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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.

Chrysler and Hyundai join Pepsi and Coke as top Super Bowl spenders [w/ video]

Super Bowl XLVIII is barely a week away, and some of the early ads are already leaking out. It's timely then that The Street has released rankings of the top five Super Bowl advertisers since 2009, showing Chrysler and Hyundai/Kia taking two of the spots with $131.7 million in cumulative spending.
Since 2010, the cost to air a 30-second Super Bowl ad has risen from $3 million in 2009 to about $4 million in 2014, and about a fifth of advertisers opt for a one-minute ad, which doubles costs. Last year, the ads brought in $292 million, and they have brought in roughly $2 billion since 2010.
Chrysler has spent $64.3 million since 2009 to make it the fourth highest spending company in the last five years. In that time, the company has rebranded itself as it emerged from bankruptcy with the Imported from Detroit ad campaign that premiered in 2011 and last year's God Made a Farmer Ram Trucks ad. Its 2012 Halftime in America sparked national debate about whether it was also a reference to the upcoming presidential election.

Hyundai pushes performance in Canadian Super Bowl ad

We keep seeing automakers put their Super Bowl ads online ahead of time, and here's one more to add to the list, although with a twist. The Internet might be the only place for many people to check out Hyundai's commercial because the spot is only playing in Canada during the game. The one-minute ad, titled Welcome to the New Age, eschews telling a narrative like many of this year's commercials. Instead, Hyundai offers a mix of energetic music over stylized imagery of the design, production and driving of the Genesis, plus a few brief cameos of other vehicles from the brand. The result is something a lot more visceral than many of the other spots so far. Too bad so many viewers are going to miss it. Autoblog reached out to Hyundai Canada for more information on the ad. According to company spokesperson Chad Heard, there is "no plan for it to be used in the US. It is specific to Canada." The spot will air during halftime.