There is no doubt that the early days of charging infrastructure rollout had some bumps in the road. Plug-in vehicles interact with the outside world in a much more complicated way than legacy gas-guzzlers do, which led to early interoperability issues. The automakers needed to quickly learn how to work with many infrastructure and hardware… Read more »
Toshiba’s new TB9150FNG, an opto-isolated Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) gate pre-driver IC, features various enhanced protective functions for the inverters of electric and hybrid vehicles. As the control and drive functions of an inverter have different operating voltages, they must be isolated from each other. This is typically accomplished with a device such as… Read more »
It’s generally expected that autonomous vehicles will prove to be safer than those driven by fallible humans, but hard figures will be needed to convince regulators and a skeptical public. During a talk in Norway, Elon Musk said that Tesla is beginning to amass some statistics on the safety of its Autopilot-equipped vehicles. “The probability… Read more »
The hottest commodity on the planet right now is not oil or coffee but lithium, according to a recent article on OilPrice.com. The ballooning battery market is expected to drive demand for the light white metal, and mining companies, battery producers and automakers are scrambling to secure supplies. Goldman Sachs predicts that for every 1%… Read more »
SK Innovation, South Korea’s largest oil refiner and chemical supplier, says it is having talks with several companies about jointly establishing an EV battery factory in China. “An investment announcement will likely be made in the near future,” said Chief Executive Chung Chul-khil, adding that the joint venture in China may be with a battery… Read more »
By itself, vehicle electrification does nothing to alleviate the traffic jams in our cities or the sprawl in our suburbs. But autonomous EVs, working together as part of a coordinated public transit system, could move people around much more smoothly and conveniently. Naturally, Elon Musk has thought about this – he has called gridlock “a… Read more »
Wireless charging technology is almost ready for the big stage. Qualcomm has demonstrated its Halo system in various vehicles, including the Drayson B12/69 electric race car. Evatran’s Plugless aftermarket system is now commercially available for the Volt and the LEAF, and a Model S-compatible version is coming soon. Several major automakers have indicated that they’re… Read more »
The Wall Street Journal reports that three key executives from the BMW i EV team have left the Bavarian automaker to join Future Mobility Corp, a Chinese startup backed by Tencent Holdings. Carsten Breitfeld, a 20-year BMW veteran who developed the i8 plug-in sports car, left BMW last month to become CEO of Future Mobility…. Read more »
At a Ford conference about a year ago, Charged asked CEO Mark Fields (and every other exec we could buttonhole) if the company had any plans for an answer to the 200-mile Bolt that GM had just announced. His coy answer of “nothing we can talk about” led willing minds to believe that there was… Read more »
Tesla has joined the Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN), an organization formed a few months ago by several automakers and EVSE manufacturers with the mission of promoting technical standards for the Combined Charging System (CCS), and working to increase its capabilities. Observers of the charging scene differ as to the significance of the move. In the… Read more »
