The annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is quickly turning into a Nurburgring equivalent when it comes to bragging rights of electric vehicle makers. The venue is perfect for EVs:  The track is 12.42 miles long, as cinch even for the most range-challenged EV.  The track finishes at 14,110 ft, a height that deprives ICE-powered cars of oxygen and some 40 percent of their power. An EV just laughs at the breathless engines. I learn all those trivia today in Mitsubishi’s showroom in Tamachi, Tokyo. A descendant on Mitsubishi’s iMiev will be part of the electrified hill climb.

The last year’s winner was the Toyota TMG EV P002. It will defend its title.  Across town in Tokyo, Mitsubishi fields its MiEV Evolution II all-electric racer.  The sport appears to be one for mature men. Mitsubishi-driver and two-time Dakar Rally overall champion Hiroshi Masuoka is a relative youngster at age 53. Toyota’s driver Rod Millen is 61. Pikes Peak legend Monster Tajima, himself 63, won’t return in an EV, but will arrive with a 670hp hachi-roku.

Beleaguered EV start-up Better Place faced yet another blow this week, as Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn declared that rapid-charging, not swappable batteries, will be the predominant charging technology for EVs.

Israeli business outlet Globes quotes Ghosn as saying

“When you look at the overall trends, we must conclude that replaceable batteries are no longer the main track for electric vehicles…The main trail is flat batteries in cars with charging. We believe that people want flexibility in the technology, and we can see that the demand is for rechargeable standard batteries.”

Ghosn stopped short of completely writing off Better Place and their battery-swap technology, but Ghosn made it clear that the focus would be elsewhere. Commercial fleets were one area where Ghosn identified potential demand for swappable batteries, due to a lack of downtime with charging the vehicles.

“There may be cases where people prefer replaceable batteries – as we have tried to include Israel and Denmark. Here we will continue to offer the Fluence with replaceable batteries. There may also be large companies, where they have a huge fleet of cars, and do not want to wait for charging. But it will not be the majority of the market, and going forward, our focus is on the charging technology, among other things look at our new Nissan Leaf.”

Increasingly efficient rapid-charging technology and a lack of demand for EVs has led to a downward spiral for Better Place’s fortunes. The company recently shuttered their American and Australian operations and gave founder Shai Agassi the boot.

Scaling back from its former intentions of becoming “China’s No. 1 automaker by 2015 and the world’s leading car maker by 2025,” China’s BYD now wants to become a world-class fish in Hong Kong’s taxi pond.

BYD has six electric e6 taxis running in Hong Kong, across the border from its Shenzhen, China, headquarters.  Its plans call for much more: “We expect to increase the number of e6 taxis in Hong Kong to 5,000 in three years,” Liu Xueliang, general manager of BYD Asia Pacific sales, told Reuters. Hong Kong Taxi & Public Light Bus Association said it is renting from BYD an initial fleet of 45 taxis for around US$1,000 each per month.

Back home in China, BYD sold about 1,700 e6 vehicles last year. They go for around $60,000 and are reluctantly bought by local governments and taxi companies that want to shine their green image.

Hong Kong’s taxi fleet consists mostly of often LPG-powered Toyota Crowns. Last year, BYD announced plans to export 50 e6 taxis to London.

Bosch has introduced a home charging point for EVs that costs half as much as current competitors, which will no doubt be welcome news for current and prospective EV buyers.

Dubbed the PowerMax, the charger is said to be capable of 240V charging at half the time of the equivalent Level 2 chargers currently available on the market. The PowerMax comes in a 16 amp configuration with a 12 foot cord or a 30 amp version with a 25 foot cord. Bosch said that it was able to lower the price of their charger by eliminating the overly-long cords featured in many competitive units. Sales begin in June, and while a home evaluation is included in the price, installation is extra.

Ferrari will be scaling back production in 2013, in an effort to help retain some of the brand’s exclusivity.

Reuters reports that Ferrari will build fewer than 7,000 cars this year, despite selling over 7,300 in 2012. Speaking to British publication AutoExpress, Ferrari head Luca di Montezemolo said

“Our exclusivity is the brand’s equity…those who buy a Ferrari buy a dream and we want to ensure that we preserve that dream. In 2013 we decided to manufacture a lower number cars than last year. We want to prove that selling less cars can still increase profits – despite the trend in the market”

Also ruled out by di Montezemolo were an SUV and a pure electric vehicle, stating  he would ”never build an all-electric car as long as I am chairman of the company”.

Toyota plans to defend its electric title at this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with a tweaked TMG EV P002. The electric racer is currently on its way to Salisbury, N.C., where TRD USA will perform aerodynamic upgrades to the Radical-based chassis.

On June 30, 61-year-old Rod Millen will  attempt a new record in the TMG EV P002 at Pikes Peak.  TMG is using  an off-board battery-to-battery charger, because there is no reliable connection to the power grid at the race site. A 42 kilowatt lithium ion battery is mounted into the back of a Toyota Hiace,. and can quickly charge the TMG EV P002 even in places where there is no plug in sight.

Exterior

If you ordered your car by the inch, the Coda is what 176 inches of generic sedan would look like. Since Coda was a small California company without the deep pockets of Elon Musk, they did what any start-up with a screw loose would do: turn to China. Hafei was crazy enough to be smoking the same thing Coda’s dudes were, so they offered up their Saibo sedan as a donor car. Plain hardly begins to describe the Saibo. It looks like a cross between a 1990s Corolla and a 2000 Civic with some 1980s Geo tossed in. No problem, just call in a design firm. Sounds good right? They hired Pininfarina. Sounds even better, right?? Yea, except look what they came up with. Ouch. The result was a grille-free beige something that was so boring we failed to take a side-profile shot of it. You didn’t miss much.

Interior

The Saibo was based on a last-century Mitsubishi Lancer, sort of. Knowing this, I feared that the 2012 Chinese car would still be sporting a 1990s interior. Oh how I wish that were true. Instead, they attempted to “modernize” things by creating an interior that even Benz/Cerberus era Chrysler would have rejected. That’s fine when the Chinese version costs about $15,000, but with a starting price of $37,250, “bad” doesn’t begin to describe what’s happening here. The dashboard in the “production” vehicle we drove rattled and squeaked non-stop, the radio was a Best Buy special with no Coda customization, and the only “feature” touted was the leather wrapped steering wheel. In truth, the tiller was fairly pleasant to hold, except that when you moved it you were reminded it was attached to a Coda. Toss in the cheesiest gauges I have ever seen and an imitation Jaguar Drive Selector gear shifter that looked bad and felt worse and the cabin was complete. I think recalling the horror within is bringing back my PTSD, I need to sit down.

Infotainment

Seriously, they just used an aftermarket double-din radio. Check out Crutchfield for the review on that.

Drivetrain

Under the not-sexy-at-all hood of the Coda beat a 130 horsepower electric motor capable of delivering a stout 220 lb-ft of twist from zero to whenever it hit its redline (we weren’t told) through a single speed transmission. If that sounds OK, trust me, it’s perfectly fine. In fact, the drivetrain of the Coda was innovative and had nothing to do with their failure. Powering the motor was a custom designed lithium ion iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery that sported square rather than round cells for greater energy density and better cooling. The power pack under the floor was rated at 31kWh (larger than the Leaf) but because of the Coda’s weight, range was barely better than the Nissan. Unlike the competition, Coda installed an active thermal management system to keep the cells at the optimum temperature at all times to prevent the same sort of battery failures we saw on the Leaf in the Arizona desert.

Drive

So far, the Coda sounds like a boring little car with a bland interior, high-tech drivetrain with an advanced battery pack. In truth, the Coda sounded like a reasonable argument on paper and it looked like something you could live with in person… until you drove it. The Coda’s motor management software that had all the refinement of a science project. An elementary school science project. Acceleration was brisk but wasn’t in tune with the sloppy bumper-car pedal. As with most EVs, the Coda had regenerative braking but the system was bipolar providing either too little assist or way to much. Press the brake pedal down 10%, nothing. 20 %, nothing. 30% was where the “magic” started with the slightest resistance to forward progress. Between 31 and 40% things were peachy-keen but soggy. Press the stopper to 41% and everyone in the car will be dialing a whiplash injury lawyer.

Steering feel was horrid, but so is the feel in the Prius. Not much to say here.

So far everything I have described could have been lived with, you know, if someone gave you a Coda and you were unable to sell it. What absolutely could not be lived with was the ride. No 1990s Mitsubishi had a terribly polished ride to begin with, add Chinese tinkering, tinkering by a company that had never built a car before and 728 battery cells and you have a recipe for disaster. To compensate for the added weight, Coda jammed stiffer springs on all four corners and did nothing else. Crashy doesn’t begin to describe what my vertebrae felt on our 50 mile drive. If you think adding passengers would have improved things, we tried, there here were four of us in the car and we are all “American sized”.

Adding insult to injury, the EPA rated the Coda sedan the least efficient EV in modern history. No wonder they failed. Still, I’m sad to see Coda Automotive go because there will be one less voice in the EV conversation and auto journalists will have one less car to complain about. When you gathered writers together, someone will proclaim “there is no such thing as a bad car anymore.” Then somebody would remember Coda and we’d all have a good laugh before we moved back to complaining about the Prius. Now Coda is a fading memory, unless you are unfortunate enough to have one in your garage, then you won’t be able to forget. Or get it fixed. My condolences.

Coda gave me a free T-shirt at the Coda store, I still have it.

Electric car startup Coda is the latest in a series of greenm dreams to go down the drain – and it won’t be the last. Coda filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, writes Reuters,  “after selling just 100 of its all-electric sedans, another example of battery-powered vehicles’ failure to break into the mass market.”

Coda launched its electric sedan in California a year ago. Based on a slider made in China, the car delivered a range of 125 miles on a single charge. For $37,250 MSRP, the few buyers received a no-frills car.

Coda had no shortage of money when it started. Coda raised $300 million in equity from backers “including Aeris Capital, Limited Brands Chief Executive Les Wexner, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson,” Reuters says. Nevertheless, $300 million are not enough to develop a car, let alone a car company.

Coda applied for, but withdrew a request for $334 million in federal loans.

Electric cars are a hard sell, but Coda made its life even tougher: “Coda has two problems,” a leading executive of a Japanese OEM that is heavily invested in electric cars told me last year, “they are trying to sell EVs, and cars made in China.”

Despite overwhelmingly positive press for the Fiat 500e, the electric Fiat is known to be a bete-noir for Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne. Speaking at the SAE Congress last week, Marchionne claimed that Fiat loses $10,000 on each 500e, describing it as “masochism”.

Marchionne has repeatedly stated that Fiat is only building the car to comply with California regulations that mandate the sale of zero-emissions vehicles. But despite rave reviews and an aggressive lease program, Marchionne has repeatedly made negative statements about the car. The Detroit Free Press quotes Marchionne on the nature of the money losing EV

“For every 500 electric that we produce even after all the subsidies we will lose about $10,000 bucks a car,” Marchionne said. “Doing that on a large scale would be masochism to the extreme.”

Machionne also urged governments to stay “neutral” on what technologies it decides to subsidize, citing the current trendiness of EVs versus the widespread enthusiasm for hydrogen a decade ago.

“A number of governments around the world including the U.S. have provided incentives for consumers to purchase plug-in electric vehicles and have provided direct incentives to manufacturers…my fear is that regulators are rushing precipitously into embracing electric vehicles as the only technological solution.”

BYD, the company we visited in yesterday’s story might ditch  conventional gasoline-powered cars and focus on electrics, Reuters says in an exclusive story,

Two senior BYD executives told Reuters that along with dropping gasoline-fueled cars, the company also might offload its solar panel business and concentrate on new greener battery technologies.

BYD will unveil its Green Hybrid Technology at the Shanghai auto show on Saturday. Reuters sees BYD focus on hybrid cars, with a smattering  of  all-electric and ‘plug-in’ electric hybrid cars thrown in.

The story caused raised eyebrows and snickers among the auto executives that congregate in Shanghai for the auto show that will open its doors to the press tomorrow. Currently, EVs and hybrids sell only in homeopathic quantities in China. I am in Shanghai, and we’ll see what develops.

On Friday, Fisker fired most of its rank-and-file employees, 160 out of a total 210, and promptly got into hot water for doing so.  The law firm Outten & Golden filed a class-action lawsuit for not giving employees a 60-day notice under California’s WARN act.

“We contend Fisker ordered mass layoffs on or about April 5, 2013 without providing its employees with advance written notice. The Case is pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California,” says Outten & Golden’s website. The firm is seeking 60 days wages and benefits for former employees. The wheels of justice better move fast. Siliconbeat says that “many speculate that Fisker could file for bankruptcy as early as Monday.”

According to Reuters, the 160 fired were told that the company could not afford to give them severance payments. 53 senior managers and executives were asked to stay on board, “primarily to pursue buyers for the company’s assets,” Reuters says.

The Outten & Gol;den lawfirm is the same that sued ill-fated Solyndra, another fine example of government investments into green technologies. Green as the color of tax payer money.

Yesterday’s Tesla “lease offer”, (which turned out to be Elon Musk’s “big announcement”) was a classic display of Tesla’s penchant for theatrics. On the surface, the move is a smart one; most customers in the large luxury sedan segment tend to lease their cars, so Tesla’s move is nothing out of the ordinary.

The 5 year lease program will allow customers to keep making payments on the car as a means of buying it outright, rather than the traditional balloon payment used by most auto makers. And, as Wired’s Damon Lavrinc notes, you could technically lease the car with nothing down.

Depending on where you live, the initial payment could be as low as … nothing. Tesla’s financial partners in the program, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, take the $7,500 federal tax credit offered to anyone who buys an electric vehicle, roll that into the state rebates and include it all as your down payment. In California, for example, that comes to $10,000.

Where it gets interesting is some of the numerical gymnastics that, according to Tesla’s True Cost To Own lease calculator, can leave you with a net lease cost of -$2,000. To find out how that happens, check out EV expert John Voelcker’s excellent take-down of Tesla’s leasing program. Rather than summarize and butcher it at TTAC, you might as well head straight to the source. It’s not to be missed. Especially if your time is worth $100/hour, as Musk thinks.

Just ahead of their Q1 2013 earnings called, Tesla announced that they were profitable in the first quarter of the year, with deliveries exceeding their own targets. In addition, Tesla has also decided to discontinue the base trim of the Model S due to a lack of demand.

Tesla reported 4,750 deliveries of the Model S, up from their own estimate of 4,500 units, which, according to the company, helped them turn a profit this quarter. Crucially, Tesla claims that profitability is achieved even using GAAP principles, since non-GAAP accounting is more easily manipulated to reflect positive results.

The 40 kWh car, which started at just under $60,000, apparently had a take rate of just 4 percent, leading to Tesla’s decision to axe it. Instead, customers who ordered the base model will get a 60kWh model electronically limited to only use 40kWh of energy. Buyers can have this reversed by Tesla if they wish, and future owners will be able to perform the procedure as well. 60 kWh cars will also be Supercharger ready across the board.

Given that Tesla’s customer base is made up of extremely wealthy EV enthusiasts who are looking to the Model S as either a) a status symbol b) a third car or c) an outright toy, the death of the 40 kWh model makes sense. Few would realistically want a base Model S whether because of status signalling or the reduced performance (in terms of both acceleration and range). Customers interested in the Model S are much more likely to gravitate to the 60 kWh model or the full-bore 85 kWh version, in the same way that the S63 AMG is the best way to use the Mercedes S-Class as an expression of one’s wealthy.

The higher profit margins on the more expensive models are also beneficial to Elon Musk’s vision of a profitable auto maker. Despite his grandiose vision of himself as a 21st century version of Henry Ford, there is little margin in producing mainstream cars. Better to let Tesla continue to market to the very wealthy while slowly allowing their product to become more accessible, rather than an ill-timed push into the mainstream.

Fisker did put its entire workforce, all 200 of them, on furlough, “while it continues to search for a strategic partner,” Reuters says. That search is not going so well. And quite possibly, the workforce will never come back.

Then there is the issue of the DOE loan. No, not the matter of the DOE only paying out $193 million of the promised $529.  The DOE actually wants money back. There is a loan payment due in late April. The amount was not revealed.

Fisker urgently needs a savior, but those are hard to come by. Dongfeng dropped out of the bidding for Fisker, “because it would be too difficult to move production to China,” Reuters writes. Before, Geely had dropped out, which leaves Fisker with no interested suitor.

According to the story, Dongfeng was interested in Fisker’s barely used production facility, which it wanted to move to China. But soon it transpired that the loan was tied to the plant being in Delaware.

Chinese companies were a bit luckless buying car companies as a going concern. They are, however, good a snapping up the pieces after a bankruptcy. Which also would solve the problem of where the plant is located.

And just as I wanted to hit the “Publish” button,  news reaches us that Fisker  is looking into that option. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Fisker has hired restructuring lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis LLP to prepare for the possible bankruptcy filing, the people said, though no final decisions have been made on whether the auto maker will need to take that path. The cash-strapped company is still seeking buyers or investors that would help it avoid that outcome, the people said.”

We can always hope.

The gasoline range-extender that will be optional in BMW’s i3 electric car will be built by Kymco, a Taiwanese firm that is best known for its scooters.

BMW and Kymco have worked together in the past, with Kymco building engines for the BMW G450X dirt bike. The two-cylinder motor was designed in Germany but built by Kymco’s Taiwan factory – and the i3 will likely have a similar arrangement, given the familiarity between the firms. The parallel-twin will apparently be given extensively changes for the i3, especially given that the requirements for a motorcycle engine and a range extender being run at a constant load are very different.

While other carmakers, including electric pioneer Nissan,  are downgrading their EV euphoria, GM’s CEO Dan Akerson suddenly sounds uncharacteristically gung-ho on the issue. At an industry conference, he says GM is working on developing an electric car that has a range of as much as 200 miles.

“There will be breakthroughs in battery technology, they’re on the horizon,” Akerson said at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference, while Bloomberg was taking notes. “We’re actually developing a car today which is really anathema to the way the auto industry works: We’re running a dual play on the technology to see which one will succeed. One will result in a 100-mile range, the other will be a 200-mile range.”

Even the true believers at GM-Volt are skeptical. Said one commenter:

“Musk talk from Akerson. Sounds like the battery experiments have not crashed and burned yet. Or just get a Model S today.”

I have talked to several large OEMs, and none of them sees a battery breakthrough on the horizon, at least not on an horizon that is visible with the naked eye. Toyota and BMW are collaborating on a lithium air battery, but they aren’t sure whether it will work at all.

Both a 100 mile and a 200 mile EV can be built today. Just load a lot of batteries in it, then, charge a lot. In all senses of the word.

If Elon Musk is still smarting about how much damage the New York Times has done to Tesla, the fledgling automaker can take comfort in the fact that the positive reviews are still pouring in.

For example, take a look at this glowing write-up on the Model S from Road & Track’s Jason Cammisa. Although the Tesla’s door handles receive a vigorous and thorough critical assessment, its other flaws are glossed over or simply omitted from consideration. After praising the Model S for  its remarkable driving dynamics, amazing powertrain and homegrown pedigree, Cammisa gets to the real meat of the EV issue – and promptly sidesteps it all.

Set aside the discussion as to whether EVs are actually feasible 
given our overtaxed power grid, and whether our electricity-generating power plants are any more environmentally friendly than a really efficient gasoline engine. Ignore, for a moment, that we don’t know how the Model S will age or how reliable it will be a decade on. Time will answer all of these, as well as the question of whether Tesla itself can stay solvent long enough to survive into maturity. We set them aside with the knowledge that the Tesla S means these discussions will finally be worth having. The Model S is the car that proves that the EV isn’t just viable, but truly desirable.

In my opinion, the above paragraph represents a pulled punch with respect to the real issues surrounding Tesla and EVs. It’s fine to evaluate the performance, aesthetics and build quality of the Model S as one would with any other car, especially in a road test. But 0-60 times and lateral g’s are a small part of the picture here. If EVs do not contribute to a net reduction in carbon emissions, why bother with a powertrain that offers significant compromises over an ICE equivalent? If Tesla cannot keep itself afloat, or if the car will turn into a 4000-lb paperweight in a decade, is buying a Model S a prudent decision? Despite leaving these critical questions unanswered, Cammisa somehow asserts that EVs are in fact “viable” and that these discussions are “…will finally be worth having”.

My question is, why aren’t we having them already, in influential publications like Road & Track? Despite what Cammisa says, we don’t have to wait for time to pass before we know the answers. A bit of intellectual labor can give us a picture of how things will play out. Furthermore a publication like R&T has both the budget and freedom from the daily grind of the blogosphere news cycle to delve into these matters.

Sure, there are a number of agenda-driven entities that propagate bad information and do little to enhance the discourse, but isn’t journalism all about sifting through bad information to find the truth? I’ve been down this road before; when the “scandal” regarding the Tesla Roadster and “bricked” batteries came out early in 2012, TTAC was among the first to call bullshit on the claims of the plaintiffs. The exercise illuminated why doing the “hard work” was so important. This is an era where hearsay can quickly become fact – a dangerous prospect given how much bad information is already floating around out there. The onus is on us as journalists to, well, do our jobs and find out the truth – whether it’s getting to the bottom of a malicious smear campaign against a fledgling startup, or determining the viability of pure EVs outside of the normal “car guy” parameters of going fast and looking cool.

The Tesla vs. New York Times controversy has finally left the news cycle, forgotten in less time than it takes a Model S to juice up at a Supercharger station.  Meanwhile, BMW is ready to introduce its new range of “i” vehicles, which will conveniently dodge the whole question of range anxiety.

Select European outlets were invited for ride-alongs in BMW’s new i3 city car and i8 supercar. The impressions gleaned from ride-alongs are generally next to worthless, but the technology being used by BMW is worth examining. Rather than a pure EV, BMW will be adopting a three-pronged approach – a pure EV, a range extender and a plug-in hybrid.

The i3, a small hatchback meant for urban driving, will adopt the BMW ActiveE’s drivetrain, with an electric motor mounted in the rear, making 168 horsepower and 184 lb-ft of torque. Maximum range is said to be 140 miles, though 80-100 miles is a more realistic figure according to BMW. The i3 will be slightly bigger than a Mini Cooper, but will weigh just 2750 lbs and git 60 mph in 7.2 seconds. And unlike the Mini, it’s rear-drive.

But the most interesting aspect of the i3 is the range extender option. Unlike the plug-in hybrid option on the i8 supercar (which uses a three-cylinder turbocharged engine and an electric motor to power the wheels), the range extender in the i3 is strictly used to help maintain the battery’s charge if it falls below a predetermined level. It does not power the drive wheels under any circumstances. The 650cc parallel-twin could help increase the i3′s range to as much as 200 miles according to BMW, though specifics were scant.

As much as pure EV enthusiasts may scoff at the idea of any carbon-emitting technology sullying the zero-emissions dream, range extender technology could become prominent as a means of expanding the viability of electric vehicles. Small motorcycle engines (like the i3) and even rotary engines are being floated as possible solutions, while other more radical possibilities are being researched right now. Serenergy, a Danish firm, makes a fuel cell system based on methanol that could be adopted for this purpose. While methanol fell out of vogue in the 90s, the prospect of creating it from sources like solid waste has helped revive interest in methanol as a biofuel. On a broader scale, range extenders could alleviate one of the main psychological deterrents to EV adoption – the fear of running out of juice, rendering you totally stranded – by offering a reliable fail-safe in case of battery depletion. And if it’s a rear engine, rear drive compact, all the better for those of us who still enjoy the act of driving.

The New York Times had their public editor (think ombudsman) publish a response to the whole “Dead Tesla’ fiasco (summary by our own Dan Wallach here), and it is far from kind to reporter John Broder.

While Public Editor Margaret Sullivan defends Broder against Tesla founder Elon Musk’s claims that he “faked” his test drive, she does just about everything else possible to impugn his journalistic cred. Witness Sullivan’s epic qualification when sticking up for her writer

My own findings are not dissimilar to the reader I quote above, although I do not believe Mr. Broder hoped the drive would end badly. I am convinced that he took on the test drive in good faith, and told the story as he experienced it.

Did he use good judgment along the way? Not especially. In particular, decisions he made at a crucial juncture – when he recharged the Model S in Norwich, Conn., a stop forced by the unexpected loss of charge overnight – were certainly instrumental in this saga’s high-drama ending.

Sullivan claims she consulted with

“…Mr. Broder, Mr. Musk, two key Tesla employees, other Times journalists, the tow-truck driver and his dispatcher, and a Tesla owner in California, among others…I’ve also had a number of talks with my brother, a physician, car aficionado and Tesla fan, who has helped me balance what might have been a tendency to unconsciously side with a seasoned and respected journalist – my own “confirmation bias.”

Perhaps Ms. Sullivan’s brother could have been replaced by someone with an engineering or automotive background rather than a Tesla fan and car nut, who surely comes with his own set of biases and, in the case of the average car aficionado, opinions that are largely formed based on hearsay and a quick scan of a buff book while waiting in the CVS checkout line.

Also missing is one crucial element that most of you are aware of, but Sullivan seems ignorant of; the element of pressure from an OEM when testing a car or anything related to the car on a manufacturer-arranged drive. Tesla has operated some of the most tightly controlled testing protocols we’ve seen in some time (TTAC has yet to drive the car outside of a brief preview). If anything, invoking the Holy Cause of journalistic integrity would call for Sullivan and the NYT to push back against any interference or petulant PR campaign from Tesla and Elon Musk. In the wake of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, the Grey Lady is doubtlessly sensitive to claims of journalistic incompetence – or worse. But if Sullivan had consulted someone besides a few Tesla employees and her brother, this crucial element may have been brought to the surface, and a different tone may have been adopted.

Carlos Ghosn’s assertion that “...electric vehicles could represent 10% of the global market in the next ten years, or 6 million vehicles…” may no longer be en vogue over at Renault, at least according to French business paper La Tribune.

The paper claims that Ghosn added a qualifier to this claim during a presentation to discuss Renault’s latest financial results. Regarding the 10 percent claims, Ghosn cautioned that “this will be the case where the vehicles will be sold…“, suggesting that the volumes would be restricted to certain markets, rather than globally.

Ironically, the remarks come as the Leaf celebrated 50,000 units globally – a nice milestone for Nissan, but still rather small numbers in the grand scheme of things. Ghosn is of course, still bullish on EV prospects, but it appears as if some of the juice has been drained from those particular batteries.

Those who watched the State of the Union address last night and have an interest in autos may have noticed a conspicuous absence; Barack Obama failed to mention his goal of putting 1 million EVs on the road by 2015.

Obama last mentioned the figure in 2011, stating

At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

Since then, the figure has been absent from the address. In 2012 did see Obama promise to  ”…not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany…” Well, we all know what happened to A123 Systems.

Tow truck delivers Model S to charging station

New York Times reporter John Broder told a harrowing story of a test drive from Delaware to Connecticut in a Tesla-supplied Model S. Broder wanted to review both the car and Tesla’s Supercharger stations along I95. The drive ended on a flatbed truck with a Model S that had run out of juice. The story landed Broder on Elon Musk’s shitlist.

“NYTimes article about Tesla range in cold is fake. Vehicle logs tell true story that he didn’t actually charge to max & took a long detour,” Musk tweeted, and the Tweet was re-tweeted more than a thousand times.

New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told Reuters that the article about Broder’s test drive “was completely factual, describing the trip in detail exactly as it occurred. Any suggestion that the account was ‘fake’ is, of course, flatly untrue.”

The report, which is required reading for both EV lovers and haters, is big on suspense. After an uneventful drive from Washington D C, it gets interesting after a 49 minute stop at the first Supercharger. Only after turning the heat to low, and later to off, Broder limps into the next Supercharger station with “Recharge Now” flashing in red.

Broder is going north, and it is getting cold. The Model S does not like it. After a night parked in Connecticut, two thirds of the available range are gone. Even after an emergency charge on the way, the battery is exhausted and the car shuts down. A tow truck is called. There are problems getting the car on the flatbed because an “electrically actuated parking brake would not release without battery power.”

Broder documents everything in great detail, along with many calls to Tesla, all the way up to Tesla’s chief technology officer, J B Straubel.

The New York Times spokeswoman said Broder “followed the instructions he was given in multiple conversations with Tesla personnel,” and “there was no unreported detour,” as Musk claims.

Better Place is shutting the doors of its Australian and American operations, and will concentrate on its Danish and Israeli divisions. The New York Times reported the news just days after Evan Thornley, head of Better Place Australia, left his post as CEO after just three months on the job.

Commeter Autobraz linked to this informative (and politically heavy-handed) article written by an Israeli expatriate over at Daily Kos regarding Better Place and some of the shenanigans that occurred since its inception. Rather than make a poor attempt at summarizing it, I highly recommend reading it for some added context. One example that sticks out is ex-founder Shai Agassi’s semi-symbolic ordering of 100,000 Renault Fluence EVs with swappable batteries. Meanwhile, Nissan has sold about 40,000 Leafs globally.

The author likes Agassi to Steve Jobs and BP to Apple, noting that without Agassi, the driving force behind BP is gone, and the company will likely follow suit. Arguably, the two also share a similar “reality distortion field” – a phenomenon that may work in consumer electronics, but rarely succeeds in the auto industry.

Today must be International Backpedaling Day. Volkswagen said “Never mind beat Toyota by 2018.”  Obama says: “Never mind a million EVs by 2015.”

Under a new strategy announced today, the Department of Energy promised to support research into new battery technologies and manufacturing methods that would lower the cost of lightweight materials and improve vehicles’ fuel-efficiency, Reuters reports.

But the DOE backpedales furiously from a goal set out in a 2011 State of the Union speech, where President Barack Obama announced what he called “Apollo projects of our times.” One of them was the goal for the United States to be “the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.”

“Whether we meet that goal in 2015 or 2016, that’s less important than that we’re on the right path to get many millions of these vehicles on the road,” an unnamed Energy Department official told Reuters.

Reuters notes that “demand for hybrids and electric vehicles has been weaker than expected.” Government money was poured into black holes. Says Reuters:

“Poor demand has hurt lithium-ion battery makers, pushing two DOE grant recipients, A123 Systems Inc and EnerDel, to file for bankruptcy protection. Dow Chemical Co took a $1.1 billion charge last year, related in part to a writedown of its lithium-ion battery business, Dow-Kokam LLC.”

Better Place Australia’s future is in serious jeopardy after its CEO resigned, amid plans to restrict new investment to Israel and Denmark, Better Place’s main markets.

Evan Thornley, Better Place’s CEO (and a native of Australia), stepped down just three months into the job. A note released to his staff, obtained by The Australian, said:

“…in recent times, strong and honestly held differences have emerged at the most senior levels of the company about how we best take the company forward…I do not wish to be a barrier to that unity and so will step down and let the company transition to new leadership…”

Prior to the New Year, around a quarter of Better Place Australia’s staff was let ago, along with half of the company’s Israeli staff. Thornley’s resignation apparently comes over differences in strategy; with battery swap stations on the ground in Canberra, Australia’s capital city, Thornley’s hometown of Melbourne was next on the list. But with Better Place’s funding situation on shaky ground, the board decided to shift direction and focus on markets like Israel and Denmark, with significant infrastructure and cars that are compatible with BP’s network of battery swap stations.

Thornley relaced founder Shai Agassi as CEO of Better Place, after a dispute with chairman Idan Ofer led to Agassi’s ouster. Now, investors and observers in Israeli are growing frustrated with the company’s substantial cash burn and management changes. Aside from Better Place’s inherently risky nature as a start-up business, the industry seems to be shifting away from their prior EV enthusiasm, with hydrogen fuel-cells suddenly en vogue yet again.