General Motors CEO Mary Barra said Thursday the company is accelerating its electric-vehicle efforts, pulling forward the schedule on many future launches, and expanding the number of EV models it sells globally to 30 by the end of 2025—a larger number than the dozen future EVs shown to journalists in a no-cameras presentation in March…. Read more »
The National Science Foundation has awarded $39 million to a team of engineers and computer scientists at the University of California San Diego to build a test bed to better understand how to integrate distributed energy sources and EV batteries into the power grid. “We will be replicating the entire California power grid on one… Read more »
Since its founding in 2004, Proterra has grown to become North America’s largest supplier of electric buses. The company has sold some 950 buses to transit agencies, airports, universities, national parks and private companies in 43 states and provinces. Under its Proterra Powered program, the company provides powertrains to other vehicle makers—school buses for Thomas… Read more »
California-based startup NeoCharge has developed an economical, quick and safe way to add a Level 2 EV charging station to your home. The company’s Smart Splitter allows you to safely plug your EV charger and an appliance such as a dryer into the same 220-volt outlet, eliminating the need for a dedicated circuit or a… Read more »
Rice University engineers have devised a simpler and more efficient way to predict battery performance, which they claim is 100,000 times faster than current modeling techniques. The analytical model developed by materials scientist Ming Tang and graduate student Fan Wang of Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering doesn’t require complex numerical simulation to guide the… Read more »
Fleet management specialist ViriCiti has begun rolling out a major implementation of its Smart Charging service for Qbuzz, a public transport operator in the Netherlands that runs a fleet of 782 vehicles. Qbuzz will use ViriCiti’s Smart Charging solution to manage a total of 163 chargers (both plug-in and pantograph) from Heliox and ABB, which… Read more »
Lordstown Motors has completed its business combination with DiamondPeak Holdings, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). For those of you who haven’t been following the EV “stock market frenzy,” a merger with a SPAC is the currently fashionable way for a startup company to go public—it’s quicker and involves less paperwork than the traditional IPO…. Read more »
EV fans tend to be divided into two groups: Greenies and Car Guys, and reaction to GM’s upcoming Hummer EV has, unsurprisingly, been divided along those lines. Hummer good Most of the media is ecstatic over the new machine. Many are praising its “bad-ass” looks (GM says it wanted to make it look “less military”… Read more »
GM has given its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center a new role and a new name. The plant will henceforth be known as Factory ZERO, and will be retooled for the exclusive production of battery-electric vehicles. The new title is meant to evoke a future automotive world with zero emissions, zero crashes and zero congestion. There may… Read more »
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have used new techniques to create a composite that they claim increases the current capacity of copper wires, providing a new material that can be scaled for use in ultra-efficient, power-dense EV traction motors. The research is aimed at improving the performance and life of components such as… Read more »