Author: EVAI

Tesla cuts prices nearly across the board and appears to be pushing more people into Full Self Driving. Disney is making a popular automotive ride all-electric. Airless tires look like the future. And do in-wheel motors make more sense for EV conversions? This and more, here at Green Car Reports. 

The Tesla Model Y undercuts the Model 3 by $5,000—for those who are EV tax credit eligible—under the latest round of Tesla price cuts made on Saturday. With it, the base Model Y rear-wheel drive could cost just $37,130, with other state incentives yet to be deducted. Tesla has also dropped the price of what it calls Full Self Driving to $8,000, but it’s eliminated the popular $6,000 Enhanced Autopilot option.

Michelin believes that airless tires are the future. But with this tech that could be especially well-suited for robotaxis, EVs, and more still under development and at the prototype stage, the company is also focusing on other tech like sustainable materials and retreads. 

The U.K.-based company that now owns Protean in-wheel motors has showcased a Land Rover Defender EV conversion that doesn’t gain weight in the translation. Although it’s modest in its electric range, the idea acts as a technology proof point and, perhaps, a lot more. 

Disneyland has now confirmed that its Autopia ride will go fully electric in 2026. The attraction for kids, started with sponsorship by an oil company, has run for decades with internal combustion mini-cars, but it’s supposed to represent the future.

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Prototypes are usually destroyed after development of a given vehicle is complete, but this Ferrari LaFerrari prototype escaped that fate and is now up for auction on SBX Cars. This car is a third-phase prototype designated by the factory as an F150 Protipo Preserie PS1, according to the auction listing. As a later-phase prototype, it’s visually…

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Tesla on Saturday once again cut prices on several of its models for the U.S. market, as part of around-the-world price cuts. Given the cuts, anyone considering the Model 3 and Model Y in the U.S. may want to take a fresh look at the numbers. 

The base price of the Model Y rear-wheel drive has dropped $2,000 versus last week, to $44,630, while the Model Y Long Range AWD price has dropped by the same amount to $49,630. Both are eligible for the $7,500 EV tax credit, cutting the effective price for many households to just $37,130 and $42,130 respectively. 

The Model 3 didn’t get a corresponding price cut and, as of Monday morning, retains its pricing at $42,130 for the base RWD Model 3 and $49,380 for the Model 3 Long Range AWD. The Model 3 also doesn’t qualify for the EV tax credit. 

Tesla Model 3

So Americans in an income bracket that qualifies them for the federal EV tax credit—that’s a modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) limitation of $300,000 for married couples filing jointly, $225,000 for head of household, or $150,000 for other filers—can get the Model Y Long Range AWD for the same price as the base Model 3 RWD. In addition, the base Model Y RWD now undercuts the base Model 3 by $5,000 for the tax-credit-eligible.

Production facilities and Tesla’s anticipation of higher production volume for the Model Y might also be playing a role in this pricing move. The Model Y is currently the top-selling EV—and passenger vehicle, in the world; it’s produced for America at both the Fremont, California, factory and in Austin, Texas, while the Model 3 is only made for the U.S. at Fremont. 

2024 Tesla Model Y. – Courtesy of Tesla, Inc.

Prices of the Model S and Model X also dropped as part of the cuts, by $2,000 in both cases. Tesla has also dropped the price of its so-called Full Self Driving package to $8,000, from $12,000 (and $15,000 until recently), eliminating the $6,000 Enhanced Autopilot option that was necessary for adaptive cruise control functionality paired with steering assist. 

“Your car will be able to drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention,” Tesla currently touts as part of its explanation for FSD. 

The company has typically dropped prices toward the end of a respective quarter, so the timing is a bit odd. The first quarter of 2024 was Tesla’s worst for sales since pandemic shutdowns. Its quarterly call is Tuesday, April 23, so this might be a proactive (and pre-emptive) move from Tesla management, including CEO Elon Musk, to spark interest. 

Note: Green Car Reports always includes mandatory fees when possible, and from here on it’s including Tesla’s $250 “order fee”—for lack of a reasonable way to avoid the fee.

Aston Martin’s DBX has only been around for a couple of years but has already received its first update. For the 2025 model year, the high-performance SUV is being offered exclusively in the range-topping DBX707 grade. It also features a revamped interior borrowing technology from the latest DB12 and Vantage sports cars. The Porsche Cayenne…

Michelin built its name on tires that ride on a cushion of air. But the top tire-maker in the world sees the future as completely airless.  

“We are convinced at Michelin that airless is the future technology that is necessary for many reasons,” Cyrille Roget, the company’s director of scientific and technical communications, said to Green Car Reports at a recent event that emphasized sustainability and EVs. 

One of those reasons, he explained, is that globally about 20% of tires are taken out of service prematurely due to sidewall damage or a puncture. With around 1.6 billion tires annually reaching the end of their service life each year, that adds up to about 320 million tires annually “that potentially could have been saved by airless technology,” Roget said. 

“It’s a technology that really is useful in our approach of sustainability, because it saves material and it saves time,” he explained. And with less material and less overall manufacturing time invested, it’s likely to wear a lower lifetime carbon footprint—an aspect that automakers are especially aware of with EVs. 

Michelin Uptis airless tires

No flats, no blowouts, no pressure checks

Michelin’s prototype airless tire line, Uptis (Unique Puncture-proof Tire System), may have been conceived to have less impact on the environment, but as the name origin suggests it has other big advantages. Although the tires weigh slightly more than standard air-filled tires, vehicles don’t need to be equipped with spares, jacks, repair kits, or tire-pressure sensors. From a safety standpoint, it avoids flats and blowouts and assures consistency in ride and handling in a way that air-filled tires might not. 

GM, Michelin Uptis airless tire prototype

As Michelin has outlined before, it thinks airless is a perfect fit for EVs and their greater curb weights, as well as autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing, or other technology or services that need to be up and running all the time. 

At one point it looked like airless tires might be ready for the road surprisingly soon. In 2019, with the introduction of Uptis, Michelin and GM announced that the automaker would be testing it on the Chevy Bolt EV. GM was bullish on its Cruise autonomous-vehicle unit at that time, and it was suggested by the companies that original-equipment airless tires might debut on a 2024 GM EV. Neither company has responded to Green Car Reports with takeaways of that test. 

Michelin Uptis airless tire on French postal van

Tests in delivery fleets, talks with Tesla

But more tests continue on this tech, which the company describes as being at the prototype stage. In 2023, Michelin announced Uptis real-world trials with both DHL Express in Singapore, and with La Poste, the French postal service. They’re fitting about 50 vehicles in each of those fleets with Uptis tires, Roget explained, and the idea will be to capture as much data as possible. 

Michelin needs all that data, because despite its more than 130 years making pneumatic tires, airless tires bring new challenges. 

“Airless technology is completely new in terms of design, in terms of production, in terms of homologation, so we have to learn everything,” Roget summed. “And that’s why we have those two years that we will test with DHL and Le Poste to the end of 2025.”

At that same time Michelin confirmed it has been in talks with Tesla about testing Uptis. So along with wireless EV charging, it might be another ideal hands-off technology fit for future Tesla Robotaxis. 

Roget notes that Uptis remains in prototype form and technically isn’t homologated for on-the-road use, but Michelin has an exception to be able to place them in test use.

Tesla Model 3 with prototype Goodyear airless tires

There have been other attempts at airless tire designs. Hankook and Bridgestone are among the several others that have presented airless tire concepts, and Goodyear has a prototype. Toyota and the tire maker Sumitomo debuted weight-saving airless tires combined with in-wheel motors in a 2017 concept, noting then that it needed to make progress in cutting rolling resistance, which was still higher than inflated designs at the time. Then it showed what appeared to be an evolution of the tires in its 2023 Lunar Cruiser EV concept. 

Toyota Baby Lunar Cruiser concept

But Michelin boasts that it’s the “only manufacturer in the world to run an airless tire on open roads under real-world conditions as part of commercial contracts.” The company also says the tires are “currently fitted on a fleet of vehicles in Las Vegas and Thailand” with clients the company isn’t disclosing. 

In the meantime, Michelin has worked on a new material within the tires, incorporating fiberglass, that can reach a level of performance very close to other modern tires. The tech has been tested internally at Michelin and has covered more than two million miles, according to the company—and, as an executive said last year, at up to 130 mph with police use in mind. 

Michelin tweel

Building on Tweel

Uptis isn’t Michelin’s first or only airless technology. It introduced Tweel (tire plus wheel) as a concept in 2005 and made it commercially available for specific low-speed applications starting in 2012, and they’re now used in a range of things from riding mowers to industrial equipment. 

Michelin’s South Carolina facility was the first facility in the world to build Tweel, and the concept was born in the company’s Greenville research center, so it’s fitting that location hosts both global development of airless tires and production of the pilot-production tires to be tested.

Michelin Uptis airless prototype tires

While airless might not be prevalent for decades, Michelin is also working on a number of other more sustainable solutions, especially for EVs that wear through tires much quicker. One of those is greener, EV-specific tires with greatly increased sustainable materials—42% or more in a prototype recently presented and due by 2025. It’s also hoping to revive the popularity of retreads with a reboot of the tech for trucks, allowing up to five retreads while reusing the tires’ carbon-intensive structure.

Whether with Uptis, Tweel, retreads, or sustainable-material tires, these solutions all make smarter use of the materials and processes needed to make these wearable items we rely on every day. And that’s certainly not just hot air. 

U.K.-based Bedeo is launching a Land Rover Defender EV conversion based around in-wheel motors from Bedeo-owned Protean Electric.

The Defender is the first in a series of “Reborn Electric: Icons” conversions, according to a Bedeo press release. The program will expand the company beyond its current business of electric van conversions to the burgeoning cottage industry of electrified classic cars—and, perhaps, to more contracts to supply its in-wheel motor tech.

Land Rover Defender EV conversion by Protean

The first completed Defender EV has a 75-kwh battery pack affording 153 miles of WLTP range—likely in the vicinity of just 110 to 125 miles if it were to be run in EPA-cycle tests. A standard 22-kw AC onboard charger can recharge the pack in an estimated five hours, while optional DC fast charging can do the same in 90 minutes (likely less time for the more typical 80% charge).

Bedeo claims it’s “committed” to maintaining the original curb weight and driving dynamics with each of these builds, achieved in part through “the advantages of weight reduction and engineering enhancements” of in-wheel motors. The company didn’t reveal the curb weight of this example.

While numerous companies and DIYers are already converting older internal-combustion vehicles to electric power, Bedeo also claims to be the first to use in-wheel motors in such a conversion.

Protean in-wheel electric motor

Protean has had a production in-wheel motor for more than a decade. Prior to its current U.K. ownership, the now-defunct Chinese-funded automaker NEVS, which had been reworking some of Saab’s assets, bought Protean in 2019.

Since then, Dongfeng, a Chinese automaker with a Volkswagen joint venture, has sourced Protean motors for its Fengshen E70 sedan. Dongfeng claims to have the world’s first passenger car to be homologated for sale with in-wheel motors, but the Lordstown Endurance pickup truck previously used them as well, sourced from Elaphe. Very few Endurance trucks were built, however.

On April 10th, heavy thunderstorms wreaked havoc on the southern United States and New Orleans was hit particularly hard. With 70 mile per hour winds and more than 8 inches of rain, many roads became completely impassable, especially for smaller cars. Due to how quickly the rain accumulated, the city’s drainage pumps were unable to move the water fast enough or even generate enough power to fully operate the pumps.

Despite the high water levels in many areas, plenty of trucks and SUVs were out on the streets that day after being caught in the storm. One vehicle in particular captured the attention of AccuWeather’s social media team. A Tesla Cybertruck can be seen among the cars driving the flooded streets of New Orleans.

While the AccuWeather account seems to be calling out the Tesla driver in particular, it was not the only vehicle present on the same flooded street. Driving in flood waters can be dangerous no matter what vehicle you’re in, but the water levels here are not especially unusual for flash floods seen in Louisiana, Texas, and other Gulf Coast states. 

When possible, you should always shelter in a safe place. But if you happen to be caught in a sudden flood with nowhere to go, then there are probably worse vehicles you could be driving. The Cybertruck is even uniquely suited to such events thanks to its featured ‘Wade Mode’ which Tesla describes as allowing the Cybertruck “to enter and drive through bodies of water. This is especially useful when off-roading and you need to drive through water, such as rivers or creeks.”

Elon Musk even once claimed that the Cybertruck could be used to “serve briefly as a boat” saying that it could cross “lakes & seas that aren’t too choppy”. But it’s quite clear that the Cybertruck is not capable of this in any way. Unless they are some very narrow, shallow seas.

Just last December, Musk said that the Cybertruck would eventually come with an optional “boat” mode. We’re willing to bet this never comes to fruition, but even if it does, no currently delivered Cybertruck is capable of this. 

Tesla currently lists the maximum wade depth as 32 inches from the bottom of the tire. This mode sets the vehicle’s ride height to Very High and can be used for up to 30 minutes in high waters at very slow speeds. But Tesla also heavily cautions the use of this feature saying “It is your responsibility to gauge the depth of any body of water before entering. Damage or water ingress to Cybertruck as a result of driving in water is not covered by the warranty.”

We have also seen the Wade Mode recently demonstrated in much higher water levels that resulted in damage to the vehicle. So don’t risk losing your life or hurting your $100,000 truck if you don’t have to. Otherwise, AccuWeather will be forced to scold you too. 

Looking for the utility of a pickup truck but don’t want the size or fuel economy penalty of a full-size truck? The Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz fit the bill. They both seat five and ride like compact crossovers, and their small beds and modest length mean they easily fit into garages and parking spaces. Launched in 2022…

The first Lotus Formula 1 car will be among the featured lots at a Bonhams auction scheduled for May 10 in Monaco. The original Team Lotus dissolved in the early 1990s (other unrelated teams subsequently used the Lotus name), but it was once an F1 powerhouse, winning seven Constructors’ and six Drivers’ Championships with innovative cars designed…