San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) plans to invest $7.5 million over the next five years in an education campaign to complement its recently approved $45-million charging station pilot. SDG&E will be installing 3,500 charging stations at 350 local businesses and apartment communities. At least 10% of the chargers will be in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The… Read more »
As Volvo unveiled two concept cars built around the new Compact Modular Architecture, it announced that its new global small car range will include a pure battery electric vehicle, as well as Twin Engine plug-in hybrid powertrain variants. Volvo previously announced that it would produce a pure EV based on its larger Scalable Product Architecture… Read more »
Silicon Valley-based Efficient Drivetrains Inc. (EDI) supplies electrified powertrains for a wide range of commercial vehicles. Now the company has added an electrification kit for OEMs to its product line. The EDI PowerDrive kit offers OEMs a framework to rapidly develop PHEV solutions. Electrification kits include a drivetrain (EDI PowerDrive); vehicle control and telematics software… Read more »
Plug-in vehicles are a rapidly growing segment for BMW. The BMW Group reports that it sold 4,504 battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles around the world in April. This represents 2.5% of the company’s total vehicle sales. The top three markets for plug-ins were the US, Scandinavia and the UK. The i3 electric city car sold… Read more »
Semiconductor pioneer Fairchild (NASDAQ: FCS) is expanding its portfolio of automotive-grade semiconductor solutions for electrified vehicles with its new discrete and bare die IGBTs and diodes, which are designed to be well-suited for traction inverters. The new components feature Field Stop Trench IGBT technology and a soft fast recovery diode. Designers can add IGBTs in… Read more »
Wireless charging certainly seems like the future, but the lack of technical standards has stalled the release of systems from the major EV makers. Now SAE has published an industry guideline for wireless power transfer (WPT) between infrastructure, vehicle suppliers and OEMs. “SAE TIR J2954 Wireless Power Transfer for Light-Duty Plug-In/ Electric Vehicles and Alignment… Read more »
“Definitely going to need to rethink production planning,” tweeted Elon Musk when he learned of the explosive demand for his latest creation. Seldom has such a short sentence been so freighted with risk, opportunity…and a whole lot of hard work. Ramping up annual production by a factor of ten will be a major challenge, one… Read more »
Southern California Edison (SCE) plans to add as many as 1,500 EV charging stations to its 5-million-customer service area. The $22-million Charge Ready pilot is focused on installing charging stations at locations where cars are parked for extended periods – workplaces, apartment complexes, fleet vehicle parking lots, campuses and recreational areas. Participants will own, operate… Read more »
Infineon Technologies’ latest power module family features extremely small dimensions (42 x 42.4 x 4.77 mm). These modules are designed for applications such as main inverters and generators with a typical power range of 40 to 50 kW, and can be used in parallel configurations to support higher power levels. An inverter is typically placed… Read more »
Scandinavian charging network operator Fortum Charge & Drive is collaborating with Swedish electricity company Jönköping Energi to install 30 public charging stations in the city of Jönköping. The project will begin this fall, and is expected to last two years. Jönköping Energi will own and manage the stations, which will be linked to the 600-station… Read more »
