Electric Vehicles

Last year, we reported on how electric vehicle investments were on track for a record high in 2016 after years of record lows following the bankruptcy of a few startups, namely Fisker, Coda, A123, and Better Place.

CB Insight has been tracking EV investments and confirmed the record year in 2016, but it projects a significant slow down in 2017 again.
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Denmark announced the phasing out of its tax break for electric vehicles starting in 2015, which caused Tesla’s sales to surge to an all-time high in the country, but they have been virtually non-existent since then and all electric car sales have crashed.

To highlight the impact, 1,300 electric vehicles were sold in Denmark in 2016, while Tesla delivered 1,300 vehicles in December 2015 alone.

The government has now announced that they are walking back some of the changes in order to boost back EV sales for at least 5,000 more vehicles.
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It’s hard to believe for someone like me who spend most of his time researching electric vehicles, but simple awareness of electric vehicles and their qualities is still the biggest barrier to EV adoption.

It is becoming clearer than ever today when looking into the results of a new survey of 158,000 people – mostly young new drivers who are studying for the driver license tests. Surprisingly, 70% of them said no to electric vehicles.
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Edmunds, the auto research firm, came up with a grim report titled “Elimination of federal tax credits likely to kill U.S. EV market”. They title says it all. They predict that electric vehicle sales in the US will crash when the main automakers making electric vehicles will run out of the federal credits.

They are mainly coming to this conclusion based on a case study of what happened to electric vehicle sales in Georgia after they ended their own state program for electric vehicles. At least, they are acknowledging that upcoming vehicles, like the Tesla Model 3, could still bring EVs to a wider audience without the tax credit.
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We reported earlier this year on the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore., sending a request for information (RFI) to automakers for an electric car order of 24,000 vehicles.

It would have become the biggest electric car order ever, but several more cities have since joined the effort and they are now looking for 114,000 electric vehicles.
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The city of San Francisco has not been shy to use its building codes to try to accelerate the deployment of sustainable energy. Last year, it required new buildings to have solar panels installed on the roof and this year, it will try to accommodate electric vehicles by using a similar approach.
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The biofuel and oil industries, which were both heavily subsidized over the years, are now working together to lobby against electric vehicle incentives under the pretext that they are seeking “a level playing field”.

Their respective main lobbying groups made the announcement this week.
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A lot of electric vehicle charging networks in Europe operate only in specific countries, which can make it hard for electric vehicle drivers to road trip across borders. A solution has been introduced today to make European electric travel easier.

Today, five of the biggest network operators announced the ‘Open Fast Charging Alliance’, which “will enable roaming to create a premium network of fast chargers all over Europe”, according to the new group. 
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Electric vehicles had a breakout year in the UK in 2016 and the market is off to a good start in 2017. Battery-powered vehicles are starting to represent a more significant portion of the total new vehicle sales in the country – it reached a record of 4.2% share of new vehicle registrations last month.
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A bill passed in Michigan in 2015 is about to kick in, making being a vehicle owner in the state more expensive than ever. The bill, which is part of a road-funding package proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder, will see cost increases across various facets of vehicle ownership, from annual registration fees to gas prices.

Those projected to be the hardest hit are people who own multiple vehicles and those who own fuel-inefficient vehicles, but while this may seem like good news to green vehicle owners, the bill is also introducing a surcharge on electric and hybrid vehicles for as much as $235…
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The Obama Administration announced today a new series of initiatives to accelerate deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.  The main announcement is the creation of 48 national EV charging corridors on 25,000 miles across 35 states.

The announcement follows another series of initiatives announced earlier this year by the White House to boost electric vehicle adoption in the US by unlocking $4.5 billion in investments.
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It might sound like an obvious thing to most people, electricity is cheaper than gas, but I find that people are not really aware of the electricity rate discrepancy around the US and the world. It’s understandable. Who has time to track electricity and gas prices outside of your own market? Plugless has time and did it.

The company came up with a neat study looking at gas prices and electricity rates – without taking into account time-of-use rates where available – in each state over the last year and came to the conclusion that electric vehicles are cheaper to fuel in all 50 states.
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After coming to the realization that they would need a mandate for all cars to be zero-emission by 2030 if they want to comply with the goals set by the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, Germany’s upper house of parliament gained approval for pushing a Europe-wide mandate to stop gas-powered car sales by 2030, according to German magazine Der Spiegel.
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With Jaguar’s recent announcement of their Formula E ‘I-type’ race car and one of their electric ‘F-Pace’ SUV prototypes being spotted in the wild, the UK-based company continues to be in EV news this week, this time with some reports about detailed information on the all-electric compact SUV, unofficially dubbed the ‘E-Pace’, that is now expected to hit the market in 2018.

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A new research report from Lux Research looked into the projected growth of the battery sector for electric vehicles (BEVs and PHEVs) and concluded that the market will rise to $10 Billion in 2020 with six large carmakers led by Tesla accounting for 90% of the demand.
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) is out with its Energy Technology Perspectives report (via Carbon Brief). The agency compiled data from the automotive industry and determined that the world’s electric vehicle fleet surpassed the 1 million cars mark last year. Out of the 15 technology sectors to combat carbon emissions followed by IEA, the agency says that the EV sector is the only one on track for deployment.
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It looks like Germany is about to become the first major country to set an official deadline for a ban on gas-powered cars. India recently confirmed that it is evaluating a scheme for all its fleet to be electric by 2030 and both the Dutch government and the Norwegian government are discussing the possibility to ban gas-powered car sales and only allow electric vehicle sales starting also by 2025.

But while the Netherlands and Norway are fighting over the technicalities, a senior government official in Germany confirmed they will impose a mandate for all new cars registered in the country to be emissions free by 2030.
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This week, Daimler announced its plan to transition to greener technologies over the next few years. The company laid out release schedules for several new hybrids, plug-in hybrids, fuel cell vehicles, and all-electric vehicles across all its brands.

The plan is a little all over the place but we try to summarize it below and if that’s not enough for you, you can dive into the full press package further down.
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In the past, I have complained about mainstream media consistently putting all electric vehicles in the same melting-pot with no or very little regard for vehicle segments, or anything else than the powertrain really. I think EV enthusiasts are already very aware of this problem, but I still want to highlight this latest example because it’s simply a great one.

A Chinese startup backed by Beijing CH-Auto, Qiantu Motor, announced a new factory to build its first vehicle, the Qiantu K50 (pictured above), an all-electric roadster, which the media are presenting as a direct competitor to the Tesla Model S, a sedan.
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German newspaper Handelsblatt, which has often produced reliable insider reports on the German auto industry, now cites insider sources saying that Volkswagen is about to present to its board of directors a plan to build a ‘multi-billion euro battery factory’.

The publication suggests that the plan is likely to be approved.

The battery cell supply chain is close to the number one priority of any automaker looking to manufacture electric vehicles in high volume. Ever since the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal, VW has been under pressure to introduce more electric vehicles to its lineup and earlier this year, it announced plans to introduce 20 new electric vehicles through the group’s brands by the end of the decade.
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