The London Taxi Company (LTC) has opened a new plant to produce what it says is the world’s first purpose-built, mass-market plug-in taxi. LTC, a subsidiary of Chinese automaker Geely, has invested £300 million ($374 million) in the next-generation London taxi, which will be produced at the plant in Ansty, Coventry, and exported around the… Read more »
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport plans to deploy 102 AeroVironment TurboDock charging stations at its parking facilities. The chargers will be installed at hourly and daily passenger parking lots, as well as an employee lot and a maintenance building. AeroVironment’s TurboDock is designed for commercial applications. It charges at either Level 1 (12 amps/120 volts), or… Read more »
Nexperia is offering its automotive power MOSFETs in a new thermally-enhanced, loss-free package with a footprint that it says is 80% smaller than industry-standard devices. LFPAK33 MOSFETs enable the infrastructure that powers contemporary automotive subsystems such as radar and ADAS technology. In the industry, pressure is growing to reduce the size of modules in the… Read more »
A new all-Tesla racing championship is scheduled to kick off this November at the Paul Ricard circuit in France. The calendar will continue with a race every month or so in Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and Spain. The Electric GT Championship will offer “motorsport for the 21st century, that presents our… Read more »
Evatran Group has announced that its installed base of Plugless wireless chargers has logged one million hours of charging time. Evatran field-tested its Plugless inductive charging systems from 2012 to 2014 with partners including Google, Duke Energy, and Hertz. In 2014 it began selling 3.3 kW wireless chargers for the Volt and the LEAF. Since… Read more »
The battle over US fuel efficiency standards is likely to be a long and complex one. The new administration has made its zeal for rolling back environmental regulations clear, and that’s music to the ears of automakers, which have devoted much time and treasure over the years to watering down existing and proposed standards. The… Read more »
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have synthesized a new class of fluorinated sulfone electrolytes to enable high-voltage, high-energy Li-ion batteries. In “Oxidatively Stable Fluorinated Sulfone Electrolytes for 5-V Lithium-ion Battery,” published in the RSC journal Energy & Environmental Science, Chi-Cheung Su and colleagues explain how they evaluated the physical and electrochemical properties of the new… Read more »
Network operator EVgo and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) have released a report regarding the future of utility rates for DC fast chargers. The new report, “EVgo Fleet and Tariff Analysis,” finds that public fast-charging infrastructure is critical to EV deployment; however, California state legislators and regulators must make adjustments to allow for more cost-effective… Read more »
Aluminum supplier Novelis has agreed to provide aluminum for NextEV’s line of NIO EVs. NIO will use Novelis Advanz aluminum alloys to create a range of structural components and parts for its electric SUV models, which it plans to launch over the next five years. The aluminum for NIO will come from Novelis’s new $100-million… Read more »
China-based Hybrid Kinetic Group (HKG), together with its design and engineering partner Pininfarina, unveiled a plug-in sedan concept that uses a microturbine at the recent Geneva Auto Salon. The H600 concept features an aluminum chassis, all-wheel torque vectoring and vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid capabilities. It offers combined power of over 600 kW, and accelerates from 0-60… Read more »
