US EV charger installer Qmerit has announced a new suite of services, initially intended for EVSE makers and commercial charge point operators (CPOs). The new offerings include on-demand repairs, warranty support, coverage of equipment parts, and preventative and predictive maintenance. The new services are intended to help tackle consumer concerns documented in an August report… Read more…

UK-based automotive remanufacturing technologies company Autocraft has secured a £24-million financing package from HSBC .  The funding will be used to expand Autocraft’s EV battery repair business in strategic global locations to meet growing demand for its REVIVE range of EV battery testing, repair and remanufacturing processes. The automotive industry faces heavy environmental and financial… Read more…

US light utility EV maker Indigo Technologies has secured an investment from Taiwanese multinational electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Technology Group, also known as Foxconn. The investment will help the company to accelerate the development of its smart EV technologies for light utility EVs, which are designed for ride hailing, delivery and autonomous transportation applications. Building… Read more…

Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that California has surpassed 100,000 public and shared private EV chargers in operation, in addition to more than half a million installed in homes. The announcement comes on the heels of approval of a $1.9-billion investment plan to accelerate both hydrogen refueling and the state’s goal of reaching 250,000 public… Read more…

UK-based laser manufacturer Luxinar is launching CO2 laser sources and femtosecond lasers that can shape battery cells and refine electronic components. Luxinar’s battery cell applications include cutting separator foils and cutting and notching electrodes. Its battery module and power train applications comprise EV battery casing ablation and busbar isolation stripping and trimming, in addition to… Read more…

Charged is hosting a virtual conference on EV engineering that’s free to attend, and it starts today. The conference includes live webinar sessions with interactive Q&As and on-demand webinars. View the daily session schedule online here. All of the live sessions will be recorded and available to view after the broadcasts. The recorded videos can… Read more…

Competition is good, but standardization is good too. As Tesla’s North American Charging Standard gradually becomes a true standard, drivers of Teslas and other EVs have more and more options for charging their NACS-capable EVs. The latest alternative to a Tesla-branded charger comes from EV charger manufacturer Emporia. The company’s new NACS Level 2 EV… Read more…

California-based eVTOL aircraft developer Archer Aviation recently performed successful battery pack drop tests at a National Institute for Aviation Research lab in advance of similar upcoming for-credit certification tests with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  The tests were part of the development program for the electric propulsion system of Archer’s Midnight, a piloted, four-passenger aircraft… Read more…

Austrian technology firm Easelink and Dutch manufacturer NXP Semiconductors have jointly developed a positioning system for automated EV charging based on ultra-wide band (UWB) technology. The system integrates UWB—a wireless technology that securely, precisely, and efficiently estimates the relative positions of two electronic devices—to help bring a vehicle into the optimal position for fully automated… Read more…

Japanese electric systems manufacturer Nidec has begun production at its newly upgraded facility in Cleveland, Ohio. The expansion includes new manufacturing lines for Nidec’s DC fast EV chargers and power conversion systems for battery energy storage systems. Nidec aims to expand its battery storage installed base and EV charger deployments that support energy distributors, companies,… Read more…

A team at Penn State has reported using cold sintering to reprocess solid-state composite electrolytes. According to research published in an open-access paper in the journal ChemSusChem, the technique was used to reprocess Mg- and Sr-doped Li7La3Zr2O12 with polypropylene carbonate (PPC) and lithium perchlorate (LLZO–PPC–LiClO4).  The low sintering temperature allows co-sintering of ceramics, polymers, and… Read more…

The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK, a research institute in Berlin, is participating with the Battery Pass Consortium to design and implement the technical standards of the EU’s digital battery passport. The passport will be required by the EU Batteries Act for new traction batteries, two-wheeled-vehicle batteries and industrial batteries with… Read more…

Sponsored by TTI. Polarization in DC Contactors for high-voltage electric vehicle applications. Littelfuse offers both polarized and non-polarized high-voltage (HV) DC contactors or relays to meet a wide range of electric vehicle (EV) application requirements. Appropriate for the majority of HV EV applications, DC contactors with polarization offer a significant advantage in terms of electric… Read more…

Automotive company Sumitomo Rubber has developed a new simulation technique called Tire Aerodynamic Simulation, which is used in the process of tire development to visualize the airflow around the tire of a running vehicle This simulation will help to develop a tire shape that optimizes aerodynamic performance and contributes to lowering the electricity consumption in… Read more…

In collaboration with the Electric School Bus (ESB) program of Dominion Energy, a regional utility headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, Daimler Truck North America subsidiary Thomas Built Buses (TBB) has announced that the state has now surpassed 1.5 million electric school bus miles driven.  Also partnering in the program is Virginia bus dealer Sonny Merryman. The… Read more…

Electric trucks are proving that they can be more powerful, more reliable, easier to use and more cost-effective than legacy diesels, one grueling job at a time. If there’s one application that requires serious power and reliability, it’s clearing snow from roads in northern Norway. The Norwegian Road Administration recently tested an electric truck in… Read more…

The need to quickly increase EV battery testing capacity is making validation labs harder to manage and forcing engineering teams to explore ways to sustainably scale up their test lab operations. Battery cyclers that are flexible, open, and connected are critical to achieve the scale needed in modern battery validation labs. Join this webinar, presented… Read more…

The market share of fully electric trucks and buses is growing at an impressive pace in Europe, according to a new report from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). The news comes to us via the Australian EV news site The Driven. Writer Daniel Bleakley laments that his country is so far behind the… Read more…

Next week, Charged is hosting a virtual conference on EV engineering that’s free to attend. The conference includes live webinar sessions with interactive Q&As and on-demand webinars. View the daily session schedule online here. All live sessions will be recorded and available to view after the broadcasts. You can access the recorded videos on each… Read more…

EV charging network operator EVgo has opened its first public EV charging station built using the company’s new prefabrication approach. Located at the Bay Colony Town Center in League City, Texas, this EVgo station is the first of several prefabricated stations slated to open this year. EVgo expects its prefabrication process to reduce station construction… Read more…