Tesla unveiled its third electric car the Model X, an electric SUV/minivan hybrid, during a sneak preview at its design studio in Hawthorne, California on Thursday. We took GigaOM TV’s Green Overdrive show down to the event and got this first hands-on video with the car and an interview with Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk. Check it out:
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The news on Monday that thermostat giant Honeywell slapped startup Nest with a lawsuit for patent infringement throws an unexpected wrinkle in the landscape of the smart thermostat this year. These connected energy devices — often overlooked but finally getting some attention in 2012 — have been poised to be a gateway into the connected home, working with mobile phones, utility meters, and heating and cooling systems. Honeywell’s lawsuit, which you can read more about here, claims that “many features of the Nest Thermostat infringe Honeywell patents.”
How might this new lawsuit impact the growth of the overall smart thermostat market? We want you, GigaOM readers, to weigh in below, and we’ll release all the details of the survey in a research note.
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Let the battle for the smart thermostat begin
Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution
GM’s communications service OnStar could some day enable owners of GM’s electric car the Volt to charge their cars primarily with any available clean power. OnStar says it’s partnered with grid wholesale operator PJM Interconnection to test out a service that receives a signal for how much solar or wind power is available when a Volt is charging.
OnStar could grab that clean power signal and deliver it to the electric car owner via a dashboard or mobile app and enable the car owner to decide when to charge the car. OnStar says Google is testing out the tech on 17 of its Volts at its headquarters. OnStar is showing off the tech at the DistribuTECH show in San Antonio, Texas this week and I got a brief glimpse of the tech at the booth.
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Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall
Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution
On Wednesday, the web went wild (or dark) and more than 13 million people protested the potential passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill in the Senate, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Fight for the Future, an organization created to organize the online protests, offered some stats today to show exactly how wild things got. Here’s the organization’s breakdown of activism by the numbers, in infographic form:
The results were impressive. More than a third of U.S. senators are opposed to PIPA in its current form ahead of the vote on the bill next week — 36 are opposed, including 5 who were formerly co-sponsors. And as the Senate votes on PIPA next Tuesday, those 13 million are invited to watch the live stream and by submitting their stories on how they use the Internet to be read by Senators who have pledged to filibuster the bill. Go, online activism.
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Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010–2015
Beyond social: the crowd-based enterprise
NewNet 2012: companies and technologies set to disrupt
For anyone thinking the big data trend is a flash in the pan, some new evidence to the contrary. A hefty 75 percent of IT pros and developers responding to a new Linux Foundation survey have their eye firmly on this big data phenomenon.
More than three-quarters of the 428 respondents “expressed concern” about big data and nearly 72 percent (unsurprisingly) said they will use Linux to support big data applications. The respondents, while biased towards Linux — this is the Linux Foundation after all – do not work in a vacuum. A respectable 35.9 percent said they plan to use Windows to meet their big data needs.
The survey queried IT/IS people and developers in organizations with 0 million or more in annual revenue and 500 or more employees. Just less than half (41.6 percent) of the respondents are based in the U.S. or Canada.
For more of the data, scroll on.
Feature photo courtesy of scoobygirl
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Dissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital future
Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight
In the latest of our New Year’s resolutions series, I chatted with Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his goals and resolutions for 2012. While most of his efforts will be on getting the company’s electric sedan, the Model S, to the first customers in July, Musk told me that Tesla plans to unveil the Model X — its third car, which is an electric SUV — at an event on February 9th.
Musk says in our interview that he thinks the Model X “will be very well received.” Tesla raised hundreds of millions of dollars in a second share sale last Summer partly to fund development of the Model X and last year Tesla said it was looking to bring the Model X to the first customers in late 2013, and would shoot for 15,000 units per year of the Model X starting in 2014.
To read the rest of Musk’s goals and resolutions for 2012, check out our New Year’s package.
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Green IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times
A 2011 Green IT Forecast
Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy
The news on Monday that thermostat giant Honeywell slapped startup Nest with a lawsuit for patent infringement throws an unexpected wrinkle in the landscape of the smart thermostat this year. These connected energy devices — often overlooked but finally getting some attention in 2012 — have been poised to be a gateway into the connected home, working with mobile phones, utility meters, and heating and cooling systems. Honeywell’s lawsuit, which you can read more about here, claims that “many features of the Nest Thermostat infringe Honeywell patents.”
GM’s communications service OnStar could some day enable owners of GM’s electric car the Volt to charge their cars primarily with any available clean power. OnStar says it’s partnered with grid wholesale operator PJM Interconnection to test out a service that receives a signal for how much solar or wind power is available when a Volt is charging.
In the latest of our New Year’s resolutions series, I chatted with Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his goals and resolutions for 2012. While most of his efforts will be on getting the company’s electric sedan, the Model S, to the first customers in July, Musk told me that Tesla plans to unveil the Model X — its third car, which is an electric SUV — at an event on February 9th.