Nearly two months into 2019, it's been a mostly quiet year for Tesla. It closed 2018 with two profitable quarters and started talking up the much-anticipated Model Y. It laid off 7 percent of its workforce, but that seemed more a sign of understanding the difficulties of making it in a brutal industry than failing to do so. This week, though, saw the return of the sort of headlines familiar to those who follow the upstart automaker: CEO Elon Musk made a hard-to-believe promise about the state of Tesla's self-driving technology. Consumer Reports stopped recommending the Model 3 over quality-control issues.

Commuters could soon be taken to work in a driverless car which is so clean they could relax on the journey with a cup of tea brewed using water from the tailpipe. The state-of-the-art Hyundai Nexo is a crossover SUV vehicle which runs on electrical energy generated by hydrogen fuel cells. Unlike traditional combustion engines, hydrogen cars don't emit carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide so its only by-product is water vapour. The water produced by Nexo could even be stored and used later to pour on plants or even used to make a cup of tea or coffee. Hyundai has also just showcased its'level 4' autonomous driving technology using Nexo as the test bed.

The automobile is entering an important period of changes. As proof, at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Hyundai is displaying a vehicle boasting three solutions that all have a chance to become reality within the next few years. That vehicle is called NEXO. First of all, a technology that should still need some time before becoming widely available in Canada, fuel cells. Hyundai, who already showed off the Tucson FCEV in various auto shows and set up a pilot project in British Columbia, has announced that it has enhanced this technology.