Electric cars

As we previously reported, virtually all automakers (except for Tesla) have asked China to slow down their electric car mandate.

Today, the Chinese government announced that they are delaying the implementation of the mandate by a year, but it’s not to say that the auto industry lobbying had its way entirely.
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California and its Air Resources Board have long been perceived as leaders in the fight against climate change and especially in the adoption of electric cars.

But several other countries have since been more aggressive and announced upcoming bans on sales of new gas and diesel-powered cars.

Now California’s government is reportedly considering the same drastic initiative.
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France, the UK, and more recently Scotland, all announced efforts to ban petrol and gas-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles.

While some of those efforts could have a significant impact, none would be greater than if the largest car market in the world, China, would do the same.

Now the Chinese government is also reportedly considering a deadline to go all-electric, which would virtually be the end of the internal combustion engine.
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Don’t get high on your own supply. Norway showed that to be true with its rapid adoption of electric vehicles despite being an oil rich country.

Now Scotland follows with its own new target to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2032 – ahead of recent targets by other countries.
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While it remains a niche market with less than 2% market share in most countries, everything points to electric vehicles becoming mainstream and disrupting the auto industry in a big way sooner rather than later.

But the timing is still being strongly debated with predictions all over the place.

Now a new report puts the target for 1 billion electric vehicles on the roads by 2050 and predicts some tough times for automakers leading up to the milestone.
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A recurring argument from EV naysayers and the fossil fuel industry is that electric cars are not really as green as perceived because they consume electricity produced by polluting power plants.

While persistent and still believed to be viable by a large part of the population, this argument has been crumbling in recent years as electric grids have been getting cleaner around the world.

We have seen evidence of that in the US where the average electric car now gets the equivalent efficiency of a non-existent 73 mpg gas-powered vehicle – and that’s before accounting for refining, transportation, etc., when it comes to petrol.

Now a new study in the UK shows just how significant of an impact greener electricity generation can have on electric car emissions in a specific region.
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In the past, we have seen a few electric cars being discounted significantly on top of EV incentives, but there seems to be a new wave of them lately.

It appears to coincide with the next-generation of EVs coming to market which represents a more important step up than previous generations.
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Once seen as a fad by industry watchers and auto executives, most would now admit that the rise of electric cars seems inevitable. Countries like Norway, where electric cars recently reached 42% of total new car sales, show that it is the future.

The US is definitely trailing behind, but the growth rate is now increasing and with several new electric cars coming to market, it’s likely about to blow up.
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We have recently seen several projections about the adoption of electric vehicles from different companies and research groups, like Morgan Stanley, Bloomberg, and even OPEC. Most of them predict that about half of new vehicle production will be electric at some point between 2035 and 2040.

Now Tesla CEO Elon Musk jumps in with his own prediction, which is unsurprisingly much more aggressive.
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California is already leading electric vehicle adoption in the US, but they still need to speed things up if they want to achieve their goal of 1.5 million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2025, and 5 million by 2030. There are currently around 300,000 EVs on California roads today.

A new bill unveiled today would unlock $3 billion worth of incentives for an updated version of California’s current EV rebate.
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The Koch brothers, who are deeply embedded in the fossil fuel industry, have long been financing offensives against electric vehicles through multimillion-dollar lobbying campaigns.

They are at it again with a fresh new effort to delegitimize electric cars and promote fossil fuels.
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Profitable production of electric vehicles is highly important. Our capitalist society revolves around profitability and therefore, if electric vehicles are to prevail over gas-powered cars, they need to be profitable to manufacture in mass.

A new study published this month by McKinsey & Company and embedded below looks into how automakers can move past producing EVs as compliance cars and “drive electrified vehicle sales and profitability”. Unsurprisingly, it describes battery economics as an important barrier to profitability and though the research firm sees a path to automakers making a profit selling electric vehicles as battery costs fall, it doesn’t see that happening for “the next two to three product cycles” – or between 2025 and 2030.
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On the heels of the California Air Resources Board’s Midterm Review of the Zero-Emission Vehicle Program, the state’s electric utilities are seeking to expand electric vehicle infrastructure with thousands of new charging stations.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) all submitted new plans to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last week to collect about $1 billion more from their customers in order to finance the important expansion.
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In this week’s top stories: Tesla 2nd-gen Autopilot could reduce crash rate by 90%, Model S 100D update, hints at upcoming EVs from Hyundai, Audi, and VW, and much more.

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Last month, we reported on the EPA filing its midterm review of the fuel consumption standard early (before Trump takes over) in order to put in place a fleet requirement of 54.5 mpg by 2025, which would force automakers to add more electric vehicles to their fleet in order to compensate for their more gas-guzzling vehicles, like SUVs and pickup trucks.

Despite lobbying from virtually all automakers (except for Tesla), the agency went ahead with making the rule official last week and it could result in a significant acceleration of the rate of investments in EVs from current automakers.
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It’s being reported this week that the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore., sent in a request for information (RFI) to automakers for what could become the biggest electric car order ever: 24,000 vehicles.

The municipalities are currently looking for information about what electric vehicles they could get on what timeline before launching a formal bidding process.
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As a major automotive supplier, Bosch is very aware of the transition to electric transport and it aims to take part in it with important investments in new lines of products. We reported over a year ago that Bosch bought the solid-state battery start-up Seeo Inc. and has since been sparsely revealing details about its plan to bring new battery technologies to market by 2020 with a 50 kWh battery pack weighing only 190 kg.

Now the company is unveiling new electric drive units at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) to complete its electric powertrain offering to OEMs.
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Fuel Cells! We thought we were already passed that after the best case scenario supply chain for hydrogen fuel cell has been proven inefficient compared to even most battery-powered electric cars available today. We thought that only a few major automakers, primarily Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda with deep sunk costs were still focusing on the technology. Even these entrenched players have been showing signs of warming up to batteries.

But now the latest automotive executive survey by KPMG suggest that a strong majority of the automotive industry still believe battery-powered cars will fail and fuel cells are the future.
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A recent survey found that what’s stopping car buyers from choosing electric vehicles is the perceived lack of charging stations, something 85% of respondents mentioned, followed by the high costs (83%), and concerns over the range (74%).

That’s unsurprising, but what is more surprising is that those are not actually the main issue slowing down electric vehicle adoption. According to the same survey, 60% of the more than 2,500 American drivers said they were “unaware of electric cars”.
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Germany’s electric vehicle market is lagging behind several neighboring countries and to change that, the government launched an incentive program 6 months ago to give a direct discount of €4,000 for all-electric cars and €3,000 for plug-in hybrids.

After receiving close to 2,000 applications within the first month, the rate slowed down significantly and now only 9,000 applications have been received since the start of the program. That’s disappointing since it’s for both all-electric and plug-in hybrids.
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If you don’t know what ‘Adam Ruins Everything’ is exactly, it’s an internet TV show aimed at millennials and hosted by CollegeHumor’s Adam Conover. It tries to debunk allegedly false perceptions that are normally considered common knowledge. Some of the most popular episodes are “Why Engagement Rings Are a Scam” and “The Real Reason Car Dealerships Are the Worst” (which we can endorse).

In a new episode today called “Electric Cars Aren’t As Green As You Think”, Adam exposed his audience of over 11 million people to some classic electric vehicle misinformation, and in the process demonstrated that the EV industry still faces difficult perception problems reinforced exactly by this kind of simplistic thinking.
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