The All-New Tesla Model 3 | Photo: Tesla Motors
A new Tesla, a new Mythbusters, and a new Top Gear — it’s an interesting week! Read on!
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Model 3
Probably the biggest news out of a company owned by Elon Musk since the first landing of a Falcon first stage back in December was the unveiling this Thursday of Tesla Motor Company’s forthcoming, mass-market electric car, the Model 3 (pictured above). With five seats, two trunks, a 215-mile (bare minimum) range, a five-star safety rating, a respectable zero-to-sixty time of under six seconds (comparable to a VW Scirocco R 2.0 Turbo, for example), and the always-updating autopilot features Tesla’s boasting about — and all for a base price of $35,000 US before electric-car rebates — the Model 3 may well be the first best-selling all-electric car. The company has already taken 253,000 pre-orders for the vehicle which should start shipping in late 2017. While that sounds like a lot — especially for a company that broke all its own previous records by delivering just over 50,000 vehicles last year — it’s also worth pointing out that US sales of Toyota Camrys last year were over 429,000. That means it’s probably not an insurmountable task to deliver all those vehicles, but it also means it may take a few years for such a young company. The completion of the Gigafactory by this summer will certainly help. You can check out a lot of coverage of the new machine over at Jalopnik, or watch Elon himself introduce the car in a video on the Tesla website. I for one can’t wait for our all-electric future.
Mythbusters
Mythbusters is dead, long live Mythbusters? It looks as though the much-lamented recent ending of the hit tv show Mythbusters may be giving rise to its own replacement, through the always-fraught medium of reality tv. The Verge is reporting that the Science Channel will be rebooting the series with a televised competition to choose a new set of hosts. Me, I’m hoping Colin Furze will try out — he certainly knows his way around insane builds — but I’m sure we’ll get to see a whole new set of lunatics inspired by the originals who — sadly — will not be involved. Still, at least someone’s going to be teaching the next generation how to try to figure things out for themselves. The show will be called The Search for the Next Mythbusters. The Verge has more on the story.
Top Gear Returns
In another bit of tv news, Top Gear will be returning to the air soon — sort of. While the original trio are in the process of building an all-new show for streaming provider and new content-producing Amazon, the old brand is still at BBC, and they’re launching a new series starring BBC Radio and tv host (and Ferrari collector) Chris Evans, and Friends actor (and massive Formula One fan) Matt LeBlanc. Whether the new Top Gear will be better than the Clarkson/Hammond/May show (which might be called “Gear Knobs”?) is hard to say, but judging from the newly-released trailer and the strange tweets from the old guard, I get the feeling I’m going to want to watch both.
ICYMI
In case you missed any of the stories we covered here this week at This Week In Tomorrow, here they are again, all in handy-dandy point form:
- On Monday, I talked about places wheatgrass maybe shouldn’t go — at least not for health benefits
- On Tuesday, I explained why I’m happy Andrew Wakefield’s “Vaxxed” won’t be shown at Tribeca
- On Wednesday, I talked about why we need to talk about the “Ashley Treatment”
- On Thursday, I responded to one doctor’s unfounded opinions on “miracle” cures, and
- On Friday Lindsey talked about Blizzard’s decision to pull one character’s “butt pose” from the new game Overwatch
If you didn’t read them, check them out!
Best of the Rest
So much happened this week that I couldn’t get to all of it (as usual) so here’s your weekly linkspam of interesting news!
- SETI’s going to check out 20,000 older, dimmer stars for signs of life
- Fermilab is going to shoot neutrinos through hundreds of mils of rock to find out more about the universe
- Jupiter got walloped by something big, fast, and heavy, and it made a big boom
- NASA’s Orion capsule is going to be a lot more high-tech than it looks
- Solar Impulse 2 is finally going to take off again this month to try to finish its round-the world flight
- Samsung might be making a foldable smartphone
- Blue Origin just landed another test of its edge-of-space rocket, and
- Amazon is finally trying to save your devices by banning cut-rate USB-C cables from its online store
That’s all for this week. Remember, I only get paid in my own (and your) enthusiasm, so please like This Week In Tomorrow on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @TWITomorrow, and tell your friends about the site!
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I’ll leave you with this AMAZING mashup trailer of Deadpool and One Punch Man that’s been making the rounds (and winning awards) and anime conventions around the country. So good.