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Tesla Supercharger Network Now Covers Majority Of Americans

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced via twitter Sunday that Tesla has officially expanded its Supercharger network across the county. The Supercharger network contains 71 stations, according to Autoblog, and Musk estimates that 80 percent of Americans are within 200 miles of at least one of them. Notably, that includes Texans who are barred from buying Tesla products in their home state. The Supercharger can charge a Model S EV to half its full power in 20 minutes, providing enough charge to get to the next filling station. All for free. The Supercharger is considered such a leap forward in green technology that it was voted 2013 Technology of the Year by AOL Autos. Critics of electric vehicles often cite a lack of recharging infrastructure as one of the major hurdles companies face when bringing the cars to the market. Tesla is tackling this problem head-on, and wants to continue expanding the network to 100-percent coverage, according to Clean Technia. With the release of the more affordable Tesla Model E on the horizon, the Northern California-based company is surely hoping that the expansion of the Supercharger network will put "range anxiety" to bed once and for all. Related Gallery Electric Cars And Hybrids Don't Have To Be Frumpy Green Tesla Alternative Fuels Fuel Efficiency Green Driving Electric supercharger network

Recharge Wrap-up: Panasonic, Tesla on Gigafactory deal?

Bentley has been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for reductions of carbon, water use and waste production in manufacturing. The Carbon Trust is an organization that helps groups such as businesses and governments reduce carbon emissions, use of energy and resources, and waste output. From 2011 to 2013, Bentley reduced CO2 emissions by 16 percent per car manufactured, curtailed water use by 35.7 percent, and saw significant waste reductions. Darran Messem of Carbon trust says, "Bentley is clearly passionate about continuing to improve its environmental performance, which is reflected by the fact the company has consistently invested in new technology." Read more in the press release below. Chevrolet is giving 12 Volts to MBAs Across America. The organization will use the range-extended electric cars in its efforts to help MBA students learn from and work with small business owners. As part of the MBAs Across America program's first year, four students drove 8,000 miles to provide entrepreneurs with free business counseling. The program has expanded, and this year, teams of MBAs will use the Volts to travel to 25 cities to offer their services. Learn more about the partnership between Chevrolet and MBAs Across America in the press release below. A professor from the University of Michigan has found fuel cycle analysis to be too flawed to be relied upon for measuring CO2 impacts of transportation fuels. Professor John DeCicco of the university's Energy Institute feels that the flaws in calculating the carbon footprint of liquid fuel production and combustion make such lifecycle analysis impractical. He suggests, instead, to focus to carbon capture. Since capturing CO2 directly from a vehicle is probably never going to happen, DiCicco believes the solution is to capture carbon from the atmosphere in sectors outside of transportation. Says DiCicco, "Research should be ramped up on options for increasing the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and on programs to manage and utilize carbon fixed in the biosphere, which offers the best CO2 removal mechanism now at hand. Such strategies can complement measures that control the demand for liquid fuels by reducing travel activity, improving vehicle efficiency and shifting to non-carbon fuels." Read more at Green Car Congress. Global transportation energy consumption is expected to increase by 25.4 percent by 2035, according to a report by Navigant Research.

Elon Musk is Vanity Fair's number one 'disrupter'

Elon Musk's leadership of Tesla Motors has transferred well to pop culture. In this case, the electric-vehicle maker's CEO has popped up as Number 1 on Vanity Fair's annual "disrupters" list. Musk jumped from No. 5 last year and for 2014 came in ahead of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Apple's Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive; and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Pretty healthy company. Vanity Fair pegged Musk's net worth at $12.9 billion, thanks in part to Tesla's stock climbing up about 70 percent in the past year (despite a recent dip) and has surged by a factor of 16 since the initial public offering in 2010. It also can't hurt that Tesla scored about $1.2 billion in government incentives when it agreed earlier this month to build its gigafactory in Nevada. Additionally, Vanity Fair feted Musk for his involvement in both space-exploration company SpaceX and home solar-panel provider SolarCity and described Musk's marital status as "complicated." VF just loves that stuff. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that Musk was the only auto executive to end up on either the publication's "disrupters" list or its "powers that be" list. The latter was headed by Fox's Rupert Murdoch, Walt Disney's Bog Iger and Comcast's Brian Roberts and Steve Burke. You can read Vanity Fair's write-up of Musk here.