It’s not looking good for Georgia’s EV tax credit. The Georgia Senate has passed a transportation funding bill that would eliminate the state’s $5,000 tax credit for leases and purchases of EVs. In fact, the bill imposes a yearly registration fee on EVs: $200 a year for personal vehicles and $300 a year for commercial… Read more »
Illinois consumers who purchased a new plug-in vehicle in 2014, or later, will not receive a $4,000 rebate from the state. That is the message from the Illinois Green Fleet rebate program, which announced the suspension of the rebate last week. The Illinois Alternate Fuels Rebate Program started in 1998 and over $14 million in rebates have been… Read more »
If the federal government wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions, one of the most obvious ways to do so would be to clean up its own vehicle fleet. The feds currently operate some 655,000 vehicles, and only a minuscule fraction of these are truly low-emission. President Obama signed an executive order Thursday directing the federal… Read more »
It may not be time to panic yet, but auto industry pundits are parsing some recent comments by a DOT official suggesting that the EPA may consider watering down federal fuel efficiency standards that are scheduled to take effect in 2022. A midterm review of the CAFE regulations is coming up, beginning with a report… Read more »
Lithium-sulfur batteries are one of the hottest topics in the battery field today, as they could theoretically offer energy density up to four times higher than that of lithium-ion batteries. However, one of several challenges to be overcome is finding cathode materials that demonstrate long-term stability. An international team of researchers from Drexel University and… Read more »
Heliox, a manufacturer of power conversion equipment, has delivered its CCS 700 V charger to fellow Dutch firm VDL Bus and Coach. VDL’s Citea electric bus will be joining the fleet of Swedish transport operator Byberg & Nordin. Heliox says this will be the first European e-bus to use the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard…. Read more »
Chinese automaker BYD’s electric buses have been attracting a lot of interest from North American transit authorities. However, the company’s plans to bring its E6 electric passenger car to the US, which it has been talking about since 2009, have come to little so far. That might be about to change. According to Reuters (via Green… Read more »
Dyson, a manufacturer of high-tech vacuum cleaners, fans, restroom hand dryers and other nifty gadgets, has invested $15 million in Sakti3, a Michigan-based developer of solid-state battery technology. As CEO Ann Marie Sastry explained in a panel discussion last November, solid-state batteries theoretically offer higher energy density than current Li-ion designs, and could also be… Read more »
The currently unfolding electromobility revolution has spurred a surge of interest in the history of EVs, and some fascinating fossils are coming to light. Our colleague Jason Torchinsky at Jalopnik unearthed an interesting relic in The Complete Book of Electric Vehicles, by Sheldon Shacket, which was published in 1979. The book describes a prototype Volkswagen… Read more »
When it comes to finding a way to charge EVs more quickly, human ingenuity has come up with some pretty wide-ranging solutions, from battery-swapping to flow batteries that store energy in tanks of liquid electrolyte. The latest innovative idea comes from startup Tanktwo, and is called a String Battery. Tanktwo’s system replaces a vehicle’s battery pack with a container filled… Read more »
