Electrifying commercial vehicles is a critical part of reducing emissions, so it’s frustrating that the pace of fleet electrification has been so slow. Viable commercial EVs have been around for years, but fleet operators insisted on conducting years-long pilots to prove their reliability. Now that phase is over, and companies are starting to place substantial… Read more »
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Food distributor Sysco to buy up to 800 Freightliner eCascadia electric Class 8 trucks
When it comes to commercial vehicle electrification, fleet operators have spent the last decade piddling around with pilots of a few vehicles. Thank goodness, it appears that those days are over—we’re seeing more and more announcements of serious orders. The latest of these comes from food service distribution giant Sysco, which has signed a letter… Read more »
The facts about recent electric bus fires in France
False or misleading posts about EV fires flood the internet on a daily basis. The latest spurious sensation was a natural gas-powered bus that caught fire in Italy—a video of the catastrophic conflagration was posted online, and within hours, it had travelled around the world and back again, falsely described as an EV fire. In… Read more »
A look inside LG Energy Solution’s massive Polish battery plant
As demand for EVs soars, US and European automakers are racing to establish localized battery production, and break the long-standing reliance on supply chains originating in Asia. There are currently at least a dozen battery “gigafactories” under construction or planned in Europe. LG Energy Solution claims that its battery cell factory in Wrocław, Poland, is… Read more »
Orange EV claims to have the most electric trucks operating in the US
Electric trucks are much in the news these days, but most of the coverage seems to focus on well-known OEMs such as Daimler and Volvo, which are just beginning to deliver e-trucks to US customers, or Tesla, which has delivered none. Meanwhile, Orange EV, founded in 2012, says it has deployed over 370 trucks to… Read more »
FlixMobility and MTRWestern to launch Seattle-Eugene electric bus line
FlixMobility, a transit company that operates electric buses on several intercity routes in Europe, has teamed with motorcoach operator MTRWestern to explore the possibility of launching a new electric bus line in the Pacific Northwest. The planned FlixBus route will stop at Seattle, Portland, Corvallis and Eugene, and the companies hope to begin service sometime… Read more »
Rocsys robots help to make EV fleet charging more reliable
Originally designed with autonomous vehicles in mind, Rocsys’s robotic charging arm has attracted interest from fleet operators. Netherlands-based Rocsys makes robotic devices that allow EVs to be charged without human intervention (see the feature in our January/February 2020 issue). When we hear about robotic charging, the application that typically springs to mind is charging autonomous… Read more »
Rivian becomes one of the world’s most valuable automakers—with no revenue
Are investors farsighted or foolhardy? A little of both, in our view—but there’s no question that Wall Street believes in an electric future. EV startup Rivian went public last week, raising nearly $12 billion to give the company a valuation of around $77 billion. Since then, RIVN stock has soared, making the company one of… Read more »
CharIN announces 5th North America Conference and Testival
The Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN) is a trade association that promotes the Combined Charging Standard (CCS). A major aspect of its work is to facilitate real-world testing of its members’ products. Now CharIN has announced that the 5th North America Conference and Testival will take place at Lucid Motors Headquarters in Newark, California on November… Read more »
Book review—Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
Considering the massive media coverage of Tesla over the last decade, it may seem surprising that there aren’t more books about the company. When I first released my history of Tesla in 2014, I expected to have a short window of exclusivity before a “real” book—one with a hard cover and celebrity blurbs on the… Read more »