San Jose Lowrider Day

Today enjoy a free event highlighting Lowriders at San Jose City Hall from 12pm to 6pm. The plaza will be filled with Lowriders from car clubs, while street parking in front of City Hall will be open to all low riders first come, first serve.

There will also be food trucks parked along 4th Street.

San Jose is the ultimate electric car hotspot

In order to move the needle on climate change, one of the key transitions we have to make is to move towards sustainable transportation. Fortunately electrics cars are also usually fast and fun to drive, providing further motivation to make the switch. 

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that San Jose is the top metro driving the EV industry. It seems like every other car on the roads is a Tesla, but several new compelling EVs are also hitting the road these days.

Despite being the 10th largest city in the country, San Jose has the 3rd highest number of EVs of any city in the US irrespective of population. It also has 2.4 charging stations for every 1,000 homes, versus the national average of 0.3 stations.

A common complaint for renters interested in EVs is that there are no charging stations at their apartments. In San Jose 12.3% of all rentals actually have stations, which is by far the most of any city. Not to mention most grocery stores and shopping centers have multiple stations, with some places like Santana Row having hundreds of chargers (have a look at the 4th floor of the parking structure on Winchester Blvd).

San Francisco came in as the 2nd best metro for EVs followed by Seattle and LA. For the full article to see all of the criteria used for the study, click here.

San Jose planning to double the number of electric car charging stations

San Jose is already one of the most Electric Vehicle (EV) friendly cities in the world. The combination of a progressive technological mindset, great weather, many single-family homes with garages, and a concern for the environment has led to a recipe for EV success. There are more miles driven in Teslas in San Jose than any other city in the world except for Los Angeles, which has quadruple our population.

There are already well over a thousand EV charging stalls in San Jose, many of them are free to encourage shoppers to visit or as an amenity to employees. Where can you find a free gas station?  Santana Row alone has 160 chargers, almost half of which are Tesla chargers on the 4th floor of the main parking structure (photos below).

Things are about to get even better for EV owners. San Jose has announced they will be receiving $14 million to install even more electric vehicle charging stations. This is enough to fund 1,400 universal chargers which any electric car can use, and 100 new fast chargers that can add miles almost as fast as a gas station in select cars. Public and private institutions that install chargers will get a significant rebate, which extra rebates available for low income areas and multi-unit residential buildings.

If you are thinking about an electric car, I highly recommend the Tesla Model 3. It's $36k after rebates, no maintenance for 4 years, 250+ miles of range, it's safe, fast, fun, and you can use any charger in the US including Tesla's proprietary fast chargers that are now everywhere. If interested, you can get 1,000 free miles of fast charging by clicking here.

Source: San Jose Inside

Daimler and Bosch will trial autonomous taxis in San Jose

All roads are headed towards robotaxis. Every major auto manufacturer is investing heavily in self-driving technology, and services are coming far sooner than you think. Waymo--which is owned by Google--will be the first to launch a paid service using autonomous vehicles. Arizona will be the first to get the service over the next couple months, followed by the Bay Area.

Right on the heels of Waymo, Daimler and Bosch are doing a pilot in San Jose during the second half of 2019. They will use a fully autonomous Mercedes Benz S Class to transport passengers between Downtown San Jose and the San Carlos/Stevens Creek corridor (Santana Row & Valley Fair). That is probably the route in San Jose in greatest need for a transit upgrade.

Unlike Waymo, who is already running some cars with no safety driver--they will have two safety drivers in each vehicle. You will be able to summon a car by using an app and presumably the service will be either very low cost or free during the trial period. Welcome to the future.

Source: Engadget, SVBJ

Electric car company grows in San Jose

NIO, a Chinese EV startup, is doubling down in North San Jose. They are moving into a 100,362 SQFT building at 3100 N. First Street, which was previously home to Broadcom and Hitachi. NIO already employs 520 people in San Jose, so this is a positive sign that more high-tech jobs will be opening up soon.

NIO currently only manufactures a single car, the EP9. It's a $1.2M supercar with 1,341 horsepower that currently holds the electric car record for the Nurburgring and for the fastest autonomous lap at the Circuit of the Americas. Like Tesla they decided to start with a halo car and work their way down to cars the masses can afford. Their next car will be a 7-seat SUV called the ES8 that will compete with Tesla's Model X.

NIO has already raised $1 billion and are rumored to be gearing up for a US IPO that could raise another $2 billion. It's clear that the auto industry is going to look a lot different in 5-10 years than it does today. If NIO turns out to be another disruptor like Tesla, then San Jose has a lot to gain as the brand grows.

Source: SVBJ

San Jose is an electric vehicle "capital city"

I'm a huge advocate of electric cars, especially since I love tech gadgets and breathing air outside. I ran across the following info on a site completely unrelated to San Jose. It turns out that in 2016 we had one of the highest percentage of EV (electric vehicle) sales in the world. 10% of all cars sold in the San Jose area are pure-electric and over 15% have some sort of electrification (includes hybrids and plug-in hybrids). The percentage of EVs in new sales in San Francisco was 6% and in New York it was an embarrassing 1%.

We are also one of the 20 EV "capital cities" which make up 40% of all the EV sales in the world. This is by pure volume versus percentage, so larger cities have an obvious advantage.

To me, this makes perfect sense since we are a land of innovators and early-adopters. Tesla even opened their first "store" in San Jose (Santana Row). I remember when 1,000 people lined up there to reserve a Model 3 last year. With several new inexpensive long-range electric cars coming out in 2018, I think we will continue to be the leader in the transition to zero-emission transit.

Source: Teslarati

Sourisseau News: The Lives of Automobiles

Last week we posted a Sourisseau News video about bicycles--this week we have a video about early cars in the San Jose area. The two minute video is embedded below for your enjoyment.

To see an archive of past videos, head over here.

Sourisseau News: The Lives of Automobiles February 2017 from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.

Sourisseau News: Car Culture

The latest edition of Sourisseau News offers a glimpse at early car culture in San Jose. You'll even find a photo of the famous (infamous?) Letcher's Garage, the very first garage on the west coast and the site of a gruesome domestic murder/suicide. Watch the full two minute video below!


Car Culture from WMS media Inc. on Vimeo.