181: The EV's are Coming
The air quality here in the Bay Area is still terrible (187 yesterday) and my kids haven’t been outside since Tuesday. It’s even worse in Oregon- around 400 in Portland. Climate change is the real problem and specifically carbon emissions into the air. The big problem with that problem remains passenger cars. In the US, the exhaust out of them is what’s throwing carbon into the air more than most other areas.
So, let’s talk a second about electronic vehicles (EV’s) and their quest to get us to a greener planet. This is what Tesla started (their mission is “to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.“) and I’m very happy to see the rise of several other Telsa competitors. Just following their progress makes me happy. The top three:
Li Auto. The Tesla of China. Has cars in production and went public in the US in July. Plenty of cash and a Chinese audience to make them a legit competitor.
Nikola. The biggest competitor in the US. They even ripped of Tesla’s name. They make a semi truck and a pickup and have ridiculous range (600 miles). GM just invested $2 billion into them to help produce their pickup.
Rivian. They seem to have the sexiest prodcuts. They have a pretty sweet pickup truck as their first product. It’s not out until summer of 2021 but they are making waves already. Amazon invested $700 million and Ford invested $500 million into them.
A new industry is emerging in the EV car space and if GM, Toyota, BWM and Ford don’t watch out, they will be left selling only gas-powered cars the rest of their days and eventually be acquired by one of the new upstarts who know how to make batteries and, more importantly, software to run these new vehicles. It’s pretty exciting battleground.
I can’t wait for this new era so our cars can get cooler and, most importantly, our skies can get cleaner.
Other Stuff
Spikeball is sweet. I need to get a set of this for our backyard
Dentists are reporting that the amount of teeth being cracked or chipped is off the charts.
Mail update:
The Mask debate rages on. Check this
Corona
Well, we did it everyone. We hit six months in this. It all seems like a blur, but here’s a nice little timeline of what’s happened…
Granted, lots more has happened, but it’s interesting to see it laid out like this.
Some San Francisco stats. Cases are coming down and we’re getting back to early June levels. The same is true for Marin.
We’re doing a good job. Keep it up folks. Have a great Tuesday
Only 64 more days to go