In a recent press release, the Leawood Police Department in Kansas announced that it had acquired a Tesla Model Y Long Range for its fleet. The vehicle would be used as one of the Leawood PD’s patrol cars. The Model Y has already been painted in the Leawood PD’s black and white colors. The department noted that they started looking into the idea of an all-electric patrol car last year after seeing dismal reviews of available hybrid patrol cars. Captain Kirt Yoder, the agency’s project manager, noted that Tesla Kansas had been quite helpful. “I ended up contacting about ten agencies from New York to California. Tesla-Kansas City was great. They were eager to help and answer all our questions,” he said. Apart from being a green vehicle, the Model Y is also expected to give the Leawood Police Department substantial cost savings. Over a year ago, a cost comparison already showed that the department’s Ford Explorer patrol SUV would cost about $4,500 per year to run. That was a time w...
Tesla’s mass layoffs reached the Autopilot team in San Mateo. Autopilot workers have started posting the news on LinkedIn. People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Tesla laid off about 200 Autopilot workers from its San Mateo office. San Mateo had around 350 employees before the recent layoffs. Tesla transferred some of the San Mateo staff to a nearby facility in previous weeks. The Autopilot team in San Mateo worked on customer vehicle data, specifically data labeling, for Tesla’s autonomous driver assistance features. According to a source, most of the employees Tesla laid off were hourly workers from the Autopilot Team. Most of the San Mateo office staff were data annotation specialists who held hourly positions. One data annotation specialist, Caesar Rosas, shared that he received the news of Tesla’s layoffs recently. He stated that almost everyone working at Tesla’s San Mateo branch was laid off, adding that he didn’t get to s...
West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin blasted a potential expansion of the electric vehicle (EV) tax credit on Thursday, while also calling for the development of the hydrogen sector to decarbonize the transportation industry. Manchin, who called a Biden administration proposal to broaden the EV tax credit program “ludicrous,” said the waiting period for EVs right now is already so long that there is no point to offering more money to incentivize consumers to buy a battery-powered car. “There is a waiting list for EVs right now, with the fuel prices, but they still want us to throw a $5,000, or $7,000 or $12,000 credit for us to buy electric vehicles,” said during a Thursday Senate budget hearing. Manchin added that production volumes of EVs are far away from fulfilling current demand levels, so it would be ridiculous to offer additional funding to the programs. It is evident that EVs are becoming more popular, and with automakers in nearly all situations relating to EVs still workin...
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