Tesla’s war with the auto dealers is getting more interesting by the day. Barely a week after New Jersey outlawed the company’s contentious direct-to-consumers sales model, the Arizona legislature is considering a bill that would explicitly legalize it. According to the Associated Press, Arizona House Bill 2123, which was approved by a state Senate committee… Read more »
Aging is an inescapable fact of life, not only for people, but for batteries as well. Researchers at the Helmholtz Center Berlin (HZB) recently identified a major reason why Li-ion batteries degrade with time. They have directly observed atomic rearrangements occurring in cathode materials during charge and discharge processes, which lead to the breakdown of the… Read more »
It seems everyone has a story about an underutilized public charging station in their neighborhood. It’s an unfortunate fact that, of the over 7,500 public chargers in the US, many were installed by local governments that had no idea how to go about selecting an appropriate location (the parking lot at city hall is usually… Read more »
Anyone who’s curious about the inner workings of a high-performance electric motorcycle should check out this new video from Brammo. Director of Product Development Brian Wismann uses a cutaway of a 2013 Empulse to give a grand tour of its components. From the 10 Amp/hour lithium-ion battery cells, grouped into 7 modules of 36 cells… Read more »
Intertek, a company that specializes in third-party validation and compliance testing, is working with the DOE and several national laboratories to collect real-world data on all the most popular plug-in models, testing the vehicles’ performance, durability and operational costs. Intertek acquires new vehicles directly from a dealer, and installs data logging equipment, which uses Wi-Fi… Read more »
Nothing focuses the official mind on electric vehicles quite like a thick blanket of nasty grey smog. It’s no coincidence that the two places on Earth with the most aggressive pro-EV policies – California and China – are places with serious air pollution problems. Does this mean that the City of Lights will be the… Read more »
Researchers at Mie University in Japan have developed a new protected lithium electrode for aqueous lithium-air batteries, which they presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. Lithium-air batteries are attracting a lot of attention, because of their potential to deliver much higher energy density than current Li-ion designs. Most recent studies have… Read more »
Kings Canyon Unified School District, in California, has ordered four buses from Trans Tech Bus, featuring electric powertrains from Foster City-based Motiv Power Systems. The SST-e, an electric version of Trans Tech’s popular SST model, uses a Ford E450 cutaway chassis equipped with Motiv’s electric Powertrain Control System (ePCS). The SST-e school bus is available… Read more »
Despite what you may hear on Fox News, which recently aired an anti-EV rant (the latest of many) that was riddled with misleading statements, by no means all conservatives are opposed to electric vehicles. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been taking flak from both left and right since his administration approved a new rule… Read more »
ClipperCreek has added a new charger to its HCS series product line. The HCS-60 is a 48 Amp Level 2 station that’s designed for both residential and commercial markets. The HCS-60 has a fully sealed NEMA 4 enclosure, and is rated for both indoor and outdoor use. It comes with a 3-year warranty, and pricing… Read more »
