Instagram, Facebook’s hotter, snootier subsidiary, may have a massive data breach on its hands.

The Electric Car Charging Infrastructure Is Nowhere Near Ready But I Have An Idea. Tesla has 5. 00,0. Model 3, Chevy has a $3. Europe have set timelines to eliminate the sale of new combustion cars, and electric vehicles may end up being cheaper to build than dead- dinosaur- sauce- burning cars.

It sure seems like electric cars are here to stay, but the truth is they’re still a pain in the ass to use when it comes to charging. I think I may have a workable stopgap solution. The latest generation of electric cars have defined a 2. Being able to drive 2.

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Tesla has 500,000 reservations for the Model 3, Chevy has a $35,000, 200+ mile-range electric vehicle, a number of countries in Europe have set timelines to eliminate. I’m not scared to say it: I love a good Subway sandwich. My dad used to take me to the only Subway in town after we went grocery shopping, and I remember tracking. Good morning! Welcome to The Morning Shift, your roundup of the auto news you crave, all in one place every weekday morning. Here are the important stories you need.

The range for many electric cars is finally where it needs to be, but, like all good things, that range does eventually run out, and that’s where the problems begin. Watch The Ultimate Fighter Season 9 Episode 2. The charging infrastructure, while at least in some way extant, can in no way compete with the convenience of the robust gasoline- refueling infrastructure drivers are used to, and that’s going to be a problem for widespread adoption.

For most owners, charging is done every night, at home, and the cars, like the plot of a shitty sitcom, always end up back where they started once the day’s adventures are over. This works fine for many people, but if you’re one of the millions of Americans who live in apartments without EV charging facilities, or if you just want to take a long road trip, the limitations of the current charging infrastructure become very, very clear. As of June of this year, there were around 1. EV charging stations with about 4. United States. That seems like a decent number, but most of those seem to be slow Level 2 charging stations, with the fast DC charging stations, like the Tesla Superchargers, only numbering 2,1.

It’s these fast DC stations that are most suitable to long- distance travel, since they don’t take 6 or 8 hours to get your car back to a usuable charge. Now, for comparison, there’s about 1. United States, with each station having.. These numbers vary wildly, from tiny stations with 2 or 4 to huge truck stops with 3. We’ll guess conservatively that an average station has 1.

U. S. That’s a hell of a lot more. Gas stations are, as we all know, everywhere.

So, here’s where we are: electric cars are finally becoming affordable and practical enough to make sense to use, but if you want to do any significant traveling in one, it’s still a colossal ass- pain. But I think I have a decent stop- gap solution.

The key here is that to make a viable electric car charging infrastructure, we’ll need to piggyback on an existing infrastructure, and the most logical one to use is the gas station network. Trying to wire all gas stations or even one given chain of gas stations with the hardware needed for fast DC chargers would be expensive and slow. That type of network will need to come one day, but in the short term we need something fast and good enough. That’s where Trunk Batteries come in. Here’s what needs to happen: one (or more) of the major gas station franchises needs to partner with a hypothetical company that produces modular, rechargeable, swappable battery packs that can be placed into an electric car’s trunk, connect to the car’s charging system, and give the car a decent enough amount of range to be useful. It’d work like this: you’re taking your Model 3 or Bolt or Model S or whatever on a road trip, and you see you’re running out of battery power.

Instead of hunting around to desperately find a charging station in range, you take the next exit, stop at a normal gas station, and back (or drive up, if you have a front trunk) up to the Trunk Battery kiosk. Once there, you open your trunk and a forklift- like device places the ~2. The battery pack has a place to hold your hood or hatch nearly closed while allowing a cable room to snake out and plug into your car’s charging port. You plug it in, check your range and see you have around 1. When you exhaust the Trunk Battery, you stop at the next Trunk Battery- licensed gas station, and either drop off the battery or have it swapped for a fresh one. Easy! Thanks to the Tesla Model 3's new 2.

EV trunks with a range of around 9. Here, I’ll walk you through the math: each 2. Wh, and weighs 6. If we get 1. 50. 0 of these cells together, that makes a nearly 3.

Wh battery pack with 2. Most sources say that you can expect an average of about 3 miles per k. Wh, so our 3. 2 k. Wh battery pack should provide about 9. If we package these 1. If we factor in wiring and cooling devices and housing, we can probably end up with a ~2. Tesla Model S, and should fit in the hatch or trunk area of pretty much any major EV available for sale.

Any gas station franchise that decides to deal in Trunk Batteries would need a bit of equipment: a self- contained kiosk that stores and recharges battery packs, along with a lift/drop system for getting them easily into and out of car trunks. These would take a bit of design and engineering work, but it’s by no means all that complicated. Additionally, since the Trunk Battery system is, essentially, a third- party battery swapping system, the viability and benefits of a battery swapping solution would be made very clear.

If Trunk Batteries became popular, carmakers may start including auxiliary charging ports right inside their trunks, or, even better, manufacturers would eventually agree on a standardized battery format and connector system to make all of the car’s batteries easily swappable by design, and without eating up precious luggage space. A solution like Trunk Batteries isn’t a long- term solution; it’s a stopgap that provides a way to leverage the existing robust gas station infrastructure in a quick- and- dirty way. Using a Trunk Battery means giving up a good chunk of your storage volume, and, at only about 1. Watch The Guard Online (2017). Even so, it would at least make an impromptu road trip possible, and allow for EVs to be used generally the same way combustion cars get used, without the route limitations and obsessive planning that’s usually required for any EV road trip. Right now, though, I think a solution like Trunk Batteries is the most likely way the coming boom of electric car ownership will be served while a real charging infrastructure is slowly built. It’s a solution that should only be needed for about a decade or so, but, without it, EVs may not even be able to sell in the numbers needed to have a full charging network make sense. As always, investors are welcome to contact me here.

Is ‘Sparky’ too obvious a name for the talking battery pack mascot?

Jeep Sale To Chinese Company May Be Going Nowhere. Good morning! Welcome to The Morning Shift, your roundup of the auto news you crave, all in one place every weekday morning. Here are the important stories you need to know. Gear: All Politics Is Local. Just a day after it said that it was interested in buying Jeep, China’s Great Wall Motor threw water all over that fire, Bloomberg reports: Great Wall said there are “big uncertainties” whether it will continue to study Fiat Chrysler, the Baoding- based automaker said in a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange.

The Chinese company’s efforts have “not generated concrete progress as of now,” and it has not established contacts with Fiat’s board.[..]“We cannot ignore the potential policy hurdles involved in a potential cross- border M& A,” Ha and Sun said in the note. The chance of a significant M& A for GWM is still remote.”And part of the reason why this deal could have fallen apart before it even truly got started is because the political mood in the United States isn’t exactly favoring massive takeovers of storied American #brands at the moment, Reuters says: Any bid now - and it would potentially be one of China’s largest ever overseas deals - would come at a time when Beijing is trying to limit extravagant Chinese purchases abroad, and when the political environment has cooled in the United States. China’s cabinet on Friday issued rules on overseas acquisitions for the first time.I am sort of curious about what Fiat Chrysler head Sergio Marchionne will do if he can’t sell off the company either as a whole, or in pieces. Maybe he’ll sell his desk or something. Gear: Well I Guess We Can Rule Out Chery. While GWM might be in a buying mood for Jeep, another big Chinese carmaker appears to be ruling itself out.

Chery, which exports more cars than any other Chinese brand, is apparently not a buyer, Reuters notes: Chinese state- owned Chery Automobile Co [CHERY. UL] aims to rely only on organic means to grow its international sales, its CEO said, underlining a strategy that is different from its private sector rivals who have either made or are considering acquisitions.[..]And while the company was open to forms of cooperation such as joint ventures, it was not actively looking for mergers and acquisitions in its bid to crack markets such as Western Europe, Chen said.“We’re today not active in the merger and acquisitions market, in the big deals so to speak. We are open for cooperation as always, but fundamentally, we have consistently organically grown our markets by our own capability and sometimes with cooperation,” he said.Has anyone heard from Geely yet? I can’t wait for a Wrangler with Volvo safety and Lotus- tuned suspension. Gear: Diesel Is A “Vital Interest” For The German State.

Diesel- fueled engines have been a staple of the German automotive industry for decades, but as of this moment it looks like Dieselgate will be its death knell. Everyone from Volkswagen to BMW to Mercedes is seemingly pouring massive resources into electric propulsion instead, but that doesn’t mean the German state is giving up, Bloomberg reports: “We have a vital interest in preserving diesel as a technology because it emits far less CO2 than other technologies,” Peter Altmaier, Merkel’s chief of staff, said in a Bloomberg TV interview in Berlin. At the same time we have to make sure that all the rules are respected and all the regulations are fully implemented.”But how far does Germany go to preserve diesel technology? And when does it give up?

Gear: It Turns Out All Those Technological Doo- Dads Are Working. Olds the world over may be lamenting the death of the REAL CAR where you did everything yourself because the REAL CAR MEN like to do everything themselves even the manual spark advance, before dying from drinking too much radium. But a study from the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety says a lot of the new safety tech in cars is actually working: Results of the new study indicate that lane departure warning lowers rates of single- vehicle, sideswipe and head- on crashes of all severities by 1.

That means that if all passenger vehicles had been equipped with lane departure warning, nearly 8. The analysis controlled for driver age, gender, insurance risk level and other factors that could affect the rates of crashes per insured vehicle year.Another IIHS study went on to note that blind spot detection systems appear to reduce lane departure crashes by 1. Sure, a lot of those lane departure warnings might be over- sensitive and annoying as hell, but we’re living. Gear: WHYReverse: My Man Was Thinking Ahead In August.

On this day in 1. Harold D. Weed of Canastota, New York, is issued U. S. Patent No. 7. 68,4. Grip- Tread for Pneumatic Tires,” a non- skid tire chain to be used on automobiles in order to increase traction on roads slick with mud, snow or ice.

Neutral: A Volvo Lotus Wrangler. What the hell does that look like?