Q&A with Lucid’s Battery Cell Technical Specialist Maithri Venkat. When it comes to battery cells for EVs, one size definitely doesn’t fit all. The properties of a particular cell act as constraining factors for every aspect of a vehicle’s design—and not only for vehicle performance parameters such as range and power, but for the development… Read more…

US fleet management company Merchants Fleet has expanded its lease and rental fleet with the addition of 250 new 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV work trucks.  The trucks have an EPA-estimated range of up to 450 miles, a towing capability of up to 10,000 pounds, and a payload of more than 1,400 pounds. Merchants offers the… Read more…

US bus maker Blue Bird has received an order from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 150 of its All American and 30 of its Vision electric school buses. Delivery is anticipated between October 2024 and early 2025. The order was placed through the district’s local Blue Bird dealer, A-Z Bus Sales. LAUSD… Read more…

Marshall County, Mississippi, is the future site of a planned joint venture of Accelera, the zero-emissions segment of Cummins; Daimler Trucks & Buses US Holding, a subsidiary of Daimler Trucks; and US commercial truck maker PACCAR, which produces diesel and electric models under the Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF brands. Plans call for the 21 GWh… Read more…

The road to a new set of emissions regulations tends to be a long one, winding through committees, public comment periods and court challenges, but as far as a layman can tell, the European Commission has reached the finish line, agreeing on CO2 targets for heavy-duty vehicles that would require phasing out almost all sales… Read more…

Planning, designing and executing an end-to-end EV battery return program doesn’t need to be difficult if you have the right gameplan. This session will highlight best practices and practical solutions ranging from: • Regulations• Package design• OEM and supply chain management• Data and reporting technology• Carrier considerations. This webinar will be hosted by CHARGED on… Read more…

To paraphrase a past American president, every pro-EV policy is only one legislative or court decision away from extinction. President Biden’s IRA and BIL (and pro-EV measures in California and other states) have been under attack on multiple fronts since their inceptions. Uncle Joe recently wielded his veto pen against legislation aimed at delaying investment… Read more…

Veolia, a water, energy and waste recycling services multinational headquartered in France, has presented the results of a successful vehicle-to-grid (V2G) trial that enabled two specially designed bidirectional vehicles to be charged and then to discharge 110 kW of energy, or enough to power 110 households for over two hours during peak evening hours.  Turbo… Read more…

TeraWatt Infrastructure, in partnership with the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT), has been selected to receive $63.8 million in federal grant funding via the US DOT’s Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) grant program. TeraWatt’s grant is one of 47 awarded to projects nationwide in the first $623-million tranche of the CFI program, part of… Read more…

While sales of the Air sedan have been slow, Lucid is planning much greater capacity for the Gravity, a three-row luxury SUV with 440 miles of range. Startup electric-car maker Lucid Motors cut the ribbon Wednesday on a massive expansion of its U.S. assembly plant in Casa Grande, Arizona. The company has built the Lucid… Read more…

Anything powered by an external source of electricity needs to be protected from voltage transients and surges, as it is not a question of whether such hazards will occur, but rather how often they will occur (and of what severity they will be). As might be expected, there are internationally agreed-upon regulations for surge and… Read more…

European vehicle manufacturer MAN Truck & Bus has signed an exclusive cooperation agreement with ABB E-mobility to work together even more closely, particularly in the area of R&D. “Cooperation in the area of research and development is rather rare in our industry,” said Thomas Nickels, Senior VP of Engineering at MAN. “Together with ABB E-mobility,… Read more…

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program (NEVI), part of the Inflation Reduction Act, has made $5 billion in federal funding available to build public EV charging stations. The program is administered at the state level, and the ultimate goal is to deploy 500,000 chargers along 75,000 miles of major US highways. The NEVI program will… Read more…

Rome’s public transport company ATAC (Azienda per la mobilità) has ordered 411 battery-electric city buses from Italian manufacturer Iveco. The €300-million deal, Iveco’s largest electric bus order to date, includes a 10-year, full-service maintenance plan for each bus. Rome’s new buses include both 12- and 18-meter models The first are scheduled to be delivered by… Read more…

The Federal Highway Administration is seeking feedback on how government rules should be updated to support the new NACS/J3400 standard, which enables other companies to manufacture and use Tesla’s formerly proprietary charging connector. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes $7.5 billion in subsidies for public EV charging infrastructure. $5 billion of that will be funneled through… Read more…

Governments in Europe and the US are increasingly alarmed about the rise of China’s EV industry, which has benefitted greatly from government subsidies (to say nothing of low-cost labor, technology transfers from Western automakers, and those same automakers’ reluctance to commit to electrification). Policymakers may invoke global trade rules to try to stem the tide…. Read more…

BMW says its historic plant in Munich will produce only electric cars from 2027, following a €650-million investment in expansion and upgrades, including the construction of a new vehicle assembly line and a new body shop. BMW’s Munich plant opened in 1922, and produced motorcycles until car production began there in 1952. It currently produces… Read more…

Stellantis has introduced a new “highly flexible, BEV-native platform that is the foundation for a wide range of upcoming vehicles for global markets in the D and E segments.” The STLA Large platform is one of four planned global BEV platforms—Small, Medium, Large and Frame—that will allow interchangeable battery cell chemistry, EDMs, power inverters and… Read more…

US EV charging software and services provider MoveEV has partnered with Canada-based telematics company Geotab to integrate MoveEV’s ReimburseEV software into the Geotab Marketplace, which is an extensive charging management ecosystem of third-party and Geotab-developed applications and add-ons.  The integration is designed to allow fleets with a variety of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to… Read more…

We’ve seen a number of EV startups that delivered a lot of hype, but few if any vehicles. For a while, we were tempted to place Canoo in that category, but now the company has begun deliveries of its electric LDV130 commercial van, as part of a large order from Kingbee, a national provider of… Read more…