Several months ago Tesla unveiled the Summon feature for some of their vehicles and it seems this feature is about to be taken even farther. The Summon feature is one in which an owner can use a remote key fob and have the vehicle open the garage door, move itself into the driveway and be turned on with the climate controls running to give the owner the ability to enjoy heading out the front door to a warmed up or cooled down vehicle. This feature is so unique that another company is working to bring this along with other technologies to the Nashville area.
Tesla
The Tesla Announcement We’ve Been Waiting For
Recently Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased that a new update would be offered on October 17th and true to his word he has announced what this new item is. Those who have been waiting for the next part of the Model 3 to be shown are unfortunately disappointed, but they can’t be too upset considering this announcement gave us the information that will help keep Tesla at the head of the table when it comes to the integration of autonomous software for the future. The new is that ever car that will be built now and in the future will have the equipment necessary to offer fully autonomous driving.
Death in a Tesla Causes Concern
The first American death in a Tesla Model S while using the Autopilot system occurred recently and has many wondering if the system or the driver were at fault. The victim in the crash was Joshua D. Brown, a forty year old technology company owner from Canton, Ohio who loved his Model S enough to post videos of himself behind the wheel of the car with the car in Autopilot mode. His death occurred on May 7th in Willison, Florida when the camera system was unable to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer with the bright sky, failing to engage the brakes, causing Brown to collide with the trailer and become the first fatal victim of this system.
The Race for Greatness
What is greatness? It seems we keep finding new ways to define what really is great and with the widespread reach of social media many terms are used to define what a finite number of people feel is great. Greatness on a grand scale is not limited to the positive either; when was the last time you heard the term “epic fail”? Most likely it showed up somewhere in your social media feeds just yesterday. As we try to define greatness on a variety of different scales from the good to the bad, something that truly can be considered great may be an item we discuss on a regular basis.
What is Holding Back EV Sales
We talk about the EV’s becoming the future of the automotive world and we even see where some of the new models have reasonable driving range, but for 2015 the total sales of EV cars was less than one percent of the market. There are now 25 plug in models that you can choose from but most consumers are not ready to make the change from gasoline to electric propulsion for one simple reason; driving range. Most of these electric cars off driving ranges that wouldn’t even fill a full day of commuting, which then means we need to have either a backup gasoline engine for further driving or we need to have a way to charge the batteries quickly.
Power on the Crazy Level
We love powerful cars. When we discuss cars in general some of the most important figures, at least in our minds, typically include the horsepower, torque, top speed, quarter mile time, time to reach sixty mph and much more to do with the power, speed and performance of the vehicle. Not often do we hold back on a car and ask it to go slower, in fact we are constantly looking for new ways to pull more power out of an engine in order to bring about the best we can get and see just what more power will do. Strange as it might be, some cars just might have too much power for their own good; here are some examples to give you an idea:
A New Mercedes-Benz at Frankfurt
The Frankfurt Motor Show is better known as the IAA which is the Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (obviously not an American English spelling at all). This might make you think the new Mercedes-Benz concept car was named after the show, but it wasn’t. The confusion is the fact that this new car is called the Concept IAA which actually stands for Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile, which might be a boring name, but it’s certainly not a boring car at all.