Human ingenuity continues to address the important problems of the world, pushing vehicle acceleration time ever faster. A team of Swiss students has set a new world record for EV acceleration with an experimental race car that reached 62 mph in 1.513 seconds. The Grimsel, built by the Academic Motorsports Club Zürich, shattered the previous… Read more »
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Former Tesla nemesis Top Gear raves about Model X
The tiff between Tesla and British car show Top Gear was the EV world’s equivalent of the OJ Simpson circus. After prickly presenter Jeremy Clarkson, a famous hater of all things electric (and most things American) gave the Roadster a snarkily negative review in 2008, Tesla sued for libel. The ensuing drama dragged on for… Read more »
Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter Cars (review)
Driving the Future, by former EPA official Margo Oge, tells the fascinating story of how the agency achieved a historic agreement with the auto industry to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions – an agreement that delivered cleaner air and millions of dollars in savings for consumers, and gave a huge boost to the growing… Read more »
VW Group to launch 30 new BEVs by 2025
The Volkswagen Group has presented a new strategic plan that places a special emphasis on e-mobility. VW and its sister brands intend to launch more than 30 battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) over the next ten years. The group estimates that by 2025, EVs could account for as much as a quarter of the global passenger car… Read more »
Elon Musk debunks scare stories about a shortage of lithium
Elon Musk and JB Straubel covered a lot of ground in a nearly-three-hour performance at Tesla’s 2016 annual shareholder meeting. They recapped the history of the company, explained why Supercharging will not be free for Model 3 buyers, and discussed their plans to remake the auto production process. They also made some very interesting remarks… Read more »
Materials Project releases trove of battery-related materials data to the public
The Materials Project, a searchable database of material properties, was launched in 2011 by the DOE’s Office of Science. It uses supercomputers to calculate the properties of materials based on first-principles quantum-mechanical frameworks. The Materials Project is designed to save researchers time by predicting the properties of materials, eliminating the need to synthesize them in… Read more »
New papers cast doubt on lithium-air breakthrough
Back in October, Cambridge scientists wowed the battery world with an announcement that they had demonstrated a highly efficient and long-lasting lithium-oxygen battery. Lithium-oxygen, or lithium-air, batteries have a theoretical energy density ten times that of lithium-ion solutions, but suffer from poor cycle life. In a paper published in the journal Science, Tao Liu and… Read more »
Evercar brings its fleet of EVs to Uber, Lyft, Instacart and other on-demand services
Evercar uses short-term rentals to accelerate the potential for electric ride-sharing and delivery services. If it can clear regulatory hurdles, its electric-miles-as-a-service tools could change the growing industry. On paper, EVs seem like the perfect choice for the on-demand economy. In a world where vehicles are being pushed to spend more time on the road… Read more »
More motor options: TM4 launches new powertrain products with increased torque and speed ranges
TM4 designs electric powertrains for the most demanding vehicle platforms and duty cycles on the road. Formed as a subsidiary of the public utility Hydro-Québec, the company sells its motor and control products to manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks and buses around the world. In June, TM4 will release an update to its SUMO product line… Read more »
Improving aerodynamic modeling: Combining airflow dynamics with vehicle-handling models
Tuning a vehicle’s aerodynamic features is nothing new. Engineers have been using wind tunnels for decades, and more recently they’ve also employed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to reduce drag, minimize noise and increase stability by preventing undesired lift forces. In the expanding world of EVs, car builders are doubling down on efforts to push… Read more »
