Are they or aren’t they? After months of refusing to comment on whether Ford is working on a 200-mile EV to challenge competitors GM, Tesla and Nissan, Kevin Layden, Ford’s Director of Electrification Programs and Engineering, seemed to dash our hopes when he said that the 2017 Focus Electric’s 100-mile range should be plenty for… Read more »
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German government announces 1 billion euro EV and PHEV subsidy program
Several European nations, notably Norway and the Netherlands, offer generous incentive programs to support e-mobility. Germany, the continent’s largest auto market, has been a conspicuous exception until now. This week, the German government announced a new incentive scheme worth about 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion). The costs are to be shared equally between the government… Read more »
Seaward’s new handheld charge point tester will help bring quality control to a new level
There is no doubt that the early days of charging infrastructure rollout had some bumps in the road. Plug-in vehicles interact with the outside world in a much more complicated way than legacy gas-guzzlers do, which led to early interoperability issues. The automakers needed to quickly learn how to work with many infrastructure and hardware… Read more »
WAVE wireless charging helps transit agencies save money by going electric
Wireless charging technology is almost ready for the big stage. Qualcomm has demonstrated its Halo system in various vehicles, including the Drayson B12/69 electric race car. Evatran’s Plugless aftermarket system is now commercially available for the Volt and the LEAF, and a Model S-compatible version is coming soon. Several major automakers have indicated that they’re… Read more »
BMW’s X5 xDrive40e spearheads its plan to offer PHEVs in every market segment
BMW has taken a bold approach to electrification. It began test-marketing EVs in 2012 with the Active E and Mini E, and escalated to full-scale production in 2013 with the i3 EV and i8 plug-in super-sports car, which together passed the milestone of 50,000 worldwide sales in January. BMW deserves a lot of credit for… Read more »
A dealership perspective: How we can sell millions of EVs
Sales of EVs and PHEVs are growing at what seems like an impressive pace, but are still tiny in relation to the larger auto market. Total new vehicle sales reached an all-time high of over 17 million in 2015, but plug-in sales just cracked the one-percent mark in Europe, and are still well under one… Read more »
Members of development team for BMW i3 and i8 defect to Chinese startup
The Wall Street Journal reports that three key executives from the BMW i EV team have left the Bavarian automaker to join Future Mobility Corp, a Chinese startup backed by Tencent Holdings. Carsten Breitfeld, a 20-year BMW veteran who developed the i8 plug-in sports car, left BMW last month to become CEO of Future Mobility…. Read more »
Ford has no plans for a 200-mile EV
At a Ford conference about a year ago, Charged asked CEO Mark Fields (and every other exec we could buttonhole) if the company had any plans for an answer to the 200-mile Bolt that GM had just announced. His coy answer of “nothing we can talk about” led willing minds to believe that there was… Read more »
Tesla joins Charging Interface Initiative – what does it mean?
Tesla has joined the Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN), an organization formed a few months ago by several automakers and EVSE manufacturers with the mission of promoting technical standards for the Combined Charging System (CCS), and working to increase its capabilities. Observers of the charging scene differ as to the significance of the move. In the… Read more »
Wrightspeed to provide its turbine-based PHEV powertrain to New Zealand bus operator
Ian Wright was a co-founder of Tesla, but he soon left to start his own company, partly because he felt that large commercial vehicles represented a better target for electrification than passenger cars (read more about Wright’s electrifying adventures in the April 2014 issue of Charged, and in the book Tesla Motors). Since then, Wrightspeed’s… Read more »