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Hertz adds Tesla Model S to Dream Cars fleet

The Tesla Model S is slowly infiltrating our rental car and chauffeured lives, having already gone to Las Vegas with Zappos as a taxi and San Francisco with car-sharing service Get Around. Now a lot more people will have the chance to get into one with its inclusion in the Hertz Dream Cars fleet, joining 19 petrol-powered rockets like the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Mercedes SLS AMG and SRT Viper. What's more, in case you missed it when it was new, the Tesla Roadster will join its sibling in the Dream Cars corral.
Although the Dream Cars are available in 35 markets, the Teslas will only come to two: San Francisco and Los Angeles airports. The rental Model S gets the 85-kWh battery with a range of 265 miles, and appears to be the P85 Performance model since Hertz lists a 0-to-60 mile per hour time of 4.2 seconds.
You can read more about it in the press release below, and if your vacation plans include California, this could give you a chance to get into a Model S faster than someone who buys one.

Sun and wind could power Tesla Gigafactory for EV batteries in Nevada

Next week is Tesla Gigafactory week. The California automaker has a major announcement planned, and it's all about its intention to build a battery factory so large, the company is pulling out the giga prefix. At some point in the next seven days, we expect to hear where Tesla will build the plant, who it will partner with, how it will pay for it and lots of other details. The production volume is expected to be at least 30 gigawatt-hours-worth per year. The Gigafactory will take in the raw materials for lithium batteries and put out finished packs, not only for the electric vehicles made by Tesla and its automotive customers, but also for massive amounts of renewable energy storage – that's a niche the company plans to begin to occupy sometime early next year with residential-sized products. The production volume is expected to be at least 30 gigawatt-hours-worth per year. That's more storage than all the lithium battery factories in the world combined produce now. Color us impressed. Now, you might be thinking, "Is it really necessary to go that big at this point in time?" In a word: yes. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said its upcoming, more-affordable vehicle – widely expected to be called the Model E – will wear a $35,000 price tag and boast a battery big enough to take it 200 miles on a charge. To achieve this, the cost of the cells needs to come down dramatically, and so it's no coincidence that the time frame for the new facility will parallel that of this car. According to Musk, the benefits from the economies of scale will see a cost drop between 30 and 40 percent. Of course, historically high prices are one of the main reasons why battery storage has not been widely used in the renewable energy sector, so this development could help drive more demand for cleaner, affordable energy, which, in turn, will drive demand for more storage. That's the kind of vicious cycle we like to see. Musk said the Gigafactory will be "heavily powered" by wind and solar energy. Speaking of renewables, that is where the Gigafactory will get much of its needed energy. During the call with financial analysts that accompanied the release of its 2013 fourth quarter earnings report, Musk mentioned that the new plant will be "heavily powered" by wind and solar energy, and will also use older Tesla packs for storage. These will help deflect the traditional arguments against wind and solar, that the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow.

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.