In this week’s top stories: Tesla quietly completes its new 80 MWh Powerpack station, Elon Musk meets with President Trump and joins his new manufacturing council, Seth takes the 2017 Chevy Bolt EV for a spin, Model 3 gets a slight rebranding and new teaser video, and much more.

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Tesla is introducing a relatively small but welcomed change for current and future owners. With the increasingly worrying levels of air pollution in major cities across the world, powerful air filters are becoming a more popular feature in cars. Tesla has on of the most advanced in-car HEPA air filter system in the world that blocks all gaseous pollutants from entering the cabin of its vehicles.

Unfortunately, it was only available in the $3,500 Premium Upgrades Package, but today Tesla made it available as a $750 aftermarket upgrade. expand full story

GM invited us to come to San Francisco for a new round of test drives of their new flagship all-electric vehicle: the Chevy Bolt EV. Note: The lovely folks at Chevy paid for our travel, hotel and fed us quite nicely.

I had mixed feelings when I first got inside the 2017 Chevy Bolt EV more than a year ago at CES 2016 and those mixed feelings persist today. My concerns aren’t about the engineering, technology or even the implementation of the vehicle. The Bolt is unequivocally the best $30,000 EV you can buy today (in some states + Canada) and for my money, the best car of any kind on the roads right now at its price point.  GM/Chevrolet deserve a mountain of praise for delivering the first affordable EV with more range than anyone could hope to use on a daily basis.

But there are still some concerns…

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SpaceX is holding the last phase of its first ‘Hyperloop Pod Competition’ this weekend at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Surprisingly and despite some startups making significant progress, this mostly-student competition could represent the most advanced hyperloop technology demonstration since Elon Musk first published the idea back in 2013. expand full story

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was already on President Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, but the White House announced today that he will also be joining the administration’s new manufacturing council, a private sector group that advises the U.S. secretary of commerce. expand full story

After a soft launch in California last year, GM’s Chevy Bolt EV is now arriving in Canada – or at least one Bolt EV has arrived in Canada. GM’s Bourgeois Chevrolet dealership in Rawdon, Quebec, announced that it received its first all-electric Bolt EV. expand full story

Flat electricity demand allowing renewables to be part of slowing CO2 in USA – The author estimated that, “CO2 emissions from U.S. electricity generation in 2016 will be 27 percent below the baseline level from 2005.” The Northeast USA saw a fall in total electricity sales in 2015. All the while, cleaner natural gas has been replacing coal – but because there is a lot less electricity needed, not all of the coal is getting replaced. Energy efficiency and renewables have been able to step in. We should give ourselves a quick nod of approval – 27% off of 2005 numbers isn’t bad considering the economic and population growth since then.

Scandinavian wind farm nixed due to Russian threat – Imagine you have this wide open ocean area that has high winds and is near your coastline, however, your neighbor has placed warships less than 200 miles away is such a threat you need to use it to practice warfare. That’s the current position of countries bordering Russia’s northwest. A different version of NIMBY…

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While Tesla wasn’t officially selling its vehicles in Portugal, several locals decided to import the Model S themselves and created a Tesla owners community in the country. Last year, they were pleading for the automaker to establish a presence in the Portugal and offer services. CEO Elon Musk heard the plea and shared our article about it while simply responding ‘OK’:

The company has since been making efforts to officially enter the market and met with government officials, but today they finally launched in the Portugal and opened orders for the Model S and X. expand full story

As we reported yesterday, Tesla is suing its former Director of Autopilot programs, Sterling Anderson. The company claims that he allegedly poached Tesla employees and stole confidential information in order to start a competing company with Chris Urmson, the former head of Google’s self-driving program.

Anderson denies the allegations, but regardless of what happened, Tesla made a bold claim about the motive behind launching his new company and in the process, they took a solid swipe at GM and Uber. expand full story