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Tesla Model S drivers claim first cross-country trip on Supercharger power

It's not like most Tesla Model S owners are hard-pressed for cash, but it's still got to be nice to know they can get across the country in their all-electric luxury hatchbacks for free. Father-daughter team John and Jill (no last names given) just finished what's being called the first coast-to-coast Model S trip powered completely by the company's Supercharger network. Tesla just completed installing the Superchargers and CEO Elon Musk tweeted just yesterday that the network was energized. The company unveiled its first Supercharger in September 2012, and Musk says he will finally take his long-promised Model S family road trip this spring. But now someone's beat him to the headlines. The pioneering duo finished its New York-to-Los Angeles trip January 25, logging about 3,600 miles in the process. Additional miles were required since father John started his trip in Kentucky before picking up daughter Jill in New York. Tesla says it has 71 free North American Superchargers and that its network is reachable by about 80 percent of the continent's population. The important number that makes that possible is that the 85-kWh version of the Model S can go 265 miles on a single charge. WIRED says John and Jill hit up 28 Superchargers over the course of a week. Naturally, fellow Tesla owners who posted on a rather long forum thread describing the trip were enthused, effusively comparing the team to Lewis and Clark. The news could spur more sales to the California-based automaker, which finished last year with a flourish of sorts. Tesla sold about 6,900 units of the Model S in October, November and December, beating the company's own target and making the Model S the country's best-selling plug-in vehicle for the fourth quarter.

Mercedes may be working on a new electric car dubbed 'Ecoluxe'

Automobile has a lengthy piece this month on how the four German mass-market luxury manufacturers each plan to go after Tesla with their own electric vehicles. It was written by Georg Kacher, the magazine's European bureau chief, and the English version came a month after he wrote the German-language original for Autobild. Tesla isn't exactly a threat to the Germans, but, according to the report, the Model S is planting the right kinds of seeds in niches that are important to the luxury players. The thinking is that - in addition to needed electric vehicles anyway for stricter US regulations - it's better to start designing the machinery now. The article posited Porsche's attack would rest on the coming Panamera platform, but a big hurdle would be battery placement. Unable to find one large space for a lithium-ion pack, engineers would instead put batteries everywhere they could, for a supposed tally of some "108 battery pouches" throughout the body. A few days after the Automobile piece, however, Porsche publicly said it had no intention of challenging the Model S, because the enthusiastic driving the brand is known for doesn't jive with useful range. In Kacher's retelling, Mercedes' plans are even more ambitious, supposedly taking aim at the Model S and the coming Model X. It would do this with an investment in excess of $2 billion in a program called "Ecoluxe" – Mercedes has no brand division akin to BMW's i and Audi's e-tron. The new brand would create a four-strong family of bespoke electric vehicles: a smaller platform with a wheelbase around 106 inches and a larger one with a wheelbase around 118 inches. In addition, the range would have "provisions for rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and rear-wheel steering." The numbers are impressive: seating for seven in the larger vehicles, both longer than 16 feet, front and rear storage areas, ratings of up to 610 horsepower and production capacity of 80,000 units per year. When would we see such creatures? Perhaps as soon as 2019. We do know that if Tesla can knock the Model X over the outfield fence, automakers are going to have to do something. We don't know what the chances are that Ecoluxe is Mercedes' first move - but such a plan could help explain the weird Mercedes concept spied in October.

Tesla making plans for Gigafactory in at least two states

Ever since February, when Tesla officially announced that it would build a gigafactory to make the incredible number of lithium-ion batteries it expects to need to power its electric vehicles, we thought it would be located in one of four states. Those four states – Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada – have been lobbying the automaker ever since, hoping to hear that the new, $5-billion plant and its 6,500 jobs would set up shop within its borders. Turns out, two of them might get some good news soon. "We want to minimize the risk timing for the gigafactory to get up and running" – Elon Musk CEO Elon Musk said Tesla will announce locations in "at least two" states where it could build the gigafactory, according to Bloomberg. He said, "What we're going to do is move forward with more than one state, at least two, all the way to breaking ground, just in case there's last-minute issues. The number one thing is we want to minimize the risk timing for the gigafactory to get up and running." This isn't to say that Tesla will actually build two gigafactories (at least, not yet, but Musk hinted there may come a day when the automaker will need a second one), just that it is going to make sure there is no hiccup in the supply of lower-cost battery packs for the upcoming lower-cost Tesla EV, sometimes referred to as the Model E. The gigafactory is expected to not only produce more li-ion cells than were made globally in 2013 but also to reduce the cost of the overall pack by 30 percent, setting the stage for the $35,000 Tesla EV (estimated) to appear.