Tesla CEO Elon Musk says it will be possible to drive one of the company's Model S cars from Tijuana all the way up to Vancouver, Canada.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) Tesla Motors has completed another big stretch of its planned cross-country network of free electric-car charging stations, the automaker said Wednesday, making it possible to drive an all-electric Model S sedan along the entire West Coast of the United States."Tesla West Coast Supercharger network now energized. Travel from Vancouver to Tijuana in styel [sic]," tweeted Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The nearly 1,800 mile trip is possible, Tesla (TSLA) says, using charging stations along Highway 101 and Interstate 5. Supercharger stations can fully recharge a Model S in about an hour or give it a half-full charge in about 20 minutes, according to Tesla.
The stations are free for Tesla owners to use and are being placed along frequently-traveled major highways to allow long distance travel between major U.S. cities.
Tesla had announced in May that, by the end of 2013, enough Supercharger stations would be in place to allow a drive from New York to Los Angeles. Musk said in September that he plans to embark on a cross-country family trip with his five sons at the end of this year.
Within two years, the automaker plans to have every part of the continental U.S. within range of a Tesla Supercharger station.
Tesla Model S: Test drive D.C. to Boston The Model S can travel up to 265 miles on a charge, according EPA estimates.
Musk and the New York Times got into a dispute early this year when a reporter for th! e paper claimed he ran out of power while trying to drive from Washington to Boston using the Supercharger network. A later test drive by CNNMoney reporters showed the car was able to make the drive using the Supercharger network then in place. Tesla ultimately plans to have a charger at least every 80 to 100 miles on heavily traveled route like the Washington-to-Boston corridor.
Musk tweeted on Wednesday that Tesla's East Coast Supercharger Network "should be complete in a few months."
Tesla is also adding battery-swapping capability to some of the stations. With that, a Tesla Model S's battery could be replaced in about 90 seconds with a fully-charged battery. Battery swapping would not be free but would cost roughly as much as a full tank of gasoline, Tesla has said. 
The drug development process is dauntingly complex. It often takes years of laboratory work to identify a potentially promising compound, which then must endure at least a few years of preliminary testing before clinical trials are even started.
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Reuters C’est ne pas une Norfolk Southern train. 
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project
Alamy A few years ago -- back during that economic crisis -- I wrote a piece about the most disgusting ways to save money. At the time, the piece was something of a joke, a tongue-in-cheek look at some of the extremes that people could go to to trim expenses and increase income. Not long afterward, the unemployment rate started dropping, the economy's slow recovery chugged along, and suddenlyusing fingernail clippings to scrub your pots or eating rodents seemed a little ... well, extreme. Fast forward five years: Unemployment is still high, wages are depressed, and the benefits of the recovery have largely accrued to the nation's wealthiest citizens. And now, even with the government shutdown over and a debt default dodged -- for now -- it's clear that we can't always count on the social safety net programs of the federal government. To put it mildly, extreme savings techniques are starting to seem a little more relevant. Other commodities' values may rise and fall, but there's one that tends to retain its worth: the human body. And, while it's illegal to sell one's organs in this country, several other parts of you can fetch a pretty penny on the open market. In a recent piece for Salon.com, Victoria Stillwell looked at some of the top methods people are using to raise money. For anyone familiar with "Les Miserables," some of the top items shouldn't seem all that surprising: some of Stillwell's interviewees reported selling their hair, a few considered selling their breast milk, and she noted that thousands of women have looked into selling their eggs. While not as invasive as selling, say, a kidney, all of these are fairly intense ways to make a buck. At the least, they involve collecting breast milk and putting it in the mail; at the most, they involve a series of uncomfortable hormone treatments and painful ovum collection procedures. Even so, all three methods are gaining popularity as it's getting harder and harder to make money through more traditional means. It's unclear how much longer Stillwell's big three methods for raising cash will continue to grow in popularity. Indeed, we should all hope that, before long, they'll seem anachronistic, unnecessary, and, well, a little extreme.
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Alamy When I was growing up, no one ever called me a princess. My parents told me I was smart, funny, powerful and kind, but never "princess." Mom handed me a Nerf gun and dad taught me how to shoot a layup. I'd wander into my parent's room to see my father ironing his suit pants for work while my mother sat at her desk paying the bills. There were no bedtime stories about helpless girls who needed to be rescued. Instead, there were lessons about how I could rescue myself through education and financial literacy. The first lesson came in the summer of 1996, when my father took money right out of my 7-year-old hands. My jaw dropped in indignation and my Pocahontas sneakers stamped the ground. I demanded he hand over my fairly earned cash. After all, I had been the one who woke up at 6 a.m. to set up my Fisher-Price table to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Embracing the entrepreneurial spirit young, I had seized upon my mother's yard sale as the perfect opportunity to venture into the business world and hone my sales technique. My 4-year-old sister and I sold doughnuts at the marked-up price of 50 cents apiece to the bargain hunters while my mom peddled our old goods. I felt I'd earned my $18. With a chuckle over my childish rage, my dad told me I owed my sister $2 in wages for helping me sell those doughnuts. Then, he took his cut. As he counted out the quarters I owed him, he explained that he had staked me the money to buy the doughnuts. Because he made the initial investment, I owed him his money back, but I could keep the rest. This, he explained, was my "net profit." That simple lesson become the cornerstone of my relationship with money -- though it was hardly the last. My father continued my fiscal education with various "sneak attacks," notably requiring me to pay for 50 percent of my college education, which cultivated in me a deep appreciation of the value of money. But it worked: When I graduated college, I felt empowered instead of intimidated at the prospect of handling my own financial affairs. At no point did I feel I needed to get married in order to stay afloat financially. Never did I wish for a Prince Charming to ride up on horseback to my little New York City apartment and whisk me away. (OK, so maybe that would be nice -- but I don't Prince Charming.) Unfortunately, my story is far from the norm. Around the world, young women (and men) are being raised without much financial education, and only realizing how badly they need it after they've accumulated crushing debt, taken out too many loans, misused credit cards or missed paying bills. And even in our modern, egalitarian era, some young women are still being raised with the idea that they should rely on a husband to provide them with a financially sound future. According to Plan's International's "Because I am a Girl" campaign, each extra year a girl spends in secondary education increases her salary by between 15 percent and 25 percent. But encouraging girls to finish high school, go to college, and find good jobs is not enough. It's equally important that they gain a level of fiscal understanding. These young women need to feel confident handling their paychecks, saving for their futures, and stepping into the role of breadwinner for their families. It's time parents and educators placed the same level of importance on financial literacy as we do an understanding of literature, math and science. Both boys and girls should be raised to feel comfortable asking questions about money, beyond "how much is allowance?" Just as we're now coming around to teaching young men that the tasks of raising children aren't "women's work," we need to be sure we're not teaching girls to, one day, just rely on their husbands to handle the money. Just imagine: We could live in a society where teens made informed decisions about student loans, young adults used their credit cards for responsible purchases they could pay off, and the awful cycle of unnecessary debt was just a parable told to children at bedtime. 
