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Tesla to earn $250 million from sales of California environmental credits

Tesla Motors is expected to release quarterly earnings figures within the next few days, and the Silicon Valley automaker is thought to have attained profitability for the first time ever. As it turns out, a good bit of that profit will reportedly come from the State of California.
According to an article from the LA Times, Tesla, which is reportedly on pace to sell 20,000 vehicles in 2013, receives as much as $35,000 in environmental credits from California for each Model S it sells. These credits can then be sold to other automakers that do business in the state but don't sell zero-emission vehicles of their own. Some experts believe Tesla could earn up to $250 million from such ZEV credits.
While profits from ZEV credits equals good news for Tesla, some experts and rival automakers aren't very pleased with California's strong-arm tactics when it comes to the sales of electric vehicles. "At the end of the day, other carmakers are subsidizing Tesla," said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst at Gartner Inc.

Tesla asks feds to investigate Model S fires, amends warranty to cover fire damage

As of the last official count, there are 19,000 Tesla Model S sedans on US roads. Three of those, as has been widely reported, have caught on fire after significant accidents. That means one in about 6,333 Model S sedans has caught fire, and none of those fires led to any injuries. By way of contrast, there were 172,500 gasoline-car fires in the States last year, which, according to the National Fire Protection Association, equals about one in every 1,450 vehicles on US roads.
In a move we'd describe as very baller, Tesla has amended the warranty to cover damage due to a fire, even if due to driver error.
Put more simply, as stated by Elon Musk in his latest posting on the official Tesla Motors blog, "You are more than four and a half times more likely to experience a fire in a gasoline car than a Model S! Considering the odds in the absolute, you are more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime than experience even a non-injurious fire in a Tesla." While the assertion of dangerous lightning strikes may be just as spurious a correlation as those who claim the Model S is a burning inferno waiting to happen, the point is clear: You are quite unlikely to experience a fire in a Tesla Model S.

Recharge Wrap-up: Tesla battery degradation graphed, Hyundai plans fuel cell hub in Korea

A man has created a graph of Tesla Model S battery degradation over time. Merijn Coumans of Holland is tracking the owner data gathered on from Model S owners in a single file and graphing it visually. Coumans continually updates the graph of drivers' maximum ranges to give a look at battery degradation over the life of the car. Coumans tracks mileage and even number of visits to Superchargers in his data. Tesla provides an eight-year battery guarantee regardless of mileage. Read more at the Steinbuch blog. US plug-in vehicle sales are expected to surpass 300,000 when the data is tallied at the end of this month. That is 30 percent of President Obama's goal of 1 million battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids by the end of 2015. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz admitted the US won't reach the goal, saying, "We're going to be a few years after the president's aspirational goal of the end of 2015, but I think that we are within a few years of reaching that goal." Green car analyst Alan Baum projects the 1 million EV milestone will be met in 2018. Read more at Hybrid Cars. Hyundai and the South Korean government plan to create a hub for fuel cell technologies. Hyundai and Kia will give up unused patents to automotive startups focused on fuel cells at a recently launched innovation center in Gwangju. "Hyundai Motor will offer substantial assistance in the whole process of corporate growth ranging from the development of ideas to industrialization to making inroads into global markets," says South Korea's President Park Geun-hye. Hyundai hopes this will make the city a center for hydrogen technology. Read more at Just Auto. Mayor Boris Johnson has approved a cycling superhighway for the city of London. Set to be built along the Thames embankment, the system of cycling lanes could help encourage more people to ride their bikes, reducing automotive traffic congestion and relieving pressure on other transit networks. Opponents are upset that the cycling highway will increase driving time across the city, and call cyclists a "loud minority," whose numbers doesn't justify the new lanes. Read more at Treehugger. Kansas and Nebraska are joining the challenge against the EPA's new ethanol emissions rules. The EPA's Moves2014 regulations seek to reduce automotive sulfur emissions by 60 percent, but, says Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, the ethanol emissions measurement model is faulty and was adopted without public comment or review.