in the country, so he’ll need to have a few more completed and on-line before he and his family set out as promised before the end of the year.

Filed under: Updates |