Chinese automobile manufacturer BYD has launched a new generation of its 8Y-battery electric yard trucks. The company’s first delivery will include 14 second-generation electric yard trucks to two facilities operated by BNSF Railway in Southern California, where a demonstration project began with six of BYD’s first-generation electric yard trucks in 2018. The demonstration project is… Read more »
Tesla has a plethora of projects in the pipeline – the Tesla Semi, Model Y, the Tesla Pickup – and making these real will require vast sums of cash – as much as $2.5 billion in capital expenditures this year, according to Bloomberg. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when the company announced last… Read more »
Buick unveiled the brand’s first electric model, the Velite 6, at the recent Shanghai auto show. According to Buick, Velite 6 isn’t quite a hatchback or a crossover or a wagon, but something in between: a “multiactivity vehicle” (MAV). The all-electric Velite 6 is built on a new platform that GM designed together with its… Read more »
EVs seem to have become a bone of contention in the Australian federal election, which will take place in May. The political nuances may be hard for us Boreals to follow, but it appears that the Coalition, an alliance of center-right political parties that has been in power since 2013, recently had a colorful clash… Read more »
The U.S. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has announced the Low or No Emission (Low-No) Bus Program, a funding opportunity for recipients to purchase electric and low-emission buses. The program has $85 million in competitive grant funds available for public transit agencies, state transportation departments, and tribes. Program applicants will be evaluated based on their need,… Read more »
All forms of transport have environmental impacts, and the mainstream media is fond of speculating that those of EVs are just as bad as those of fossil fuel vehicles. Some facts and figures to rebut the croakers may be found in Tesla’s 2019 Impact Report, in which the company discloses the impacts of its products… Read more »
Volkswagen has refuted a recent anti-EV hit piece with a new study that confirms what many earlier studies have found: EVs have smaller life-cycle carbon footprints than comparable ICE vehicles, even if they are charged by dirty fossil-derived energy. “For the same vehicle models with different powertrains, the carbon footprint of the battery-powered E variants… Read more »
San Francisco International Airport (SFO) has purchased six Proterra Catalyst E2 e-buses and three 60 kW Proterra plug-in chargers. SFO says the e-bus fleet will help it reduce operating costs, and supports the airport’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2021. The e-buses will replace six diesel buses in SFO’s current fleet. The buses, each of… Read more »
Rivian, which caught the EV world’s attention with a prototype SUV and pickup truck, has secured an equity investment of $500 million from Ford. Rivian will remain an independent company, and Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s President of Automotive, will join Rivian’s seven-member board. The two companies will also work together to develop a new Ford EV,… Read more »
Tesla had a rough week. In its first-quarter 2019 earnings report, it described a loss of $702 million, or $4.10 per share – quite large even by Tesla’s standards, and greater than the $1.81 per share that Wall Street analysts (surveyed by FactSet) had forecast. Q1 revenue of $4.54 billion also fell short of expectations,… Read more »