Tag: electric vehicles

Some say…”Electric Vehicles are bringing out the worst in us”

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American car executives keep insisting that there is no trade-off between saving the planet and having a hell of a good time behind the wheel. “What I find particularly gratifying,” Ford’s executive chair, Bill Ford, said in April as he unveiled his company’s new electric truck, “is not only is this a green F-150, but it’s a better F-150 … You’re actually gaining things that the internal combustion engine doesn’t have.” Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, sounded equally bullish in a recent social-media post: “Once you’ve experienced an [electric vehicle] and all it has to offer—the torque, handling, performance, capability—you’re in.”

The pitch is enticing, but it raises a few questions. Is the electric F-150 Lightning “better” than the conventional F-150 if its added weight and size deepen the country’s road-safety crisis? And how, exactly, are electric-vehicle drivers going to use the extra power that companies are handing them?…

Converting the transportation system from fossil fuels to electricity is essential to addressing climate change. But automakers’ focus on large, battery-powered SUVs and trucks reinforces a destructive American desire to drive something bigger, faster, and heavier than everyone else.

And that question raised in conjunction with what smallish discussion there is among American consumers about battery-electric cars…sounds like, feels like, every discussion I’ve wandered into about more power, different power methods, in the last seventy years of my life. Not that the discussion originated with me. That just covers the time on this wee planet I’ve spent as a car nut, a hot rodder, sports car jockey and rally car navigator.

I honestly feel it’s over-emphasized in the article. Excepting me, my immediate and even somewhat-extended portions of our family are fairly representative consumers of automotive gear. Most of our vehicles are US-made cars and pickup trucks. They already include a few hybrids…usually driven as designed with a significant portion of all driving done on electric power. We can announce our “gas mileage” is 50 or 70 or 90 miles per gallon (today, in fact) when we’re out running errands to town in my wife’s Ford Maverick Hybrid.

What I see of the folks in our small community driving hybrids from the host of brands already midway to full-electric commitment, our driving styles haven’t changed a jot from prior. The same holds true of the few Teslas in the neighborhood. Aside from that subtly different nose, that crew is mostly identifiable by the sudden sprouting of solar panels atop their garages.

Germany matches France — making electric car charging stations mandatory at all gas stations

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Germany has announced that it will require all its fuel filling stations across the country to set up electric car charging stations…The chargers will be installed under its EUR 130 billion economic recovery plan to help remove refuelling concerns and boost consumer demand. The move is expected to boost EV (electric vehicle) demand along with a wider stimulus plan under which the country plans to raise taxes to penalise owning large polluting ICE (internal combustion engine) SUVs and provide a EUR 6,000 subsidy towards EV costs. The German government’s announcement follows that of the French plan announced last week…

Meanwhile, Congress prepares itself for the annual summer thumb-twiddling competition.

Tesla getting ready to introduce million-mile electric vehicle battery

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Battery on wheels

❝ Battery research revealed earlier this month and affiliated with Tesla could suggest that the company is well on its way to bringing a million-mile battery to market.

The result could last three times as long as Tesla’s current cells—6,000 cycles, across a wide temperature range—and be the electric-car brand’s “secret sauce” as it moves to prove its vehicles as high-mileage self-driving workhorses.

❝ The work was presented by pioneering lithium-ion battery researcher Jeff Dahm, and focused on a new “single crystal nickel metal hydride (NMC)/artificial graphite” chemistry.

“We conclude that cells of this type should be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) and last at least two decades in grid energy storage,” the paper’s authors outline…

❝ Research presented in the paper, published September 6 in Journal of The Electrochemical Society, was supported by Tesla Canada and included years of testing…

Notable in other articles/interviews with Dahm is that Musk isn’t trying to hold the technology secret. Building the EV industry as a whole is also beneficial to Tesla. After all, they’ll still probably be first on the street with this tech.

Battery advances could double electric car mileage and power

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❝ Electric car batteries could soon ditch the liquid electrolyte chemicals of yesteryear for a technology that’s more energy dense, more flame resistant, and optimized for the road. Researchers at Michigan Technological University announced the publication of three new articles this week around solid-state batteries — and the research could give a big boost to electric cars.

❝ Solid-state batteries encompass a variety of techniques, but most of them involve dropping the liquids that conduct electricity and interact with the lithium, replacing them with an alternative, solid material…

The research published this week analyzes the way lithium acts in a battery at scales under 500 nanometers, confirming that the material is surprisingly strong, a stepping stone to what engineers agree is essentially redesigning batteries from scratch. The papers were published in the Journal of Materials Research. Erik Herbert, the lead researcher and assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Michigan Technological University, tells Inverse these cells could pose an alternative to current electric car batteries.

RTFA. Too brief and I’ll keep my eyes open for more depth to follow.

The Electric Vehicle Takeover

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❝ Do you want the big thing or the new thing?…More importantly: Do you want to invest in the big thing or the new thing?

It’s a question that haunts any industry vulnerable to disruption, which is pretty much all of them these days.

❝ Take the automotive business. Bloomberg New Energy Finance just released its latest long-term outlook for electric vehicles. It posits, startlingly, that sales of all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles will overtake those using internal combustion engines within roughly two decades…

The late 2030s may sound like a long way away. But they aren’t when put in the context of an automotive industry that’s only been around for a century or so.

❝ Looked at differently, BNEF’s projection suggests electric vehicles account for all the growth in global vehicle sales within a decade from now…

Based on BNEF’s projections, global sales of vehicles will rise by 1.67 million in the year 2026. But sales of electric vehicles are forecast to rise by 2.06 million, while the number of vehicles using internal combustion engines will fall slightly, by around 400,000. To be clear, absolute sales of electric vehicles in that year are expected to be just over 10 million, versus almost 87 million for their traditional counterparts…

❝ And while it is tough for incumbents to pivot to a new business, it is not impossible…it was critical for Facebook that, even as it was launching its IPO in 2012, it was also overhauling its business to focus on smartphones rather than its desktop PC product — despite the latter accounting for 89 percent of the company’s advertising revenue that year…

Facebook’s desktop product dominated its advertising revenue in 2012 — but all the growth potential was in smartphones.

More examples dot the financial map. VW planning on investing $10 billion into electric vehicle manufacture – mostly in the United States for global distribution. The Brits announced, today, legislation to end registration of diesel or gasoline-powered motor vehicles in the UK by 2040.

Those drops of water appearing under your front door look like the beginning of a flood to me.

Sounds like Norway may end gas-powered car sales by 2025

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❝ An all-electric future may be closer than you think — at least if you live in Norway. The country’s four leading political parties have reportedly agreed to a plan to stop selling gasoline-powered cars by 2025…

The details are in some dispute: The two left-leaning parties confirmed the report, but the two right-leaning parties denied it…

❝ Norway was the first European country to get Tesla charging stations, and in April 2015, the country reached its target of registering 50,000 electric cars by 2018, beating its deadline by two years. About one in four cars sold there is electric.

❝ Norway is also one of the world’s top oil exporters, pulling in billions from the production and sale of oil and gas. However, the Norway’s gargantuan sovereign wealth fund has been divesting from fossil-fuel companies over the past few years.

The role model for commodities-exporting nations with brains. Use the profits from geologically-limited resources to build an infrastructure no longer dependent upon those materials, eh?

Canada will replace government limousines with electric vehicles

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electric parking lot GWN

❝ Under the leadership of its Liberal Party and new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada has unveiled its latest budget. While much of the 2016 budget focuses on supporting and growing the country’s middle class…Canada also addresses a host of environmental concerns, including greenhouse gas emissions and alternative fuel technology. In fact, there’s a whole chapter on A Clean Growth Economy.

❝ In the budget, Canada proposes setting aside $62.5 million Canadian for the alternative fuel infrastructure, which includes EV charging and natural gas and hydrogen fueling stations. “Early action is needed to support the transition to low-carbon transportation fuels, as vehicle choices made today will determine the mix of technologies on the road in 2030,” the budget reads. It is also expanding tax incentives to businesses to invest in EV charging and electricity storage. “These resources will also support technology demonstration projects that advance electric vehicle charging technology…”

Another $56.9 million is proposed for a cleaner transportation sector, which was responsible for 23 percent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2013. Included in this proposal is the development of international emissions standards for air, rail and marine transport. The budget also looks to improve life for city dwellers through improvements in public transport. As cities have expanded, public transit hasn’t kept up. Congestion and longer commutes are hurting businesses, families and the environment. The new budget proposes investing up to $3.4 billion in public transit over three years. “These investments,” the budget reads, “will help to shorten commute times, cut air pollution, strengthen communities and grow Canada’s economy.”

❝ In the spirit of putting its money where its mouth is, the Canadian government has announced plans to get rid of its limousines and replace them with electric vehicles. In a country that has taken a hit from low oil prices…it’s a heartening gesture to see a focus on a cleaner economy and transport.

Mail me a penny postcard when our Republican-controlled Congress decides that language and guidance like this should be included in our federal budget. If they had their way, we’d probably still be using kerosene lamps for lighting.

The greenest, most intelligent building in the world

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It knows where you live. It knows what car you drive. It knows who you’re meeting with today and how much sugar you take in your coffee. (At least it will, after the next software update.) This is the Edge, and it’s quite possibly the smartest office space ever constructed.

A day at the Edge in Amsterdam starts with a smartphone app developed with the building’s main tenant, consulting firm Deloitte. From the minute you wake up, you’re connected. The app checks your schedule, and the building recognizes your car when you arrive and directs you to a parking spot.

Then the app finds you a desk. Because at the Edge, you don’t have one. No one does. Workspaces are based on your schedule: sitting desk, standing desk, work booth, meeting room, balcony seat, or “concentration room.” Wherever you go, the app knows your preferences for light and temperature, and it tweaks the environment accordingly.

The Edge is also the ­greenest building in the world, according to British rating agency BREEAM, which gave it the highest ­sustainability score ever awarded: 98.4 percent. The Dutch have a phrase for all of this: het nieuwe werken, or roughly, the new way of working. It’s about using information technology to shape both the way we work and the spaces in which we do it. It’s about resource efficiency in the traditional sense — the solar panels create more electricity than the building uses — but it’s also about the best use of the humans…

“We think we can be the Uber of buildings,” says Coen van Oostrom, chief executive officer of OVG Real Estate, the building’s developer. “We connect them, we make them more efficient, and in the end we will actually need fewer buildings in the world.”

Watch the video, read the whole article. Lots of interesting tech that will soon be off-the-shelf if it isn’t already.

One important portion of administration of the building is polling the users on questions of privacy. This is, after all, Europe, not the Leader of the Free World. Privacy is a real concern. It’s managed as much by democracy as technocrats.

Birds, bats, bees, and bugs. These are the building’s neighbors on the north-facing terrace. OVG worked with Amsterdam officials to establish a continuous path of vegetation that supports beneficial insects throughout the city. Birdhouses and bat boxes are tucked discreetly into the landscaping. These pockmarked towers support various species of solitary bees, which buzz about the flowers on the public terrace.


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Coming – $470M GM plant to build and sell electrified vehicles in China

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SAIC already plans to build an electric Lavida with Volkswagen

Building on its current momentum within the region, General Motors announced it will be part of a new venture to construct an electrified vehicle factory in China.

GM is joining SAIC Motor Corp Ltd and Wuling Motors to build the $470 million plant. A GM representative said the factory will be dedicated to producing only “new energy vehicles,” China’s term for battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Annual capacity is expected to be 200,000 vehicles per year…

This new factory expands on a collaboration already in place between GM and SAIC Motors. Last month, GM announced that it is creating a new vehicle family from the ground up, which will replace several existing models. SAIC Motors is working alongside GM to develop the powertrain architecture and engine for this new line…

GM noted that this product line will be manufactured and sold in China, Mexico and India, among other regions.

“There are no plans to export the vehicles to mature markets such as the United States,” said GM.

GM does well in China. They sell more Buicks there than anywhere else in the world. Yes, they still look like Buicks to me. But, informed consumers + government support = equals an opportunity to market products more in line with forward-looking values.

Which is why there are no plans to offer any of these cars in the United States.