A game of one-upmanship seems to be developing between America’s top two legacy automakers, and we’re cheering them on. In January, GM made a weaselly (but still significant) announcement of its “aspiration to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035.” A week later, Ford announced that it would double its planned investments in… Read more »
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2022 Bolt EUV model that Chevy calls an SUV joins an updated Bolt EV priced from $31,995
For 2022, the Chevrolet Bolt lineup will expand from one to two models, with a new, so-called SUV version added alongside the original hatchback. Importantly, the Bolt siblings will take on a new role as the most affordable entries in a lineup of Chevrolet electric vehicles expected to grow significantly by 2025. Chevy dubs its… Read more »
Green Tesla embraces carbon-intensive bitcoin
Elon Musk is by nature an iconoclast, a disrupter, an upsetter of applecarts and a slayer of sacred cows, so his long-standing interest in bitcoin, which has been described as “a techno-anarchist project” and “a way to separate money from the state,” is not at all surprising. Now Tesla has purchased $1.5 billion worth of… Read more »
A sneak peek at Tesla’s new structural battery pack
One of the most significant innovations Tesla introduced with Model Y was the replacement of about 70 parts with two enormous aluminum castings. Now the company says it has plans to take this idea a step further by developing a battery pack that forms part of the structure of the vehicle, linking the front and… Read more »
Isolation technologies for EV power electronics
A previous article on bidirectional chargers touched on using transformers to provide isolation at high power levels—in which application they are the only game in town, really—but this time the focus will be on achieving isolation at low power levels, such as the feedback signal in a regulator, data communication buses between devices, gate drivers… Read more »
2022 GMC Hummer EV: the biggest, baddest, butchest EV to hit the market?
The news that General Motors would relaunch the infamous Hummer name—as an all-electric truck no less—broke a few days before the high-dollar, high-visibility 2020 Super Bowl ad that introduced that vehicle to the world. After a succession of carefully staged events for media and the public, we now know that the 2022 GMC Hummer EV… Read more »
Are German dealers sabotaging VW’s EV efforts?
The Volkswagen Group is by far the most charged of the legacy automakers—it’s making massive investments in electrification, converting entire factories to EV production, and rolling out fast charging networks across the US and Europe. Chairman Herbert Diess recently won an important vote of confidence from the company’s board, which agreed to back his ambitious… Read more »
Model S refresh includes completely revamped interior, powertrain updates and more
Over the past couple of years, as Tesla rolled out a seemingly endless stream of new features for Models 3 and Y, folks have been saying that the two elders of the line-up were overdue for an update. Now Tesla has announced a sweeping new refresh for Models S and X, featuring an entirely new… Read more »
Setting a new standard for battery leak testing
Defective cells can shorten battery life, decrease range, and lead to safety issues. A leaky cell housing, one common failure mode for Li-ion batteries, can allow ambient humidity to come in contact with the electrolyte, triggering an exothermic (heat-releasing) chemical reaction. Currently, the common practice in the battery manufacturing industry is to test cell packaging… Read more »
New class of cobalt-free cathodes could enhance energy density of Li-ion batteries
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers have developed a new family of cathodes with the potential to replace the costly cobalt-based cathodes typically found in today’s lithium-ion batteries. The new class, called NFA (nickel, iron, aluminum), is a derivative of lithium nickelate that’s used as a cathode material. These novel cathodes are designed to be… Read more »
