Automobile magazine contributor Georg Kacher recently got a chance to drive one of the few existing prototypes of Porsche’s Mission E, and was also able to glean some technical details about the upcoming EV. Porsche told Kacher that every Mission E will have all-wheel drive at first – a rear-wheel-drive version may be offered in… Read more »
[Editor’s note: We reported that this was a new survey, but later realized, on more closely reading the original source, that the survey was published in January 2017. This was a journalistic error on our part, and we apologize.] Really? With everything that’s going on in the EV space these days, most executives at major… Read more »
By Scott Shepard, Senior Research Analyst with Navigant Research’s Transportation Efficiencies program Vehicle-grid integration (VGI) is a topic that tends to be at the fringes of coverage of transportation electrification. Developments in the VGI field are often overshadowed by Tesla Model 3 delivery timelines or by the range specs of the next-generation Nissan LEAF. Regardless,… Read more »
Thermal interface materials (TIMs) serve as the thermal path between a device and a heat sink. In automotive environments, extreme thermal stability is required to support the long product lives and warranties. So TIMs are critical to the thermal design of EV and HEV power modules where the material can account for up to 50% of… Read more »
Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed a way to stabilize lithium metal electrodes by forming a single-ion-conducting and stable protective surface layer in vivo. In “An In Vivo Formed Solid Electrolyte Surface Layer Enables Stable Plating of Li Metal,” published in the journal Joule, Quan Pang, Xiao Liang and colleagues explain how they… Read more »
Plug-in sales have failed…to reach the milestone of 200,000 units. Total US sales for 2017 were 199,826 (according to InsideEVs), a 26% increase compared to 2016’s 158,614. Worldwide sales were well over a million. December saw the biggest US monthly sales in history, and was the 27th consecutive month that sales were greater than the… Read more »
The California Energy Commission has awarded nearly $3 million to car-sharing programs using EVs in disadvantaged communities. Stratosfuel will demonstrate a fuel cell car-sharing platform using the hydrogen-refueling network in Riverside and Ontario. Calstart will use battery EVs in a ride-hailing service targeting community college students who attend Fresno City College from surrounding rural areas…. Read more »
Renault’s SYMBIOZ concept car, revealed at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, is currently performing road tests in France to demonstrate Level 4 autonomy, which frees the driver from all dynamic driving tasks. Level 4 automation is currently not permitted under French road rules, but trials are allowed if a human is traveling in the… Read more »
Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a way to mitigate the risk of battery failure during automobile accidents by including slits along the electrodes. In “Limiting Internal Short-Circuit Damage by Electrode Partition for Impact-Tolerant Li-Ion Batteries,” published in the journal Joule, the research team explains how this technology could allow manufacturers… Read more »
Carbon fiber-reinforced plastics represent a promising lightweight replacement for heavy steel. However, for carbon fiber to be widely adopted, new, more economical composites need to be developed. Unfortunately, carbon fiber properties are difficult to model, as they depend on complex features such as fiber loading, length distribution and orientation. Now researchers at the DOE’s Pacific… Read more »
