Over the first 10 years of their existence, most modern battery-electric cars have been compact hatchbacks or Teslas. While a few are marketed as crossover utility vehicles, none have been the full-size pickup trucks that make up a huge and very profitable segment of US vehicle sales. That’s about to change. What follows is a… Read more »
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Retooling a shuttered factory to build electric trucks: Q&A with Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns
Will Ohio’s Voltage Valley energize a new era for the US auto industry? Big things are happening in the Mahoning Valley area of northeastern Ohio. The region, which centers on the city of Youngstown, was a booming center of steel production until the 1970s. Since then, like many other industrial hubs, the area has suffered… Read more »
Colorado adds medium- and heavy-duty vehicles to its electrification plans
Governments around the world are pursuing policies to speed up EV adoption, but most are piecemeal—a purchase incentive here, an investment in EVSE there. California and the UK are among the few entities that are developing comprehensive plans to electrify all forms of transport. The Centennial State is moving closer to that ideal, and is… Read more »
Daimler becomes the latest automaker to abandon hydrogen-powered passenger cars
Mercedes-Benz has ended its development of fuel cell-powered passenger cars, saying that they would be too expensive—around double the cost to produce of comparable battery-electric vehicles. The company has been working on fuel cell technology for over 30 years. Mercedes says it will wind down production of the GLC F-Cell, which was developed in a… Read more »
Monthly EV market share in Germany tops 9 percent, led by Tesla Model 3
Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, has been slower than some of its neighbors to embrace EVs, but things seem to be changing fast. In March, plug-in vehicles accounted for a record 9.2% of the total auto market (as reported by CleanTechnica). The balance between pure EVs and PHEVs was about even. For the first time,… Read more »
BMW reveals details of hydrogen fuel cell powertrain system
Different automakers have different visions of the low-emissions future, to say the least. Just a few days after the Volkswagen Group released an article explaining why it has abandoned hydrogen fuel cells in favor of battery-electric powertrains, BMW has “reaffirmed its ongoing commitment to hydrogen fuel cell powertrain system technology.” Unlike VW, BMW is leaving… Read more »
EV software delays threaten to become “a disaster” for the German automakers
When I interviewed Tesla co-founder Ian Wright in 2014 for my history of Tesla, he described the software found in traditional automobiles as “a dog’s breakfast,” by which he meant that it was a motley mixture of heterogenous hardware and software, in contrast to Tesla’s elegant unified system, which controls every function of the vehicle…. Read more »
SEAT adapts windshield wiper motors to make ventilators
Spain has been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 virus. Now SEAT, the Spanish subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, has adapted an auto assembly line to manufacture ventilators. Since the emergence of the pandemic, SEAT has launched several initiatives to produce material and devices in high demand by hospitals, including ventilators. A team of engineers… Read more »
The battery that breathes—Freudenberg’s pressure compensation system
EV batteries require pressure compensation both under normal operation and during emergency ventilation. Freudenberg Sealing Technologies’ DIAvent component combines these two functions into a single design, which will be used in the ABT e-Caddy and ABT e-Transporter, two Volkswagen vans that are popular in Europe and Mexico. To reduce battery weight and size, ABT uses… Read more »
New York State pledges $24 million in VW settlement funds for electric transit buses
New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) have announced that over $24 million is available to replace diesel-powered transit buses with new all-electric buses. As part of the state’s $128-million allocation from the federal Volkswagen Settlement, NYSERDA will invest $18.4 million to fund… Read more »