The ABB FIA Formula E Championship has announced a partnership with Belgian materials technology and recycling group Umicore to recycle the Li-ion battery units and cells used during the first two seasons of the racing series. The batteries from Formula E’s first two seasons, which were built by Williams Advanced Engineering, have been collected and… Read more »
Polestar, Volvo’s electric performance sub-brand, has unveiled its first pure EV. The Polestar 2 is an “avant-garde 5-door fastback” that offers all-wheel drive, 300 kW of power, 660 Nm of torque, an estimated range of 275 miles, and a 0-100 km/h time of less than five seconds. It sports front and rear DC-AC inverters, a… Read more »
Automotive supplier BorgWarner has acquired two Oregon-based companies specializing in EV technology: Rinehart Motion Systems and AM Racing. The two newly acquired companies will be merged into a single company called Cascadia Motion. Cascadia Motion will target customers with low-volume, specialty EV applications. Before the acquisition, Rinehart Motion Systems developed propulsion inverters and controls for… Read more »
Lucid Motors is one of the most interesting of a crop of young EV startups that are hoping to duplicate Tesla’s formula of launching a luxury EV as the first step towards bringing EVs to the mainstream (see our interview with CTO Peter Rawlinson in the March/April 2018 issue of Charged). A prototype of that… Read more »
Alliance Ventures, the venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has invested an undisclosed amount in PowerShare, an EV charging platform startup based in China. PowerShare, which received investment from BP Ventures just weeks before this latest investment, offers an online platform that connects EV drivers, charge point operators, and power suppliers. The startup’s cloud-based system enables… Read more »
A group of investors has filed a class action lawsuit in San Diego federal court to stop Tesla’s acquisition of battery and ultracapacitor innovator Maxwell Technologies. Bloomberg Terminal reports (via Electrek) that the litigants are calling the price of $4.75 per share (over $200 million total) and the process that led to the deal “unfair.” This… Read more »
The European Parliament and the Council have reached provisional agreement on a regulation that will set strict CO2 emission standards for trucks in the EU. Emissions from new trucks will have to be 15% lower by 2025 and 30% lower in 2030, compared to 2019 emissions. The text of the regulation still needs to be… Read more »
PolyPlus, a Californian company that’s developing a rechargeable lithium metal battery with a conductive glass separator, has entered a development agreement with Korean energy and chemical company SK Innovation. The collaboration is focused on PolyPlus’s solid-state lithium anode laminate. The companies’ initial goal is to produce and test prototype cells to demonstrate increased volumetric and… Read more »
Electric motor manufacturer YASA has announced the signing of a long-term joint innovation agreement with an unidentified global automotive OEM. The two companies will collaborate to develop custom electric motor and controller solutions for the OEM’s line of EVs and PHEVs. “This agreement brings together one of the world’s best-known automotive manufacturers with YASA, the… Read more »
German EV rental company nextmove, Tesla’s largest customer in Germany, plans to add 100 Model 3s to its fleet this year. The company recently took delivery of the first four units of the new sedan (the Performance version) at Tesla’s facility in Berlin. nextmove’s mission is to make EVs accessible to as many people as… Read more »
