What We’re Reading

• Tesla’s big price cuts mean ‘a major shift in the EV market’ (The Verge, January 14, 2023)

  Tesla’s announcement last week that it would dramatically lower the starting price of several models by up to 20% excited some car buyers for whom price had been a barrier, but upset many current owners—especially recent owners—who bought at higher prices. “The Model 3 Performance, for example, dropped from nearly $63,000 to $54,000 before any tax credits. The Model Y Performance has gone down from nearly $70,000 to about $57,000, also before the tax credits.” The price cuts have the added benefit of actually making some models eligible for tax cuts, creating greater accessibility in a market that has been criticized for pricing out the average consumer.

  Why is Tesla making such steep cuts, and why now? One likely reason is competition. While the EV market is predicted to grow significantly in 2023, supply chain challenges could make it difficult for OEMs to deliver. With its steep price cuts, Tesla is seen as “positioning itself to scoop up consumers unwilling to wait or who may be on the fence about EV technology by enticing them with one thing all buyers respond to—a deal.” Another likely reason is investor pressure to increase deliveries.

  What’s the catch? Although the tax incentive rules remain in flux (as we noted a few weeks back), to take full advantage of the price cuts with tax incentives, buyers will need to take delivery by March 31 when new battery sourcing rules become effective. Whether Tesla will be able to meet that deadline with the inevitable increased demand resulting from its pay cuts remains to be seen.

• Computers that power self-driving cars could be a huge driver of global carbon emissions (MIT News, January 13, 2023)

  While AV technologies often are assumed to have a net positive environmental impact, researchers at MIT are pushing back on that assumption based on the results of a complex new study showing that “the energy needed to run the powerful computers on board a global fleet of autonomous vehicles could generate as many greenhouse gas emissions as all the data centers in the world today.”

  Although the global environmental impact of data centers receives little attention, they “currently account for about 0.3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the International Energy Agency. MIT researchers estimate that “1 billion autonomous vehicles, each driving for one hour per day with a computer consuming 840 watts, would consume enough energy to generate about the same amount of emissions as data centers currently do.”

  To reduce this environmental impact, the researchers are now turning their attention to developing more efficient hardware, including hardware to run more specific and efficient algorithms, without compromising safety.

  Read more coverage of the study from yahoo!news here.

• NTSB Chair Raises Safety Concerns About Heavy Electric Vehicles (Claims Journal, January 12, 2023)

  U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy expressed concerns that the significantly increased weight of EVs over traditional ICE vehicles may lead to more severe injuries and fatalities in vehicle collisions. As examples, she pointed to the GMC Hummer EV, which weighs 3,000 pounds more than its ICE version, and the Ford F-150 Lightning, which also weighs 2,000 to 3,000 pounds more than the standard F-150. Homendy said that the “heavier weight ‘has a significant impact on safety for all road users,’” and “[w]e have to be careful that we aren’t also creating unintended consequences: more death on our roads.” NHTSA Acting Chair Ann Carlson also has expressed concerns about EV weight, telling reporters that the agency is “studying the impact of vehicle size on roadway safety.”