Silicon Valley Business Journal: Tesla Wants to Fix the World’s Parking Problems -- Starting With Its Own
Looking for parking in an overstuffed parking lot could be its own special ring of purgatory. At Tesla’s factory in Fremont, 6,000 employees compete daily for 4,500 parking spots, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Ironically, some of the Tesla engineers who find themselves endlessly circling the employee parking lot each day are working on eventually solving the world’s parking problems through self-driving car technology. For them, self-parking cars can’t come soon enough.
The daily frustration around parking drove one employee to start @teslaparkinglot, an Instagram account documenting bad behavior at the company’s parking lots. In less than a year, the account has gained more than 8,600 followers.
San Francisco Chronicle: Solar Hits Big, Brief Milestone in California
For three hours on March 11, solar power met roughly half of all electricity demand across a big swath of California, according to a new estimate from the federal government.
Even for a state used to setting renewable power records, it was a milestone. And while temporary, it will doubtless happen again as the state advances toward its goal of getting half of all its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
The estimate came from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistics branch of the Department of Energy. The administration used data from the California Independent System Operator, which manages the electricity grid across 80 percent of the state and part of Nevada.
Fortune: Why Investors Should Think Twice Before Buying Into Tesla
When Tesla Inc.’s market capitalization surpassed General Motors Monday and Ford Motor Co. last week, it became the most valuable U.S. automaker. The story of Tesla’s valuation is a tale of four narratives -- two positive and two negative. Each set is plausible, even compelling, but the stories they tell are dramatically different. To better understand what Tesla may be worth, investors need to understand these narratives and decide which ones they choose to bet on.
NPR: Natural-Gas Plant Makes a Play for Coal's Market, Using 'Clean' Technology
President Trump wants America to use more "clean coal" to make electricity. He hasn't elaborated on what kind of coal that might be.
But there is, in fact, a way to capture and contain or reuse one of coal's worst pollutants -- carbon dioxide, which warms the atmosphere. Though "carbon capture" has been slow to catch on among those who run coal-fired power plants (despite billions spent on research), entrepreneurs are now starting to adapt the technology for natural gas -- coal's biggest competitor.
Bill Brown, co-founder of the venture capital firm 8 Rivers Capital, in Durham, N.C., is one of those entrepreneurs. I met him on a construction site near Houston. He's a big guy in steel-toed boots and a hard hat, and he's got a big idea: Build a demonstration power plant that burns fossil fuels without dumping carbon dioxide into the air.
Climate Central: Hey Look, Another Record-Low Month for Sea Ice
Climate change continues its rapid reshaping of the Arctic as yet another month saw sea ice set a record-low mark.
March data just released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center marks six months in a row of near-record or record-low sea ice for the region. It’s a story that’s been reported so often recently, it risks feeling almost normal. But make no mistake. There has never been a run like this in nearly 40 years of satellite data.