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Daimler CEO says nobody is making money on EVs right now

What do you charge for a vehicle you're going to lose money on? If you're Mercedes-Benz and the vehicle in question is the B-Class Electric Drive, you offer it for lease for just 399 euros ($498) a month with a down payment of 8,473 euros ($10,582). If Daimler was going to price it honestly, it seems, the number would have to be a lot higher. "Nobody today is making a battery-powered vehicle that's economically viable." – Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche That's according to Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche, who spoke to reporters in Spain recently and said that, "You can reasonably say that nobody today is making a battery-powered vehicle that's economically viable in its own right. Manufacturers will not see a return within a reasonable time on the billions they're investing now." There are ways to make money in EVs, of course. Just ask Daimler, which recently sold its stake in Tesla for a cool $780 million. Zetsche has some EV-critical company in executives like Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, who has said his company loses over $10,000 on each Fiat 500E it sells. Other automakers – e.g., Tesla, Nissan – are much more positive about their financial bet on EVs, but no one is opening all their books to the public to prove this. Tesla, which worked with Mercedes on the B-Class ED, will have an earnings call with investors later today, so perhaps we'll learn something new in a few hours. The B-Class ED lease deal is for 36 months, based on an MSRP of 39,151 euros ($48,895) in Europe, including the 19 percent VAT. You can read more in the press release below. Commercial release of Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive: Local emission-free driving from ˆ399/month Stuttgart, Nov 03, 2014 With its high-torque electric motor, the B-Class Electric Drive delivers lively and superior driving pleasure – with zero local emissions. The B-Class Electric Drive is now available to order, with deliveries set to start before the end of 2014. Prices start at ˆ39,151[1]. The B-Class Electric Drive can be leased through the Mercedes-Benz Bank from ˆ399 a month[2]. Further information on the full range of tailor-made leasing and financing offers as well as specific pricing examples are available at http://www.mercedes-benz-bank.de. Quiet and local emission-free driving is ensured by a 132 kW electric motor, which, as is typical of an electric drive, delivers its maximum torque of 340 Nm right from the start. The result is noticeably powerful acceleration from rest.

Tesla working on snake-like auto charger

When people complain about electric cars, the gripes usually focus on range anxiety and the hassle of waiting for a charge to complete. The physical act of plugging the vehicle into the charger is seldom that big of a concern. However, for the contingent of customers who find hooking up their model to be torturous, Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears to have a rather bizarre (but potentially cool) solution on the way. In back-to-back tweets (embedded below), Musk announced his company is hard at work on a new charger that would automatically emerge from the wall of your garage and hook up to a Model S to begin charging. To make the tech just the teeniest bit more impressive, he claims the bot works with all versions of the company's electric car Í– not just new ones. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Musk broached the idea of automatically plugging a Model S into the charger during the Tesla D unveiling and said, "we will probably do something like that." He didn't explain much more at the time, though. There still aren't many hard details on the scheme, but the idea of having a robotic snake living in the garage is both somewhat nightmarish and amazingly cool. We can't wait to see this thing in action. News Source: Twitter [1], [2]Image Credit: Tesla Green Tesla Green Automakers Ownership Technology Electric Sedan EV charging

Tesla Model S reduces colors with new options

The Tesla Model S is no longer a "green" car. Or brown, for that matter. Call it a case of streamlining. The California-based automaker will reduce the option choices for the Model S by reducing the number of variants and colors available on its only production vehicle. Elon Musk made the announcement on the company's conference call with analysts earlier this month. Musk said: We've had to make some tough decisions on essentially having fewer versions of the Model S in order to streamline manufacturing and thus be able to ramp production better and have better control in logistics and not have like a million variations on the Model S. The dual motors, we're not going to produce the dual motor 60-kilowatt hour car at all. We're not taking additional orders for the performance 85. We're only doing the performance 85 dual motor and we're cancelling green and brown as colors. These are a few examples, but this helps us streamline the manufacturing and supply chain logistics and enables us to better ramp production. Additionally, there will no longer be an all-wheel-drive version of the 60-kilowatt-hour Model S. Tesla announced its third-quarter results earlier this month, saying it had a record-high 7,785 deliveries for the three-month period. By the end of next year, the company hopes to be knocking out 2,000 vehicles a week, which would put Tesla over the 100,000-annual-vehicle threshold. And with fewer colors to choose from, too.