The good news: EV sales are growing steadily. The bad news: They’ve now grown enough to attract the attention of Big Oil, which is planning a multi-million-dollar counterattack. Citing “refining industry sources,” the Huffington Post reports that a consortium of fossil fuel interests is making plans to form a new advocacy group that hopes to… Read more »
The DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions has issued a solicitation for proposals that help bring advanced energy technologies to market. The office’s Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) has $20 million in new funding available. Proposals solicited from all 17 of DOE’s national laboratories will be submitted for review this spring, and TCF will match 50% funding… Read more »
Much research in the battery world focuses on finding a replacement for graphite as an anode material. One candidate is hard carbon, which can be formed in various morphologies to deliver the desired properties. But in fact, there are already millions of tiny factories around the world, cranking out as many carbon particles as could… Read more »
Every week brings another example of how EVs will fit in as an integral part of the distributed, smart energy system of the future. The latest news comes from Renault. Europe’s leading EV-seller has partnered with energy storage company Connected Energy to develop a modular storage product called E-STOR. E-STOR uses second-life EV batteries to… Read more »
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have demonstrated an energy management system (EMS) that learns from historical driving cycles how to combine the power streams from an electric motor and an internal-combustion engine in the most energy-efficient way. In “Data-Driven Reinforcement Learning-Based Real-Time Energy Management System for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” published in Transportation Research… Read more »
For reasons best known to themselves, automakers routinely sell the same or similar cars under different names (badges) in different markets. This was the case with the first-generation Chevrolet Volt – a cosmetically different version was sold in Continental Europe as the Opel Ampera, in the UK as the Vauxhall Ampera, and as the Holden… Read more »
New Flyer has completed a two-week in-service demonstration of its Xcelsior XE40 battery-electric transit bus with Miami-Dade Transit, the nation’s 15th-largest public transit system. The new e-bus logged 1,150 in-service miles and more than 1,800 passenger rides on 11 service routes throughout Miami and Dade County. The Xcelsior battery-electric bus features a Siemens electric drive… Read more »
Daimler, in partnership with its subsidiary ACCUmotive and Hannover-based utility enercity, is planning a new stationary energy storage system with a unique twist. The 15 MWh installation will be marketed on the German energy balancing market, and will also serve as a storage facility for new EV battery packs. The battery bank will consist of… Read more »
The Antelope Valley Transit Authority (AVTA), which serves some 450,000 residents in the northern Los Angeles metro region, says it has taken a step toward becoming the first 100% electric public transit fleet in the country, ordering up to 85 BYD electric buses over a five-year period. BYD will deliver a variety of e-bus models,… Read more »
GM has floated the idea of selling the plug-in hybrid powertrain used in the 2016 Chevrolet Volt (and in the Cadillac CT6 PHEV and Chevy Malibu Hybrid) to other automakers. “We want to be the partner of choice in propulsion system development in this complex and turbulent era we are approaching,” GM’s global powertrain chief… Read more »
