EVs may require less maintenance than legacy vehicles, but cars will be cars, so it’s still prudent to keep up with regular scheduled maintenance. Especially for the affluent sorts who can afford to drive Teslas, it may make more sense to pay for a plan up front than to risk losing valuable time to a… Read more »
Portuguese EVSE manufacturer Efacec is building and installing chargers aimed at the new generation of long-range EVs, with output power of up to 350 kW. Efacec had sold 44 High Power units of its HV range as of December. The HV range includes models with different power levels, including 50, 160, 175 and 350 kW,… Read more »
Faraday Future is scaling back its ambitions, according to Reuters, cutting its planned product portfolio from seven EVs to two, and also reducing the size of its factory in Nevada to 650,000 square feet, less than a third of its original planned footprint. When the company announced plans for its assembly facility in 2015, it… Read more »
A team of researchers affiliated with the South Korean university UNIST has developed a new way to increase the energy efficiency of metal-air batteries by using a conducting polymer. In “Polypyrrole-assisted oxygen electrocatalysis on perovskite oxides,” published in Energy & Environmental Science, Professors Dong-Gyu Lee, Hyun-Kon Song and Guntae Kim explain that, in the cathode… Read more »
In 2012, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) adopted the Advanced Clean Cars (ACC) program, a set of standards for new vehicles through model year 2025. The program has two components: the Low-Emission Vehicle III regulations, which mandate reductions in emissions from legacy vehicles; and the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) regulation, which requires manufacturers to produce… Read more »
Tesla has announced that it will shut down production at its California assembly plant for a week to prepare to start producing Model 3. “This will allow Tesla to begin Model 3 production later this year as planned and enable us to start the ramp towards 500,000 vehicles annually in 2018,” said a Tesla spokesman…. Read more »
A new report from Navigant Research examines the current market for advanced batteries (defined as mass-produced products aimed at the automotive or stationary energy storage sectors). In the first three quarters of 2016, Navigant says, over 323 million individual battery cells were shipped, representing 16.1 GWh of energy capacity and $3.8 billion in sales. The… Read more »
Are even oil companies starting to hop on the EV bandwagon? Giant multinational Shell has confirmed plans to add EV charging points to some of its gas stations in the UK and the Netherlands. The first EV chargers may be installed before the end of 2017. “We have a number of countries where we’re looking… Read more »
Microvast, headquartered in Stafford, Texas, with offices in China, the UK and Germany, is a manufacturer of lithium-ion battery systems for electric and hybrid transit buses. The company recently announced record annual sales for 2016 – over 7,500 units. As of the end of 2016, more than 15,000 Microvast battery-powered buses were operating in public… Read more »
Japanese automotive supplier NSK has demonstrated what it says is the first transmission-equipped wheel hub motor. In-wheel motors have several advantages – they can reduce the weight of the vehicle, control the drive force of each wheel for improved torque vectoring, and possibly free up room for more passenger and cargo space. However, achieving both… Read more »
