The famous English university town of Oxford has officially launched a fleet of 159 new battery-powered buses. Some of the buses are already in service, and the city plans to convert all of its buses to zero-emission models. Operators Go-Ahead and Stagecoach put up about half of the £82.5-million cost to deploy the e-buses, and… Read more…

Comau, an Italian industrial automation company and LiNa, a solid-state sodium battery manufacturer, are developing a scalable manufacturing solution for sodium-metal-chloride battery cells. Comau provided LiNa with a detailed cell manufacturing automation roadmap. Comau and LiNa engineers designed the enclosure and handling equipment for solid-state battery cell components. They also identified and integrated commercially available… Read more…

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the selection of 16 projects totaling $32.5 million to advance electrification of the transportation sector. Spanning nine states and Washington DC, the selected projects will focus on expanding EV deployment and supporting EV charging infrastructure by reducing installation costs, educating consumers and implementing regional deployment. Funded through… Read more…

Amprius Technologies has announced an expansion of its product portfolio of silicon anode batteries. The new SiCore batteries are based on a proprietary silicon anode material system. Amprius claims its batteries deliver performance that surpasses that of today’s state-of-the-art graphite-based cells: specific energy up to 400 Wh/kg, and cycle life up to 1,200 cycles at… Read more…

It’s the kind of headline EV boosters hate, and EV boo-birds trumpet: just two years after announcing that it would buy 100,000 Teslas and a raft of other EVs, rental giant Hertz announced that it would sell 20,000 of its Teslas and replace them with tried-and-true gas-guzzlers (at this writing, the company is offering around… Read more…

It’s widely believed that frequent DC fast charging stresses a battery, shortening its useful lifetime. However, the long-term effects of frequent fast charging can be mitigated with properly designed charging limits. (Battery data specialist Recurrent recently released the results of a study on the subject.) Can BMS software eliminate this problem and push the limits… Read more…

RecycLiCo Battery Materials, a battery recycling company, has received investment approval from the Taiwan Department of Investment Review for its 50/50 joint venture with Zenith Chemical. RecycLiCo will invest 24 million Taiwan dollars ($768,000) initially, and subsequent investments will be determined as needed through construction and commissioning. The joint venture, Recyclico Zenith Battery Materials Technology,… Read more…

Electronics giant Siemens has completed its acquisition of Netherlands-based DC fast charger manufacturer Heliox. Siemens says the acquisition will complement its existing eMobility charging portfolio, adding charging solutions ranging in power levels from 40 kW to over a megawatt for commercial EV depots. Heliox’s portfolio also extends Siemens’s market reach, primarily in Europe and North… Read more…

Beam Global has secured an order from the US Army Corps of Engineers for 88 more EV ARC off-grid charging systems. The EV ARC systems will be deployed across 21 locations in 16 states. Executive Order 14057 calls for 100% zero-emission federal fleet vehicle acquisitions by 2035, including 100% light-duty acquisitions by 2027. This could… Read more…

EV chargers come in all shapes and sizes to fit a variety of use cases, but we’ve never heard of a wood-burning EV charger until now. Florida-based Air Burners, a manufacturer of air curtain burner systems, collaborated with Rolls-Royce and Volvo Construction Equipment to develop a portable machine that turns biomass waste into energy. The… Read more…

The rapid rise of alternative energy vehicles has caused a seismic shift in the fuel market, offering unprecedented opportunities for operators of EV charging stations and opening new revenue streams for gas station owners, convenience stores, and retailers. Our webinar provides you with a nuanced understanding of the crucial role of location technology and data… Read more…

Governments in North America and Europe are seriously concerned about China’s growing dominance of the EV industry. Chinese automaker BYD recently surpassed Tesla as the world’s leading seller of EVs, and it’s only one of several Chinese-owned brands that are already selling cars in the US and the EU. However, the world’s #2 and #3… Read more…

German automotive and arms manufacturer Rheinmetall has won an order for several hundred thousand high-voltage electric coolant pumps. This is the customer’s first electric truck division order and is worth a figure in the mid-two-digit million-euro range. High-voltage CWA 2000 pumps are designed for use in 800 V architecture. Glandless design and bearings made for… Read more…

Proterra’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection took the EV industry by surprise, but the blow was softened by the company’s plan to sell off its business units: Proterra Powered (powertrain and battery technology); Proterra Transit (electric buses); and Proterra Energy (charging infrastructure). In November, the Volvo Group was selected as the winning bidder for Proterra Powered…. Read more…

Several companies are working on battery-electric aircraft, but electric aviation is a tougher nut to crack than electric cars, for physical reasons. It simply takes a lot more energy to keep an aircraft aloft than it does to propel a vehicle along a road, and every additional pound of battery weight takes a steep toll… Read more…

Many fleets are going electric, but to the best of our knowledge, none are doing so on the same scale as Amazon. The company says it’s now operating some 10,000 of the delivery trucks that it co-developed with Rivian, and it hopes to roll out 100,000 electric trucks by 2030. Building the trucks appears to… Read more…

Here at Charged, we don’t devote much time to debunking anti-EV misinformation—the enemies of the future flood the zone with FUD 24/7, and responding to even a fraction of it might leave no time for anything else. However, a recent article in Carbon Brief is so comprehensive and well-researched that we just had to bring… Read more…

Retail giant Costco has installed on-site solar generation at a new electric truck charging project in southern California. Costco contracted Washington-based Trinity Structures to design and build an off-grid rooftop solar system at its distribution center in Mira Loma. Trinity completed the project in four months. The “solar electrification structure,” as Trinity calls it, is… Read more…

EV education and advocacy organization Plug In America has received a grant from the DOE for a three-year, $5-million consumer education project, the largest grant in the organization’s 15-year history. This grant is part of a slate of 16 projects to advance transportation electrification that will be funded throught the DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office to… Read more…

Circuit protection specialist Littelfuse has introduced a new overtemperature detection platform for Li-ion battery systems. The new TTape system is designed to help vehicle systems manage premature cell aging effectively while reducing the risks associated with thermal runaway incidents. Littelfuse explains that TTape is suited for a wide range of applications, including EVs, hybrids and… Read more…