While BMW has been shining a spotlight on its new i3 electric city car, the second vehicle in the i line still had a bit of mystery about it. The i8 rolled out of the shadows this week in Frankfurt, as BMW announced that the plug-in hybrid sports car will arrive in US showrooms in… Read more »
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The challenges of battery state of charge measurements
Your BMS’s fuel gauge is lying to you. Here’s why that’s not a big deal. Battery management systems (BMSs), and the fuel gauges in them, are a part of daily life for almost everyone. You’ll find them in vehicles, laptops, cell phones, grid-attached energy storage – basically, anything that does work and needs to be plugged in,… Read more »
BMW i3: The launch of many firsts
When you’re writing about the dawn of a new industry, “firsts” and “milestones” come along so often that they may start to lose their novelty. However, the BMW i3, which was officially “launched” in July, and is scheduled to go on sale next year, boasts an impressive number of innovations that has the EV press… Read more »
Grocery chain tests 18-ton Swiss-built electric truck
Coop, Switzerland’s second-largest grocery store chain, and Feldschlösschen, one of the country’s largest beer brewers, have launched a pilot of a locally-built 18-ton electric truck. Coop and Feldschlösschen will test the e-truck on delivery routes in the Zürich region through the end of 2013. If it proves satisfactory, the companies plan to put more into… Read more »
BMW tells us more about the ultramodern i8 sports coupe
BMW has released a wealth of details on the second vehicle in its electrified i line, the radical i8 plug-in hybrid sports car. Like the i3 city car that Charged examined at its coming-out party in New York, the i8 is scheduled to go on sale in early 2014. However, it will be produced in… Read more »
Musk expands on Tesla’s Q2 financial report
Last evening, Tesla Motors announced its Q2 2013 financial results, and afterward, Chairman & CEO Elon Musk and CFO Deepak Ahuja took questions from journalists and analysts for about an hour. As expected, Musk did most of the talking, and covered a lot of ground concerning Tesla’s future production plans and international expansion. On… Read more »
Australian researchers announce supercapacitor breakthrough
Researchers at Australia’s Monash University have developed a compact graphene-based supercapacitor device that lasts as long as a conventional battery, an advance with the potential to bring next-generation energy storage a step closer. Professor Dan Li of the Department of Materials Engineering and his team published their work this week in Science. Supercapacitors (SCs) are… Read more »
A reluctant gem: The FIAT 500e EV
The cute, cuddly FIAT 500e EV may have been born only out of regulatory necessity. So what happens if it becomes the best-reviewed new EV in its class? The bar is raised; the game changes. Maybe Chrysler will even concede that it should sell it outside of the Golden State. Summertime in Sonoma County… Read more »
A closer look at coulombic efficiency
Peter Ulrix and Stef Leemans of PEC explain how the very delicate process of measuring a cell’s coulombic efficiency could significantly speed up development times. In May, the California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) put out its results for America’s biggest survey of plug-in drivers yet. More than 2,000 California EV owners responded, and while… Read more »
EVs: the Holy Grail of multiphysics
Sandeep Sovani on the evolution of computer-based engineering simulations. Before actually creating any physical prototypes, engineers build a three-dimensional virtual model of a component, and can use computer simulations to test how the design will perform in the real world. Computer-based engineering simulation early in the development process allows them to refine and validate designs… Read more »