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 »
Search Results Found For: "range energy"
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 »
New NREL study measures the public’s attitude about plug-in vehicles
A new report by Mark Singer of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) aims to highlight what consumers think about plug-in vehicles, including pure EVs and PHEVs, and to gain some insights about what may be needed to encourage widespread adoption. The report, Consumer Views on Plug-in Electric Vehicles – National Benchmark Report, presents the… Read more »
Five BYD electric double-decker buses go into service in central London
The world’s most famous city bus is going electric. Transport for London (TfL) has been experimenting with several kinds of battery-electric and fuel cell buses since 2013. Now it has introduced an electric version of the capital’s iconic double-decker bus into revenue service. TfL is putting five BYD electric double decker buses into service on… Read more »
Researchers use superionic conductors as electrolytes for solid-state batteries
Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Toyota and two other research institutions, have designed and tested solid-state batteries using a novel type of solid electrolyte. In “High-power all-solid-state batteries using sulfide superionic conductors,” published in Nature Energy, Yuki Kato and team members explain the advantages of superionic materials as solid electrolytes…. Read more »