InstaVolt has begun construction of its 400th rapid charger, making it the UK’s largest owner-operated network of rapid chargers in the UK. It expects to have 600 rapid chargers in service by next spring. InstaVolt installs its chargers at no cost to the location owners, and takes care of the entire process, from planning to… Read more »
Warsaw transit operator Miejskie Zakłady Autobusowe w Warszawie (MZA) has purchased 130 articulated Urbino 18 electric buses from Polish manufacturer Solaris. Solaris has already delivered 20 electric buses to Warsaw. The buses’ batteries will have a capacity of 150 kWh. Delivery of the new e-buses is scheduled for 2020. MZA CEO Jan Kuźmiński said, “Our… Read more »
Battery manufacturing equipment startup Intecells has closed a Series A funding round led by Walden International and atmospheric plasma technology company Plasmatreat. Founded in 2017, Intecells is a joint venture between Plasmatreat and Architected Batteries Unbound, which licenses battery electrode fabrication technology and cell integration using atmospheric plasma. The startup will use the funding to… Read more »
The good news: Florida plans to invest $25 million from Volkswagen’s Dirty Diesel settlement in a network of highway charging stations. The (potentially) bad news: the state could choose to spend the rest of the settlement funds to replace existing diesel engines with newer, slightly cleaner, diesel engines. As part of Volkswagen’s punishment for getting… Read more »
At a roundtable with CEOs and other leaders in the car and energy industries, former UK Prime Minister Theresa May outlined the government’s commitment to the country’s struggling auto industry and called for the UK to stay at the forefront of the design and manufacturing of EVs. May confirmed that Jaguar Land Rover will receive… Read more »
In an attempt to prolong EV battery life, Bosch is developing new cloud services that supplement individual vehicles’ battery-management systems. The company calls the new service Battery in the Cloud. Its first customer is DiDi, a gargantuan Chinese mobility provider, which is equipping a pilot vehicle fleet with Bosch battery services in the city of… Read more »
Battery storage companies raised $1.4 billion in 17 deals during the first half of 2019, according to a report from Mercom Capital Group. That figure is up 139 percent from H1 2018, during which companies raised $543 million in 30 deals. There were six battery storage mergers and acquisitions in H1 2019, compared to eight… Read more »
For some time, Charged has followed the story of Workhorse Group, a Cincinnati-based company that has built a prototype electric pickup, has sold electric trucks to UPS and FedEx, and is in the running for a major contract to supply delivery trucks to the US Postal Service. Along with other observers of the EV scene,… Read more »
The Canadian government has announced a $4.6-million investment in Petro-Canada to build 92 fast chargers in its coast-to-coast network. The first completed station, in Nova Scotia, will be part of a larger network of more than 50 Petro-Canada locations, each with two charging units on site. This investment is part of the Government of Canada’s… Read more »
Sumitomo and Professor Hiroshi Tani of Kansai University have developed a new technology to generate electricity from the rotation of a tire. By installing a power generating device (or Energy Harvester) inside a tire, researchers were able to convert static electricity into clean energy. The new device, which Sumitomo calls the ‘SMART TYRE CONCEPT’, takes… Read more »