They've been working on it for over 12 years; I wrote the following for my web site in 2002. It will be in an upcoming book. Apologies for the mangled unicode, but slashdot's preview is worthless, since "preview" shows the unicode but the submission displays garbage. Here is the article:

McCoy: He's dead, Jim
        Several years ago, before PCs were not nearly as com-mon in the home as they are now, a friend of mine asked of my computer, âoebut aren't you afraid it will explode?â
        He was a Star Trek fan, and in the old 1950s and 1960s science fiction and spy shows, computers all had a nasty habit of blowing up. All one had to do to these TV or movie computers to make them explode was shoot them, with either a ray gun or a police revolver. Some TV and movie computers would blow up if you âoepressed the wrong buttonâ; one episode of the 1960s TV show The Prisoner (âoeI am not a number! I am a free man!â) had a computer that could answer any question. The bad guys, who had imprisoned the hero, a spy who had resigned his post, wanted to know why he resigned. Of course, before the bad guys could ask the computer âoeWhy did number six resign his post?â the intrepid number six offered that he had a question the computer could not answer.
        He typed in to the Remington electric typewriter and fed the paper into the computer, which, of course, promptly started smoking, sparking, and ultimately blew up. The question was simply âoewhy?â
        Similarly, in an episode of Star Trek, Spock makes a computer explode by asking it to figure the value of pi to the last decimal place. Of course, any time a Star Trek computer was fired on, whether by a Klingon or Federation phaser, and no matter what civilization designed and built the computer, it would explode in a grand display of fireworks.
        I had to explain to my friend that this was all nonsense, that early computers from the early 1950s used thousands of vacuum tubes, requiring high voltages, which could throw showers of sparks and bright purple flashes with the characteristic âoepop!â if there was a short circuit in its 120-240 volt circuitry but would not actually explode, and that modern computers ran on three to twelve volts and wouldn't even get a spark from a short.
        I had to explain to my friend that the only explosions were in my games; that the computer itself here in the analog world was safe.
        Along with the matter transporter and faster than light travel, the exploding computer was one of those things relegated to science fiction.
        Until now.
        New Scientist reports that they have found a way to make silicon explode on demand, either by shock, as with that .38 caliber police special or by electrical signal.
        âoeThis machine is stolen and will self-destruct in ten seconds.â
        New Scientist says âoeFor instance, the American spy plane impounded by China last year could have used it to destroy its secret electronics systems.â
        They add âoeIn a stolen mobile phone, the network would send a trigger signal to the part of the chip containing the gadolinium nitrate âdetonatorâ(TM), triggering the explosion... and detonate it at will.â
        So not only is Star Trek's computer to blow up, its communicators will too! I can see in five years when these bozos have the anti theft circuits in phones. Drop your phone now and it might break. Drop it in five years and it might take your leg off!
        Of course, the new viruses in ten years will not just reformat your hard drive; the kids will be writing viruses to make people's computers explode in their homes!
        Doncha just love science... Personally, I'm hoping someone with a little common sense will have a talk with these educated morons and explain that just maybe, exploding computers ain't such a good idea after all. Just maybe the US Government might be more concerned with bringing its spy plane crew home alive than exploding its electronics; they could have blown the plane up with conventional explosives, or even driven the thing into the ground, but they didn't.
        When my cell phone explodes the manufacturer better hope it takes my head off, because if it doesn't I'm suing the shit out of the morons!
        Beam me up, Scotty.
1/18/2002

Maybe folks will make art for art's sake, program for the love of code, etc. I love the freedom of being able to write and publish anything I want without making compromises with money issues. Like Rush (the band) sang in Spirit of Radio,

It's really just a question of your honesty, yeah
Your honesty.
One likes to believe in the freedom of music,
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity.

I'll post a journal pimping it, of course.

Odd, I hadn't had mod points for years and when I stopped posting so much, all of a sudden I'm getting fifteen points every few days.

I have to agree with d_r, whoever is doing it is laughable.

You won't gain anything from social "justice" and it will only annoy you and waste your time.

where do you want to spend your money? On food or on energy?

the reason for the longer range is that you move across cells. It is the number of charges (combined with heat) that is detrimental to cells. As such, they will likely always have about 160-250 MPC.
BUT, you are right about rentals for true long distance driving.

These should ONLY be in the service centers and the batteries should be for say 400 MPC. IOW, this is not to be used to fill up for local driving, but instead used for putting in long distance batteries so that you can take a vacation. With a battery that has say over 120 KWH, that first 30 min will still bring you up over 250-300 MPC, which is plenty long for extended driving.

Actually, there is.
Robots, actually androids, can be updated right away with any improvement. With humans, we have to undergo a generation cycle. Basically, look at speed of change of regular cars vs Tesla. Because of Tesla's heavy electronics manufacturing, new updates change it regularly, making the car newer and better, in a much faster way.

Well, that is a good question. I would like to think that it can. But, I do not know.
However, I DO know that they can be held personally liable.

Yes, they CAN go if people would SUE.
I make a habit to never put my CC in stores that run windows or that outsource to India, or any nation where the coders are paid a pitance of western coders. As such, I have not had my CC's stolen.
People need to put together mass lawsuits against companies and their CEO/CIO personally. Once that starts happening, then and only then, will things change.
Even here, it would be nice to see a lawyer step up and state that they are willing to do a class action against these companies.

The company, along with the CEO and CIO need to be held accountable. Once these ppl realize that they can be held PERSONALLY responsible for their bad actions, then and only then, will we see real issues solved.

Look, everybody is ignoring the common things. Instead, they see what the crackers WANT them to see, which is other doorways than what was initially used.

Look, the problem here is that ALL OF THESE COMPANIES THAT WERE CRACKED have 3 things in common:
1) they run windows.
2) they outsourced to India.
3) the company is not allowed to operate in India.

Basically, Indians are being bought off to leave backdoors on the production system.