Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

Martyn1981

Some BEV sales figures for Denmark and Italy. The Italian figures are interesting, they are relatively small, but are roughly doubling each year.

Tesla Model 3 Still Dominates Danish EV Sales

Italy’s BEV Sales Doubled In First Half Of 2020 — The Only Way Is Up

Martyn1981

Some news from GM, but rather vague on timelines, regarding lots of new BEV's on the way. Having watched the vid on the Osborne effect, I kinda now get it how the old guard need to avoid promoting EV's as they will impact sales (and revenue) from ICEV's. So they are caught with their leg in the bear trap, but at some point they are going to have to chew it off, and move forward (BEV's) or fail.

GM Says 12 New EVs Coming, Including Full Size Pickup Truck With 400 Mile Range

Last week, General Motors released its latest sustainability report. Buried within its nearly 200 pages, the company offered some new information about its electric vehicle plans. Globally, The General will have 20 electric models available to customers by 2023, many of them aimed at the Chinese market. But at least 12 will be sold in America as well.

The biggest surprise in the report is news of a full size pickup truck from Chevrolet that reportedly will have a range of 400 miles. No further details are available, which leaves open the question whether is will be a Silverado clone or something completely different. Surely the segment-smashing Tesla Cybertruck has got people at the highest levels of GM, Ford, and Dodge scratching their heads. Do they stick with what has worked for generations (which has generated massive profits for them year after year) or strike out boldly in new directions as Tesla has done? There is no timeline specified, but by 2023, we should know how GM and the rest of the industry plan to respond to the Cybertruck.

Martyn1981

Extracts from this week's Carbon Commentary newsletter. #1 is perhaps about RE and storage, but I'm splitting hairs. #6 WOW, that's certainly saying something.

1, Vehicle-to-Grid and electric buses. A new 2.6 GW offshore wind farm now in development prompted a Virginia utility to subsidise the sale of electric buses for schools. The 20 buses will be used to provide storage capacity and grid stabilisation services because they will allow bidirectional flows of electricity (‘Vehicle-to-Grid’ or V2G). School buses are exceptionally well fitted to offering V2G because of their predictable working hours and battery requirements. The V2G technology is provided by Proterra, in its buses which can provide between 220 and 660 kWh of storage. The utility wants to sponsor the acquisition of ‘thousands’ of buses, which might allow more than a gigawatt hour of storage capacity. But the electric buses are still three times the price of diesel competitors and state regulators won’t allow the costs to be added to consumer bills. (Thanks to Thad Curtz).

6, Phase-out of internal combustion engine cars. The country head of Shell in the UK suggested that petrol and diesel cars could be taken off sale as soon as 2030 if the country pursued the right policies. These include incentives for EV purchase, better charging infrastructure and widespread ‘smart’ charging. This statement, delivered with little fanfare, appears to represent a major change of opinion. In the most aggressive of Shell’s decarbonisation scenarios (‘Sky’), the company had suggested that EVs might represent only 50% of all new vehicles by the end of this decade. It also hypothesises that only about only about 25% of all vehicle kilometres in Europe will be powered by electricity by that date. However if all new cars in the UK were to be EVs in 2030, approximately 50% of all vehicle kilometres would be electric. (To make this calculation I assume the average UK car last 13 years and new cars do more kilometres per year than old cars). 

Martyn1981

I thought this was a great article, fun and eye opening on the potential of electric vehicles and tools in Uganda, and a $550 conversion kit for petrol motorbikes. They re-use old laptop batteries. With cheap energy and creativeness, Africa could leapfrog into a much better position going forward.

Uganda-Based Bodawerk’s Electric Tractors, Motorcycle Conversion Kits, Threshing & Milling Machines Look Set To Transform Lives

Kampala-based Bodawerk is looking to transform lives in Africa, starting in Uganda with its electric products powered by upcycled old laptop batteries. Bodawerk ran pilot programs for its electric tractor and electric farm implements in Lira, Uganda in 2019. 

Checkout this Bodawerk Youtube video to see some of its electric implements in action. The company has just received a grant from the DOEN foundation for this program and plans are underway to scale up this initiative. A lot of farmers across the continent are still using ox-drawn and human-powered farming implements, and these electric plows are going to improve productivity and efficiencies for subsistence farmers.

Martyn1981

Leaky news/rumours!

Tesla Semi Pilot Line “Coming Together” — Employee Leak

A Tesla employee based at Tesla Gigafactory 1 in Nevada has indicated that the pilot production line for the Tesla Semi is under development, implying that things seem to be going well. This person tweeted last week, “New nugget: pilot line for Semi coming together….”

Coastalwatch

Pressure looks to be building on the sale of FF cars in Scotland and why not. Any new such car sold today could still be polluting the air in twenty years time. Why wait even so long?

Scottish Government told to ban new petrol and diesel cars by 2025

CAMPAIGNERS are pleading with the Scottish Government to bring forward the timescale for phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in a bid to cut carbon emissions and harness a green recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

The Scottish Government has pledged that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans will be phased out by 2032, eight years ahead of the UK Government’s commitment.

But an electric vehicle industry body is lobbying for more urgency from ministers and to instead set a more aggressive target of 2025 for the overhaul.

Transport continues to be Scotland’s biggest contribution to carbon emissions while the latest data, which indicated the Scottish Government failed to meet its annual target for reductions, revealed that source emissions actually increased by 1.5 per cent from 2017 to 2018.

Alister Hamilton, chairman of EVA Scotland, said: “Dealing with the health impact of coronavirus required big thinking, which will have to be equaled as we attempt to recover from the economic impact. For our move towards electric transportation, that means phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2025, instead of the current target of 2032.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18591169.scottish-government-told-ban-petrol-diesel-cars-2025/

Martyn1981

Scotland is probably small enough (in population and car ownership) to pull this off. If they do, then that would be a massive signal to the UK, the World, and ICEV production. I'm not saying it would be easy, just possible, but they would have some serious bragging rights going forward.

silverwhistle

They already subsidise (6 year?) loans for the purchase of electric vehicles and having plenty (and increasing supplies) of RE ties in well. Of course they might want to keep a few petrol stations: just to keep a few English ICE tourists happy!:-)

Solarchaser

Not necessarily vehicle related,  but they do offer interest free loans for RE and general home efficiency improvements like solar/insulation/ashp etc in Scotland, not sure if this is available in ruk also?

EVandPV

silverwhistle said:

They already subsidise (6 year?) loans for the purchase of electric vehicles 

Correct.
And an additional £300 grant towards a charger on top of the £500 OLEV grant.