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Recharge Wrap-up: Musk sees solar future, Uber sued for tips

Elon Musk and his cousin, Lyndon Rive, spoke about their ideas for solar power and energy storage at a private conference in New York. Musk, the Tesla CEO and Rive, CEO of SolarCity, said that within 10 years, every solar system SolarCity sells will come with battery storage, and that it will be cheaper than getting energy from a utility company. Tesla, which provides battery packs for SolarCity, will set aside a portion of its Gigafactory's production capacity for grid-scale energy storage. Rive says his company will be able to produce the most efficient solar panels available, while Tesla has plans for in-home energy storage that not only saves power for nighttime and cloudy days, but also looks good. Read more at The Wall Street Journal and head over to Treehugger for more commentary. Proper deployment of bike lanes could help improve the flow of traffic while making cycling safer in urban settings. In New York City, adding bike lanes improved automotive traffic according to a study. What seems to work well is putting the bike lane closest to the curb on the left side of a one-way street, with a small buffer zone and a parking lane separating it from car traffic. The addition of turning lanes, with their own traffic signals for vehicles turning left, also allows car and bike traffic to continue smoothly. Read more at Core77. Uber is facing a lawsuit over its included gratuity. The ride-hailing app charges a 20 percent tip, included in the price of the ride. The Illinois plaintiff claims, however, that Uber keeps "a substantial portion" of that gratuity for itself, rather than paying it out to the driver. The lawsuit, which is seeking group status, looks to make Uber give up any of the gratuity funds it has kept. The plaintiff is also seeking an unspecified amount of cash in damages. Read more at Bloomberg. A new study breaks down the demographics of the users of public transit. The study, called "Who's On Board 2014," Finds that ridership is mostly inverse from income, with people making over $150,000 per year bucking the trend by riding as much as those in lower brackets. Regardless of region, younger people are more likely to use public transportation, while older people prefer to drive more. African Americans are more likely to ride, with 39 percent using public transit once a week, and 22 percent commuting by transit. Whites use public transit less, with only 10 percent riding once a week, and just five percent using public transit to commute.

2017 Frankfurt Motor Show | Observations on the Ferrari Portofino, Honda Urban EV and more

Related: We obsessively covered the Frankfurt Motor Show — here's our complete coverage The 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show kicked off the fall reveal season with an impressive array of powerful cars blended with forward-looking concepts. It's a seminal period for automakers, who find themselves at the intersection of disruption and opportunity. With that in mind, here are four takeaways from Frankfurt. The transformation of the curvy yet overbaked Ferrari California T into the Portofino is complete, and its coming-out party in Frankfurt served notice that Ferrari's entry-level sports car is much more formidable. There was nothing wrong with the California (and later the California T), but the Portofino features a cleaner look with stronger lines and an elegant resemblance to the rest of the Ferrari family. The California name is a good one. Used on a number of memorable cars in the 1950s and '60s, it's steeped in tradition, and certainly Ferrari will dust it off again. But switching to Portofino, the name of a scenic town in Italy, is a nice way to change the conversation and generate fresh interest in this part of the Ferrari portfolio. Man, people are stoked over the Honda Urban EV concept. Why? I assume it's the retro look that harks back to early Civics, and the lack of information about the concept itself. What people don't know, they're imagining. Honda hasn't even confirmed the range, the car is very small, and it likely won't be sold in the United States. With this dearth of facts, enthusiasts are filling in their own blanks. I guess that's OK. Count me among the intrigued. When I saw pictures of this thing early Tuesday morning, I was pretty excited, too. We do know Honda is expanding its electric strategy, and two-thirds of its new vehicles sold around the world will have some form of electrification by 2030. The Urban EV launches in Europe in 2019, and a hybrid CR-V rolls out in Europe next year. Unconfirmed for the U.S. market, it seems like a no-brainer to bring that version of the CR-V here. The electrification and autonomous tech parade of concepts continues. You gotta be there. It's the cost of doing business in the modern automotive landscape. This technology takes years to develop and launch, so the next best thing to remind the world you're trying to be cutting-edge is to show off lots of fancy concepts. Frankfurt had plenty. A couple standouts: The BMW I Vision Dynamics and Audi's Elaine and Aicon.

Recharge Wrap-up: Tesla is for Mistresses; Yo, free Smart ED rides!

Smart used the Yo app to give free test rides to San Franciscans last week. Yo is a free app wherein users tap a username to send a notification that simply says "Yo" to the recipient. Signs at locations in the Mission and SoMa neighborhoods gave instructions to send a Yo to SmartUSA for a free ride anywhere in the city. Three of the eight Smart vehicles used for the promotion were the Smart Fortwo Electric Drive. The event allowed people to see how well suited the cars are to the city, particularly when it comes to San Francisco's parking problems. It also saved users the fare of an Uber or Lyft hire. Read more at TechCrunch. Zipcar has added the 2014 Honda Fit EV to its UC Davis fleet near Sacramento, California. The cars will go to the school's West Village, a planned zero net energy community, which plans to generate as much energy as it uses within a year. "Innovations like solar power to help generate the electricity needed to charge the EV," says Dan Sperling, founding director of the school's Institute of Transportation Studies, "and fully zero emission car sharing moves us aggressively toward a sustainable future." The addition of the Fit EVs will also give cash-strapped students access to affordable emissions-free driving. Read more in the press release, below. California is one step closer to adding 15,000 new green HOV stickers after a bill was approved by the state Senate. Now the bill must go up before the California State Assembly for approval before it can be signed by Governor Jerry Brown. The bill will raise the total number of the green HOV stickers for plug-in hybrids to 70,000. Raising the cap on the green decals, which allow owners use of the carpool lanes, could encourage more California drivers to buy a PHEV. Read more at Inside EVs. The Tesla Model S made a star appearance on the ABC television show Mistresses. In the episode "Choices," the character Joss receives the car as a gift from her fiance, but is not all too happy about it, seeing it as putting her in a position of dependency. "I could never in a million years afford that Tesla," Joss complains to her friend. "How am I ever supposed to get mad at him when he can hold a Tesla over my head?" The luxury EV makes an on-screen appearance in the episode complete with an interior shot of the car's touchscreen display. See a clip from the episode below or read more at Green Car Reports. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences.