Volvo Trucks North America has deployed its first pilot VNR Electric truck in Southern California as part of the Volvo LIGHTS (Low Impact Green Heavy Transport Solutions) project—a collaboration with the South Coast Air Quality Management District and 13 other organizations to develop a blueprint to scale up the adoption of battery-electric trucks. The first… Read more »
Fight fans have been following the fortunes of the competing DC fast charging standards, CHAdeMO and CCS, for the past several years, but it’s been apparent for a while that the tide of the struggle has turned. When we reported on recently released figures from the DOE showing that the two standards account for similar… Read more »
It’s no secret that auto dealerships are a major bottleneck for EV sales. Legacy automakers may cast an envious eye on Tesla’s direct-to-customer sales model, but they cannot practically (or legally) cut the dealers out of the equation. Now Volkswagen may have found a way to solve this dilemma, at least in Germany. VW has… Read more »
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 »
The tedious and complicated war between Tesla and the auto dealers continues to drag on. At present, the country is a patchwork—some states explicitly allow Tesla’s direct sales model, some explicitly prohibit it, and in others some sort of compromise has been reached. Tesla recently won an important battle in Michigan, and now it appears… Read more »
As anticipation builds for Porsche’s upcoming Taycan EV, the company has announced a third, entry-level version. The Taycan 4S will be available with two battery sizes: the Performance Battery, with total capacity of 79.2 kWh and power of up to 522 hp (390 kW); and the Performance Battery Plus, with 93.4 kWh and 563 hp… Read more »
Starting with model year 2020, the Chevy Bolt will offer an EPA-estimated range of 259 miles, a 21-mile increase over previous model years. Chevy says its battery engineering team improved the cell electrodes by making small changes to the cell chemistry, which allowed them to increase the vehicle range without needing to change the physical… Read more »
Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission (AQCC) voted 8-1 to approve the state’s adoption of the zero-emissions vehicle mandate. Colorado became the 10th state to join California’s ZEV program. According to the state’s Air Pollution Control Division (yes, this is a separate agency from the AQCC), automakers will be required to make ZEVs 4.9% of the… Read more »
Many readers are surprised to learn that Charged is headquartered not in California, but in St Petersburg, Florida. Once a sleepy retirement center nicknamed “God’s Waiting Room,” nowadays “The Burg” is a hipster hotspot, replete with art galleries, craft breweries and vegan eateries. Another distinction that places St Pete in the avant-garde: it’s an EV… Read more »
When you think of roadblocks to EV adoption, vision-challenged automakers, uneducated dealerships and SUV-loving consumers make for convenient culprits. However, in many parts of the world, arcane technical and political issues also present major challenges. In the UK, a technical issue having to do with the electrical grid is emerging as a limitation on home… Read more »