Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

Martyn1981

Bit of a Biffa advert, but here's a BEV skip truck, and its a Volvo, as they really do seem to have a large range and production of BEV trucks.

So, BEV rubbish trucks, BEV ship truck, BEV cement truck ...... I assume a BEV building supplies truck with the crane, are now available, so that's most of the noisy urban diesel trucks with loud engine reving for power take-off sorted. 'Just' need them to roll out now.

Biffa breaks ground with first-ever Volvo FE Electric Skiploader

Featuring four batteries, the Volvo FE Electric boasts an impressive range of around 190 km on a single charge. What’s more, a quick pit stop of just 2.3 hours using a 150 kW DC charger is all it takes to recharge. 

Grumpy_chap

Martyn1981 said:

that's most of the noisy urban diesel trucks with loud engine reving for power take-off sorted. 

We do need the ice cream van to get an EV solution.
They are all dirty, smelly horrible things round our way, ancient as the Ark and keep the engine running so the compressor works and soft whipped stuff can be put in a wafer cone.
All rather odd that the parents that get worked up about traffic pollution at the school gates and the unhealthy school meals are quite happy at 4 o'clock to stand in line with the offspring breathing diesel fumes to treat their teeth to some preservative coating.

Perhaps the EV ice cream van could also sell apples instead.
And not play the annoying tune.

Grumpy_chap

No locally produced batteries so a bit of flex on the rules for trade to / from EU

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67634706

Netexporter

Grumpy_chap said:

No locally produced batteries so a bit of flex on the rules for trade to / from EU

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67634706

BYD and CATL will clean up.

michaels

Netexporter said:

Grumpy_chap said:

No locally produced batteries so a bit of flex on the rules for trade to / from EU

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67634706

BYD and CATL will clean up.

I thought the only UK gigafactory was AESC?

Netexporter

But they are now going to allow imports from outside the EU, for longer. BYD and CATL are the biggest battery makers in the world.

Martyn1981

An overload of facts and figures for anyone interested in the subject of zero emission vehicles.

I'd recommend scrolling down and actually downloading the full report. It may be 71 pages, but remarkably interesting, dare I say fun. For instance the chart on page 21 shows sales of BEV buses slowing ...... but that's because China is the biggest market, and many cities are largely BEV bus already.

Page 6 not so much fun, as the emissions from road transport haven't yet peaked.

Page 24 shows that the majority of 'oil demand avoided' by EV's is actually from 2/3 wheelers, hence why I get a bit overexcited at news items on this area, and especially the rollout of battery swapping stations for such vehicles.

Page 41, battery prices falling agian, after the 2022 blip.

The lead article also mentions that China may reach its 2030 NEV target of 40%, next year. [NEV means new energy vehicles and includes PHEV's, so appears to be the equivalent of PEV's.]

Zero-Emission Vehicles Factbook: COP28 Edition

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 said:

Page 24 shows that the majority of 'oil demand avoided' by EV's is actually from 2/3 wheelers, hence why I get a bit overexcited at news items on this area, and especially the rollout of battery swapping stations for such vehicles.

Further to my previous post, here's some news on BEV 2 wheelers and swapping stations in India. This sector is very important from a G&E viewpoint.

Gogoro Launches Battery-Swapping Scooters in India

Gogoro, an exciting company we’ve covered before that sells battery-swappable scooters, announced the launch of the company’s scooter ecosystem in India. The company also unveiled its first India-made Smartscooter, the CrossOver GX250.

Gogoro battery swapping represents a new era of swappable battery refueling that is intelligent, safe, and continuously evolving to meet the needs of riders, businesses, and communities. It does this with ease because a scooter’s battery pack (or part of it) can be easily swapped by most adults. By needing only enough battery to carry a person and a small vehicle around, batteries can be small and light. The swap stations can also be small and light, and are easily placed around cities to make it easy to get a fully-charged battery fast.

It’s also very much possible to charge Gogoro batteries at home. You can’t really lug a whole scooter up four flights of stairs, and in taller buildings, they probably won’t let you put it in the elevator. But, the removable batteries can be lugged up stairs and plugged in overnight for more cost savings over the swapping stations.

In Taiwan (the company’s home country), The Gogoro Network has leveraged this innovative solution and earned the patronage of nearly 600,000 riders, boasting an extensive network of 12,000 battery swapping stations across over 2,500 locations. As of this writing, there are more than 1.3 million smart batteries in circulation. More importantly, with over 400,000 daily battery swaps and a staggering total of 510 million battery swaps to date, Gogoro’s battery swapping initiative has effectively curbed CO2 emissions by over 785,000 tons since its establishment in 2015.

Given the prevalence of two-wheeled vehicles in most of the world, and given their popularity in India, scooters with swappable batteries and widely available stations make for an easy way to bring electric to the transportation scene. Unlike electric cars, they can still be cheap and they don’t require expensive charging infrastructure to be practical.

I know I’ve said this a bunch of times before, but the fact is that two-wheeled vehicles rule the world. Sales of motorcycles and scooters dominate over four-wheeled car sales, and it isn’t even close. Sales of bicycles in turn dwarf motorcycle sales, again by a super wide margin.

It’s even more impactful given that many ICE scooters are powered by a dirty two-stroke engine. Replacing one of those with an electric motor makes for a much larger emissions reduction than replacing a cleaner car engine.

Between all of these things, Gogoro’s scooters are able to have a much bigger impact than the electric cars that are struggling to gain traction even in developing countries. The ease of purchase, ease of refueling, and the big impact they can have on the environment all adds up to a much more impactful vehicle.

It’s not as exciting as a Tesla or a Rivian, but these scooters are going to do a lot more good than these more expensive vehicles ever will!

QrizB

It seems that the law has caught up with one EV entrepreneur.

From the BBC:

The founder of an electric truck start-up that was popular in the US has been sentenced to four years in prison.
Trevor Milton, who led Nikola Corporation, was convicted of fraud last year after a jury found he had lied persistently about the company.

Full story at:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67752125

Martyn1981

I think this is big news. BYD has outsold Tesla in BEV's, not PEV's (BEV's + PHEV's), but actually in BEV's. No idea if they are profitable (yet) on BEV's alone, but overall they are profitable on PEV's, having ended ICE only production in early 2022.

We're seeing China move to EV's at an incredible rate, with literally 100's of manufacturers. But I think the big news here, is actually the alarm bells that should be ringing at legacy auto headquarters across Europe, America and Japan. Slow rolling a switch to EV's simply isn't going to work. The rest of this decade is going to get very, very rough for ICEV's, as demand continues to melt away.

BYD Shoots Past Tesla In BEV Sales — New #1!

In the 4th quarter of 2023, Tesla sold (aka delivered) 484,507 electric vehicles. In the same quarter, BYD sold 526,409 full battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). That’s right, we’re not talking plugin vehicles — BYD passed up Tesla in plugin vehicle sales a long time ago and stands far out on its own in that category. We’re talking 100% battery-electric vehicles, and BYD is the new king. In fact, BYD had nearly 10% more BEV sales than Tesla — it had more than 40,000 more sales than the US EV giant — so it wasn’t even close.