Alkegen has begun commercial production of its silicon fiber anode material platform, SiFAB. The company’s new SiFAB production line is an extension of its established large-scale manufacturing facility in New Carlisle, Indiana. SiFAB features micron-sized silicon fiber with an engineered structure that enables higher energy density through a nanoporous fiber... Read more →

Albemarle Corporation plans to locate its previously announced lithium hydroxide Mega-Flex facility in Chester County, South Carolina. (Earlier post.) Plans for the facility include an initial investment of at least $1.3 billion to help meet the surging demand for domestic and international electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries. The term Mega-Flex... Read more →

Cirba Solutions announced today a phase I investment of more than $300 million into a lithium-ion electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling facility in South Carolina. With more than 30 years of experience, Cirba Solutions has paved the way for a sustainable closed-loop battery supply chain. The company is investing more... Read more →

Amogy Inc., a developer of emission-free, energy-dense ammonia power solutions (earlier post), announced a $139-million Series B-1 fundraising. The round was led by SK Innovation, joined by other global investors including Temasek, Korea Zinc, Aramco Ventures, AP Ventures, MOL PLUS, Yanmar Ventures, Zeon Ventures and DCVC. SK Innovation had already... Read more →

For Europe, Ford revealed the new all-electric Explorer—the first in a series of new electric vehicles from Ford. The mid-size crossover, engineered and built in Germany, uses Volkswagen’s MEB platform (earlier post) and has seats for five across two rows. Ford and the Volkswagen Group announced an expanded e-mobility partnership... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released a set of reports—Pathways to Commercial Liftoff—that provide guidance for bringing advanced nuclear, clean hydrogen and long-duration energy storage into the commercial mainstream. The reports conclude that by 2030, cumulative investments must increase from approximately $40 billion to $300 billion across the... Read more →

The Department of Energy announced $14 million in funding (DE-FOA-0002946) to support and to optimize the production of affordable biofuels and biochemicals while significantly reducing carbon emissions. The Topic Areas in the 2023 Conversion Research and Development (R&D) funding opportunity seek to address the following R&D needs: R&D on gasification... Read more →

SABIC, a global leader in the chemical industry, introduced two new LNP THERMOCOMP compounds that offer the potential to improve signal gain performance vs. ceramics in second-generation automotive global navigation satellite system (GNSS) antennas. The new products, LNP THERMOCOMP ZKC0CXXD compound and LNP THERMOCOMP ZKC0DXXD compound, help enable the design... Read more →

ExxonMobil recently announced the successful startup of its Beaumont refinery expansion project, which adds 250,000 barrels per day of capacity to one of the largest refining and petrochemical complexes along the US Gulf Coast. (Earlier post.) Supported by the company’s growing crude production in the Permian Basin, the project is... Read more →

Volvo Trucks and mining company Boliden are joining forces to implement electric truck transport in underground environments. The Swedish mining group Boliden is becoming one of the first in the world to start using battery-electric trucks for heavy underground transport starting 2023. In mining environments, the electric trucks can deliver... Read more →

Infineon Technologies and Delta Electronics are expanding their long-term cooperation from industrial to automotive applications. Infineon and Delta signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will deepen their joint innovation activities to provide more efficient and higher-density solutions for the fast-growing market of electric vehicles (EV). The agreement covers a wide... Read more →

NVIDIA announced that BYD will extend its use of the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin centralized compute platform in a broader range of its NEVs. The enhanced partnership expands BYD’s use of DRIVE Orin (earlier post) across the multiple models in its next-generation Dynasty and Ocean series of vehicles, bringing safe and... Read more →

China-based Dongfeng Motor (DFM) has launched two new passenger cars powered by ProteanDrive Pd18 in-wheel motors. The two models were showcased at a ceremony in Wuxi, held by DFM and Weifu Electric Drive Technology (WFDT)—the joint venture between Weifu and Protean Electric (earlier post). Unveiled at the event was the... Read more →

BMW i Ventures announced a co-lead investment in the $16.1-million Series A round for startup DeepDrive. DeepDrive has developed a cost- and resource-efficient dual-rotor motor, extending the range of electric vehicles. Other investors include UVC Partners, Bayern Kapital with Wachstumsfonds Bayern, and Continental’s Corporate Venture Capital Unit. The company is... Read more →

Hyundai Motor Group has developed an automatic charging robot (ACR) for electric vehicles (EV). The ACR for EVs is a one-arm robot capable of plugging a cable into an EV’s charging port and removing it again once charging is complete. The ACR will help to make EV-charging easier and more... Read more →

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption has accelerated faster than many predicted. Globally, EV sales doubled in 2021 and jumped 55% in 2022 to account for 13% of all vehicles sold. If this trend is to continue, however, the eMobility ecosystem must collaborate around ‘Six essentials for mainstream EV adoption’, according to... Read more →

Based on comparison tests between a Tesla Model Y and Kia Niro full hybrid, independent emissions testing company Emissions Analytics (earlier post) is suggesting that at present full hybrids are the win-win, do-no-harm option for decarbonizing transportation, while BEVs are a win-lose option, hampered by a “vexatious” trade-off between CO2... Read more →

Supply chain disruption and rising material costs are causing the global automotive industry to re-evaluate lean manufacturing principles, according to a new survey commissioned by ABB Robotics. Shifting from ‘just-in-time’ to ‘just in case’ strategies, manufacturers are holding more stock to protect against unplanned disruptions. Produced in partnership with Automotive... Read more →

A research team led by Profs. CHEN Wei and WEI Wei from the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed novel graphene/silicon carbide (SiC) catalysts for efficient CO2 photoelectroreduction to ethanol (C2H5OH). The results were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The composite catalyst,... Read more →

EKPO Fuel Cell Technologies GmbH (EKPO), an entity fully consolidated within the Group of majority shareholder ElringKlinger AG, and operated in partnership with French automotive supplier Plastic Omnium, which holds the remaining ownership interests, secured a contract from a global automotive manufacturer to supply mass-produced bipolar plates for the carmaker’s... Read more →

Fusion Fuel has been awarded €3.6 million in grant funding through Component 5 (‘C-5’) of Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan to develop a 1 MW decentralized green hydrogen production facility co-located with a hydrogen refueling station in Elvas, Portugal. Fusion Fuel had previously been awarded €36 million in C-5 funding... Read more →

Microchip Technology introduced the MPLAB SiC Power Simulator that quickly evaluates Microchip’s silicon carbide (SiC) power devices and modules across various topologies before committing a design to hardware. Microchip’s MPLAB SiC Power Simulator is a PLECS (Piecewise Linear Electrical Circuit Simulation)-based software environment designed in collaboration with Plexim (the providers... Read more →

CISSOID and Silicon Mobility have partnered to introduce a complete and modular Silicon Carbide (SiC) inverter reference design, providing customers with an innovative and customizable solution for electric motor drives up to 350kW/850V. The reference design includes a high voltage SiC-based power module, integrated Gate Driver board, Control board, DC... Read more →

Daimler Truck subsidiary Torc Robotics, a pioneer in commercializing self-driving vehicle technology, signed an agreement to acquire Algolux Inc. Torc is acquiring Algolux for its award-winning intellectual property and expertise in the areas of computer vision and machine learning. Algolux perception technology in two views, combining both regular computer vision... Read more →

Kia Corporation unveiled the Concept EV5 at Kia Chinese EV Day. The Concept EV5 provides a preview of a production all-electric SUV model that will be launched first in China later this year; details regarding any future plans for the other global markets will be made in due course. The... Read more →

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) intends to issue a funding opportunity announcement (DE-FOS-0003023) that will boost the domestic production of large metallic near net shape (NNS) components. This FOA will impact a broad cross-section of the US manufacturing sector including clean... Read more →

Elcora Advanced Materials has begun operations on the 16 km² manganese mining concession in Morocco for which it had acquired exclusive rights earlier. (Earlier post.) The SGS-certified African Laboratory for Mining and Environment (AFRILAB) team evaluated onsite that already extracted Manganese (Mn) piles contain about 5,500 metric tonnes of manganese... Read more →

The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) awarded a grant to PLN Indonesia Power (Indonesia Power) for technical assistance to help develop the country’s first small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear power plant. Indonesia Power selected Oregon-based NuScale Power OVS, LLC (NuScale) to carry out the assistance in partnership with a... Read more →

Large-scale deployment of battery electric vehicle (BEV) and photovoltaic (PV) electricity technologies could raise electricity costs by increasing peak evening electricity demand and causing overgeneration of electricity during midday. A new study by MIT researchers examines these risks and how they amplify or mitigate each other. The researchers used data... Read more →

JCB publicly unveiled its new port fuel injected, 4.8L inline-four hydrogen combustion engine (448 ABH2)—the company’s zero-carbon emissions solution for construction and agricultural equipment—at the Conexpo 2023 show in Las Vegas as part of the International Fluid Power Exposition (IFPE). JCB is investing £100 million in the project to produce... Read more →