While short-haul applications such as local delivery trucks, port drayage trucks and city buses are perfect candidates for electrification, long-haul trucking will likely prove more of a challenge, because of battery-electric vehicles’ limited range. Now Furrer+Frey, a Swiss firm that provides a wide range of rail transport products and services, has proposed a simple, low-tech… Read more »
Search Results Found For: "range energy"
XG Sciences receives DOE grant for silicon-graphene anode technology
Michigan-based XG Sciences has received a DOE Round 2 small business award for $150,000, which it will use to support its efforts to develop low-cost manufacturing of a silicon-graphene composite anode. One goal for the new anode type is to reduce the formation of the solid electrolyte interface (SEI). The SEI layer is both a… Read more »
ABI Research: Global EV revenue will reach $58 billion in 2021
ABI Research forecasts that global EV revenue will quintuple by 2021, to reach $58 billion. Converging trends such as multimodal transport and ride-sharing will help to drive the rapid growth. “The role of vehicle electrification in urban areas is part of a broader smart mobility model that includes shared vehicles, charging options, and driverless electric… Read more »
Oil giant Total to acquire battery-maker Saft
France-based oil company Total is taking over international battery maker Saft. To the barricades! A Gallic conspiracy to buy up battery makers and buttress Big Bad Oil? Probably not. Saft builds a wide range of batteries for transportation (including stop-start technology), backup power, space and defense applications, but to the best of our knowledge, doesn’t… Read more »
Nordic plug-in market soars in Q1 2016
13,896 new plug-in vehicles hit the roads of Scandinavia in the first quarter of 2016. Both Norway and Finland had their best-selling quarters to date. However, sales in Denmark stalled as the government phased out tax breaks. As reported by auto industry publication Insero Quarterly, EVs are still outselling PHEVs, but the latter are closing… Read more »
A closer look at wire bonding
Wire bonding technology – widely utilized in the microelectronics and power electronics industries since the 1970s – is finding its way into interesting new applications in the growing EV industry – in particular, battery connections. We’re quite certain that a few EVs are using wire-bonding technology for production battery pack connections, but Charged was unable… 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 »