Month: May 2021

Italdesign and Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) have announced a partnership that will provide the automotive sector with a complete high-performance EV production solution.  Combining WAE’s composite EV rolling chassis with vehicle development services from Italdesign, the joint venture will support automotive OEMs in the creation of a range of premium...

Buying a pre-owned EV presents a new concern for buyers to beware of—the health of the vehicle’s battery. All batteries degrade over time, and there’s no simple way for a buyer to know how much of its original range a used EV retains. Some older EVs—notable the air-cooled Nissan LEAF—have...

Over the years, Charged has reported on many EV initiatives from major automakers. These have always been announced with great fanfare, and promises of “commitment” to electrification, but after a couple of years and a couple thousand EV sales, most of these “new eras” have quietly faded away (Ford’s 2012...

AlphaStruxure, a provider of Energy as a Service (EaaS) solutions, has won a contract to deploy an integrated microgrid and electric bus charging infrastructure project for Montgomery County, Maryland. The project will enable transit operator Ride On Montgomery County to convert at least 44 buses from diesel to electric power....

WAFIOS has introduced the SpeedFormer, a new approach to the production of hairpins for EV motors. SpeedFormer combines three bending techniques from conventional wire and tube bending machines into one system. One of the bending techniques has been used for decades in WAFIOS CNC spring and wire forming machines and...

In Charged’s home state of Florida, two separate proposals to impose special taxes on EV drivers were narrowly defeated in the legislature’s recent session. The latest battleground is Texas, where the legislature is considering an EV tax of up to $400 per year, which would be the highest rate in...

For a decade now, Tesla has been fighting state governments for the right to sell its vehicles directly to customers—something which has historically been prohibited in most US states. Texas is one of the states that still forbids direct sales, so residents have had to resort to a workaround some...

Aggreko, a provider of mobile and modular energy solutions, has delivered a smart battery storage system to Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne will incorporate the new system into a fast charging facility at its Smart Energy Plaza near Chicago. Aggreko and ANL will use this net-zero battery storage system to demonstrate...

AMPLY Power offers managed charging services to operators of EV fleets. Its newest customer is the Palermo Union Elementary School District in Northern California. AMPLY helped to secure funding from the Butte County Air Quality Management District, and local utility PG&E provided charger rebates and “make ready” EVSE incentives, eliminating...

Commercial EV specialist Endera has acquired Metro Titan, a school and shuttle bus manufacturing company.  The acquisition gives Endera the capability to deliver electric commercial vehicles in all 50 states. From its Ohio-based facility, Endera will manufacture electric Type A school buses, shuttle buses, and paratransit vehicles for the DOT,...

In a virtual meeting with investors, Ford outlined a plethora of plans to expand its electrification efforts. There was a big bundle of news, which will take the media some days to fully unpack, but the gist of it is that, under a plan dubbed Ford+, the automaker will be...

Norway is the world’s EV capital, and it’s not just land vehicles that are going electric. A couple of electric utilities and an electric boat manufacturer have teamed up to install a fast charger for boats at the harbor of Floro on the country’s rugged west coast. The new charger...

For those who were wondering whether Porsche buyers would embrace an electric car, here’s your answer: last quarter, sales of the new Taycan EV were only a hair below sales of the iconic 911 model. Porsche delivered 9,072 Taycans during the first quarter of 2021, trailing the 911 by 61...

Tesla has taken a major step towards implementing an innovative new chassis design—the first Model Y megacasting has come out of the enormous Idra “gigapress” at Gigafactory Texas. Front and rear megacastings will be combined with the company’s new structural battery pack to form the underbody of Model Y. Current...

Sponsored by Starline Track Busway Automakers have taken bold steps forward in the development of rapid and robust electric vehicle offerings.  Those efforts have not gone unnoticed. The combination of more competitively priced electric car models and improvements in battery technology have provided peace of mind for consumers looking to...

How will self-driving EVs charge themselves without human intervention? The Dutch firm ROCSYS believes its robotic charging system is the answer. The company recently raised $6.3 million from exisiting investors Forward.One and Superangel in a new funding round. ROCSYS will use the new funding to scale up its activities throughout...

Allison Transmission and Emergency One have agreed to integrate the Allison eGen Power 100D electric axle into Emergency One’s fire rescue and emergency vehicle platform. This builds on a successful current relationship, under which 90% of the units Emergency One sells are equipped with an Allison automatic transmission. The eGen...

EconCore has developed new honeycomb cores for laminated sandwich panels made with SABIC’s NORYL GTX resin. The new honeycomb core is designed to provide higher heat performance, better dimensional stability and lower water absorption compared to honeycomb structures made with traditional thermoplastics. SABIC says the new core material can be...

In March, Kia teased us with some exterior and interior images of the EV6 electric crossover, the automaker’s first dedicated (that is, not adapted from a legacy vehicle) EV. Now the automaker’s American division has confirmed official specs for the version destined for the US market. The EV6 will be...

The city of Basel, located on the Rhine at the confluence of Switzerland, Germany and France, plans to fully electrify its bus routes, and power them with 100% renewable energy, by 2027. Basler Verkehrs-Betriebe (BVB)’s fleet currently includes 115 buses serving 14 routes (there are also 135 trams serving 9...

The Costa Coffee chain has partnered with charging network InstaVolt to install DC fast chargers at up to 200 of its drive-through sites across the UK.  The stations will offer power levels of up to 120 kW. Drivers will pay for charging on a pay-as-you-go basis. Costa Coffee, which has...

WIMA, a maker of film capacitors, employs Wevo potting compounds in its supercapacitor PowerBlock—a cascaded, double-layer capacitor module whose capacitance, rated voltage and dimensions can be individually adapted to a desired application. This allows a range of mobility applications, such as engine starter modules in large construction and agricultural machinery,...

SVOLT will begin commercialization of lithium-ion batteries using safety technology from Soteria Battery Innovation Group (BIG), which, the company says, eliminates the root cause of thermal runaway and improves battery safety.      SVOLT’s new portfolio, which will be commercially available in the third quarter of 2021, uses thin metalized film current...

Mazda unveiled its first battery-electric vehicle, the MX-30, at the 2019 Tokyo Motor Show. Now the company plans to bring it to the US market, beginning with California, in fall 2021. It’s scheduled to roll out in additional states in 2022. The MX-30 is built on Mazda’s Skyactiv-Vehicle Architecture platform....

Aircraft are responsible for a substantial amount of air pollution, but building an electric airplane presents several physical and institutional problems that automobile designers don’t have to worry about. NASA has been working on electric planes, and grappling with these problems, for at least a decade, and has begun to...

Netherlands-based charging network Fastned is teaming up with Tesla to build a huge dual-branded charging station in Oxford. Fastned has deployed some 137 fast charging stations in several European countries. Early on, the network tried to appeal to Tesla drivers by adding Tesla CHAdeMO adapters to its stations. Now that...

TWAICE, a provider of battery analytics software, has raised $26 million in Series B funding, bringing the company’s total financing to $45 million. The funds will be used to expand the company’s analytics platform and to fuel international expansion. “We have heavily invested in our battery analytics software to address...

Faster EV charging will necessitate a significant increase in the current passing through the charging cable, which causes an increase in heat. Researchers at Purdue University may have developed a way to dissipate that heat. Their solution employs a liquid-to-vapor phase change. With traditional liquid cooling, the cooling fluid captures...

Sponsored by Keysight Technologies Learn Trends in Verification of Interoperability Today! Although differences are found among countries and regions, global diffusion of electric vehicles (EVs) is still in its development process. While China and some European countries have established EV policies and the penetration rate of EVs is expected to...

The Florida Public Service Commission has approved Duke Energy Florida’s latest rate settlement agreement, which includes plans for a new multi-part EV initiative that the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy calls “the largest electric transportation program in the state’s history.” Duke secured approval for a $7-million EVSE pilot called Park...