Tesla Model 3 Pikes Peak Crash Pics Are Crazy Intense

As reported by InsideEVs: Crashing while racing up Pikes Peak is bound to be both pretty spectacular and scary to see. If there could possibly be any doubt about that, it is erased by these images of a Tesla Model 3 Performance driven by Randy Pobst that caught the car in mid-fiasco. Now, thankfully the professional driver is ok, but it seems like the car will not have a chance to compete in the official running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb on Sunday.

According to a tweet from Unplugged Performance – an aftermarket outfitter of Tesla parts and accessories which sponsored the entry – the crash occurred during an initial practice session on the top section of the mountain. They say Pobst way driving "way too hot" and hit a dip, which then caused the car to go airborne. Unfortunately, physics can be cruel with all its strict rules about what-goes-up-must-come-down and a-body-in-motion-tends-to-stay-in-motion, etcetera. Check out the pics in the gallery just below. If you need a tissue, it's ok. We understand.











It's truly unfortunate, because everything had been going well for the team up until this point. Pobst had been very pleased with the Model 3 in previous sessions covering the bottom section of the mountain. He had completed that in first place, keeping an incredible 26 seconds between himself and the closest competitor. He went so far as to say the battery-powered beast was the best of the six vehicles he'd ever raced in the event over his career, which is truly something.

Don't believe us? Hear him say it himself on video in the embedded tweet below. But, before you watch that, first, check out the in-car footage from that first amazing run.

Ok, now that you've taken that in, watch the clip in this embedded tweet. Be sure to watch until the end to capture some of the unscripted excitement of racing hard on a challenging course.

And here's video of Pobst discussing the crash and explaining what went wrong:

Sadly, the crash isn't the first experienced by a Tesla Model 3 at Pikes Peak this year. The event kicked off with an unholy trinity of the mid-sized electric sedan. That number had already been reduced by one when rookie Josh Allen crashed his entry hard enough to leave it out of the running. You can see it being towed unceremoniously away in the embedded tweet below.

The remaining contender is being driven by Blake Fuller. He famously set a record in a Tesla Model S in 2016. Indeed, it is that record he is attempting to beat this year. If you'd like a little insight into that car, we watched it do a 2-mile lap of our test track in early June. You can also see it going through tech inspection at the mountain in the embedded tweet below.

Fingers crossed this last Tesla Model 3 entry makes it to race time on Sunday and performs as it ought to. Expect the record to fall if it does.

Ford Starts Construction on New Factory for Electric F-150 Pickup Truck

As reported by Electrek: Ford has started construction on a new factory to build the upcoming electric F-150 pickup truck next to its current pickup factory in Dearborn, Michigan.

You could argue that no one has a bigger stake in electric pickup trucks.

Electrification has disrupted every segment it has touched, and with Ford being the leader in the pickup truck segment with the F-150, it has the most to lose if it doesn’t play a big part in electrifying the segment.

Ford sold about 900,000 F-Series pickup trucks last year, bringing in around $42 billion in revenue. The US automaker has a plan to bring an electric F-150 to market, but not much is known about it.

When confirming plans to launch an all-electric version of the F-150, Ford’s best-selling pickup truck, Darren Palmer, the head of Ford’s Team Edison, said that the automaker was aiming to bring the electric F-150 to market “before 2022.”

This would have put the vehicle in line with a series of new electric pickup trucks scheduled to come in “late 2021,” like Tesla Cybertruck and GMC Hummer EV.

However, earlier this year, Ford confirmed that the production will start in 2022.

Ford is currently working on bringing a redesigned F-150 next year.

While it’s retooling its factories for the new version of the truck, Bloomberg reports that Ford also started building a new plant next to its Dearborn factory to build the new electric version:

Ford will temporarily shut a factory in Michigan next month to install machinery for the redesigned F-150 pickup going on sale next year. The automaker also is constructing a new facility adjacent to its Dearborn, Michigan, truck plant to build an electric version of the F-150, according to people familiar with the project. Prototype production is expected to start next year, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing internal plans.

While the first production prototypes are expected next year, the actual volume production for dealerships is not expected until 2022.

Interestingly, it’s going to be Ford’s first electric vehicle built from the ground up to be produced in the US.

This year, Ford is bringing the Mustang Mach-E to market, but the vehicle is built in Mexico.

With an official launch date in 2022, the Ford F-150 Electric is coming after the Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T, Lordstown Endurance, and several other electric pickup trucks slated for 2021.

However, all these programs are based on building new factories or major retooling of existing factories, and therefore, the timelines for any of those new vehicle programs could also slip.

Electric F-150 pulling a line of freight train cars weighing over 1 million lbs.

Jeep's Monster Off-Road E-Bike Starts Shipping in Early September

It looks like it can go downhill as well as it goes uphill.

As reported by Engadget: Jeep’s full-suspension off-road e-bike with insane amounts of power and an equally ludicrous price tag will finally start shipping in “early September,” according to manufacturer QuietKat. The company also released a climb performance video, showing that you’ll be able to mount steep hills without breaking much of a sweat — the dream of every Sunday mountain biker.

The Jeep e-bike comes with a 750 watt “Bafang Ultra” motor that can peak at 1,500 watts and go for 30-60 miles thanks to the 48 volt, 14.5aH battery. It has a RockHox Monarch RL rear shock and front air suspension fork with 150mm of travel, 10 speeds, 4-piston hydraulic disc brakes and 4.8-inch fat-tires. It weighs in at 79 pounds, over double the weight of a normal competition downhill bike, but it’s not bad considering it also gives you a ride up the hill.

You’re going to pay to get the ultimate all-terrain, Jeep-branded e-bike. It starts at $5,899, which sounds like a lot, but is in the ballpark of other full-suspension e-bikes. As mentioned, QuietKat has promised that it’ll start shipping in early September.

The Colorado Startup Dreaming up a Return to Supersonic Flight

Boom Supersonic hopes to test-fly its supersonic plane in 2021.

As reported by Engadget: In less than 50 days, a company will unveil what it hopes will be the plane to kickstart a new generation of supersonic flight. On October 7th, Boom Supersonic is planning to show off the XB-1, its single-seat test craft, with flights planned for next year. It’s early days, but what happens in Colorado in the next 18 months could have lasting consequences on how we fly.

We’ve been here before. In the 1960s, the British and French governments came together to build a supersonic liner. Concorde began flying in 1969 and entered commercial service in 1976, with its last flight taking place in 2003. There’s only been one other civilian supersonic transport (SST), the Russian-made Tupolev TU-144, but it barely counts. Most students of aviation history know that the plane made less than a hundred passenger flights before retirement.

Concorde’s life played out the latter half of the 20th century in microcosm. Created in an optimistic era by engineers who solved the plane’s challenges in longhand. This mechanical marvel, fast and reliable, flew at Mach 2.04 and, along with the moon landing, marked the high point of humanity’s technological achievement. By the time that it came into service, much of that optimism had given way to cynicism.

In the righter-wing decades that followed its birth, we simply decided to walk back from the future. Concorde wasn’t abandoned because we improved upon it, but because it was cheaper to do something worse. Why let a handful of people cross the Atlantic in a couple of hours when the jumbo jets (that were developed concurrently) can do the same at far lower cost?

Two decades later, and a new generation of entrepreneurs, tired of waiting for another optimistic age, are trying to build it themselves. That’s where the Colorado-based Boom Supersonic and its founder, Blake Scholl, come in. Scholl describes himself as an Objectivist (a follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand) and previously worked for both Groupon and Amazon. He freely admits that, beyond his private pilots license, he does not have an aerospace background.

During our talk, Scholl referenced SpaceX a number of times, and it’s clear that Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company is the model Boom is striving to emulate. “You know, when SpaceX got started, it was a joke that a startup could build a rocket,” he said “and not that many years later, they’re landing rockets vertically on pads.” Scholl’s ambition is to do for supersonic travel what SpaceX did, and is doing, for the space industry.  

One of the things that Scholl and Boom are banking on is the advances in computer-aided design and materials science. The single-seat, 71-foot long XB-1 is designed to test if these advances will make building a supersonic plane far more efficient and cheap than it was in the ‘60s. XB-1 will use a variety of molded carbon fiber composites for its body that should hold up better against the heat and stresses caused by supersonic flight. The company says that the plane should be able to withstand temperatures exceeding 300 Fahrenheit (148C). 



Concorde had no on-board computer and had a movable nose; Such was the angle of attack upon landing that Concorde’s nose had to drop in order for the pilots to see where the ground was. The XB-1 ditches that in favor of cameras on the nose and landing gear, hopefully reducing complexity. And the plane’s design has been refined (in a virtual simulator) to ensure a high fineness ratio, a fancy way of saying the plane is shaped narrow and pointy to reduce drag at high speeds. 

XB-1 will be piloted by Commander Bill ‘Doc’ Shoemaker, a 21-year US naval aviator who led combat missions in an F-18 on a number of occasions. He has also served as a flight test instructor at the US Navy test pilot school and previously worked for Zee.Aero, one of (Google co-founder) Larry Page’s self-funded flying car startups.

If XB-1 proves successful, then Boom will move to begin building its full-size supersonic plane, Overture. Overture is a craft designed to seat less than a hundred people at “business class” levels of comfort. And for “business class” prices, they’ll be able to fly from, say, Tokyo to Seattle in four hours and thirty minutes. 

One problem with there being a singular example of the technology in history is that all discussions inevitably lead back to Concorde. One of that plane’s biggest failures was emissions: it was notorious for guzzling gas and emitting highly toxic particles. Boom has already pledged that its test program will be entirely “carbon neutral” and that its planes will set the bar for energy efficient planes.

“One of the principal reasons that Concorde wasn’t affordable was that it just consumed too much fuel,” said Scholl. “Fast forward 50 years and none of those things need to be true any more.” XB-1 and Overture are designed to use alternative fuels, rather than the kerosene mixes found on some liners today. Scholl said that as well, the company is working with other businesses to develop airline grade fuel through direct air capture.

Direct Air Capture is a system that draws carbon dioxide out of the air and recombines it to create hydrocarbons. Companies like Carbon Engineering are working on systems to mass-produce fuel in this way to create (if you squint) “carbon neutral fuel.” Of course, that still requires the burning (and releasing) of carbon back into the atmosphere but the hope is that, if more CO2 is extracted than used, it’ll be more virtuous than existing fossil fuels.

Boom also promises its planes will use less fuel through a combination of efficient materials and better engines. Scholl said that the planes are powered with a “quiet, efficient turbofan system [...] a similar engine architecture to what you’d see on any large Airbus or Boeing wide-body aircraft today, just adapted for supersonic flight.” And recently, Boom announced that it was teaming up with Rolls Royce to build an engine for Overture. 

Concorde was killed by economics -- it was too expensive to run and far too expensive to support, especially as it got older. British Airways had to buy its contingent from the UK government at famously knock-down rates to keep them going. Scholl says that Overture is going to be expensive, but that Boom’s lack of a legacy is as much of a benefit as it is a burden. “We don’t have to think about the 737 Max, we don’t have to think about how to keep the factories running for our last-generation airplanes,” he said, claiming that Boom has the “luxury of focus.”

Scholl expects Overture to cost just $6 billion to develop -- by comparison, a 2011 Seattle Times report claimed that Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner cost $32 billion to design. But Scholl is planning to sell 2,000 Overture aircraft for “$200 million a pop,” which he says is a “$200 [billion] to $400 billion market opportunity.” Those targets represent an ambitious plan to effectively swallow the majority of global business travel. If successful, such a move would render traditional long-haul business class obsolete.

Except, of course, that launching a supersonic plane to bring the world together and enable a new generation of business travel isn’t ideal in 2020. We are, of course, struggling to deal with a pandemic that has dramatically discouraged air travel for anything but essential reasons. As I wrote back in June, COVID-19 will see a dramatic reduction in people flying, enough to kill off some of the airline industry’s biggest planes. (That said, the economics of flight mean that a smaller plane with fewer passengers, flying at capacity each time, will likely remain profitable. Which suggests that Overture’s sub-100 capacity and high speed may be the ideal vehicle for post-pandemic travel).

“We’re still a few years away from flying Overture and carrying our first passengers,” said Scholl, “and by the time that happens, COVID will be a distant nightmare.” Scholl says that Boom is “designing Overture to be the first post-pandemic airplane.” Both because you’ll be spending less time in the air, and also down to cabin airflow modeling Boom is planning to do. Scholl says he expects Overture’s cabin to be “safer than a typical restaurant.”

And Scholl isn’t too worried about a depression in business travel, saying that video conferencing cannot replace the “human connection.” He cited statistics claiming that private air travel, while still below 2019 levels, is still up on commercial flights. Scholl expects that, in the next decade or so, when the global health crises and economic crises are behind us, flying will be back in demand just at the time that Overture is ready to satisfy it. 

It’s still early days, of course, and right now the first step on the road to a second supersonic age sits half-finished in a Denver warehouse. But that’s how all of these journeys begin, with unbridled (and sometimes unfounded) optimism. As the commercial aviation industry enters one of its darkest periods in a generation, perhaps a dose of optimism is exactly what’s needed.