Bio-Hybrid GmbH, a company belonging to the Schaeffler Group, will present the near-production Bio-Hybrid (earlier post)—a new, modern form of personal urban mobility and means of transportation—at CES 2019. The variable and electrically assisted vehicles will be showcased in Las Vegas in the Cargo and Passenger versions. At the same... Read more →

The BMW Group is investing around €200 million in its Munich plant in preparation for series production of the BMW i4 electric vehicle, which will be manufactured at the company’s headquarters starting in 2021. The BMW Group is pursuing the strategy of producing fully electric vehicles together with plug-in hybrids... Read more →

Hyundai Motor Group (HMG), which includes automotive brands Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motors Corporation, announced its long-term roadmap for hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology: FCEV Vision 2030. Aligned with the roadmap, Hyundai Motor Group (The Group) will boost its annual fuel-cell systems production capacity to 700,000 units by 2030... Read more →

Daimler will buy more than €20 billion (US$23 billion) of battery cells for electric drive vehicles by 2030, the company announced. The suppliers are already producing battery cells in Asia and Europe and are continuing to expand in Europe and additionally in the US. Daimler currently has battery cell supply... Read more →

An international team of researchers has developed a manganese hydride molecular sieve that can be readily synthesized from inexpensive precursors and demonstrates a reversible excess adsorption performance of 10.5 wt% and 197 kgH2m-3 at 120 bar at ambient temperature with no loss of activity after 54 cycles. The team projects... Read more →

Next-Battery, a start-up developing high energy-density Li-ion battery technology, has secured a strategic relationship with Lvchi Automobile Technology (Shanghai) Co Ltd. LVCHI AUTO group is a whole value chain operation platform company that focuses on new electric vehicles (EV), with targeted annual production of more than 500,000 vehicles. The global... Read more →

The new electric car brand Aion S—recently unveiled at Auto Guangzhou 2018 by GAC NE, GAC MOTOR’s new energy vehicle arm—will be the first line of cars to adopt Nidec’s fully integrated traction motor system (E-Axle) (earlier post). The super e-car with a driving mileage of more than 500 kilometers... Read more →

Since early November, the cars chauffeuring the management board members of Robert Bosch GmbH have been running on fully renewable diesel. Known as “C.A.R.E. diesel,” this fuel is synthesized mainly from by-products and waste materials. Its supplier Toolfuel claims that C.A.R.E. diesel reduces the CO2 emissions of these cars by... Read more →

On 15 December, the new BMW iFE.18 and the BMW i Andretti Motorsport Team will contest their first race in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in Ad Diriyah (KSA). At the heart of the car, which was developed for Season 5, lies the drivetrain: the Racing eDrive01. Drivetrain components:... Read more →

Scania, a member of the Volkswagen Group, is developing a fuel cell refuse truck together with Renova, a waste handling company in western Sweden, fuel cell manufacturer Powercell Sweden AB, and JOAB, a manufacturer of truck bodies. The truck will feature a fully electrified powertrain as well as an electrified... Read more →

A new animal study by a team at the Ohio State University suggests that a parent’s exposure to dirty air before conception may result in cardiac dysfunction in adult male offspring. The open-access paper is published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The study used an in vivo... Read more →

Volvo Buses is participating in a research project in which used electric bus batteries are used as solar energy storage units. Batteries from electric bus route 55 in Gothenburg, Sweden are being used for solar energy storage in a second-life application. This is part of a research project in which... Read more →

eMotorWerks, a subsidiary of the Enel Group’s new advanced energy services business line Enel X, and LO3 Energy, a company that facilitates local energy marketplaces through blockchain-based services, have launched a partnership to use JuiceNet’s smart-grid control technology for a series of microgrid + EVs projects with the joint goal... Read more →

A new brief published by the International Transport Forum (ITF)—an intergovernmental organization at the OECD with 59 member countries—identifies proven measures that decrease road freight’s CO2 emissions. Moving goods by road consumes about 50% of all diesel produced; 80% of the global net increase in diesel use since 2000 comes... Read more →

The future of the US Interstate Highway System is threatened by a persistent and growing backlog of structural and operational deficiencies and by various looming challenges, such as the progress of automated vehicles, developments in electric vehicles, and vulnerabilities due to climate change, according to a new congressionally mandated report... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a novel process that uses biomass gasification to produce high-octane gasoline blendstock. The resulting blendstock is low in aromatic compounds. To make this new blendstock, NREL’s indirect liquefaction team first converts... Read more →

Arc welding generates welding fume that is hazardous for human health. A team from the Far Eastern Federal University in Russia, with other colleagues in Russia and Greece, has focused on the key characteristics, as well as dispersion models, of welding fumes within a work zone. An open-access paper on... Read more →

Automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler predicts that in 2030 some 30% of all newly registered passenger cars will be fully electric and 40% will be propelled by hybrid powertrains—i.e., 70% of all passenger cars will be using at least one electric motor as a source of propulsion. At CES 2019,... Read more →

As British Airways looks towards its Centenary next year, the airline, in collaboration with Cranfield University, has challenged academics from across the UK to develop a sustainable alternative fuel which could power a commercial aircraft on a long-haul flight, carrying up to 300 customers with zero net emissions. This marks... Read more →

Rechargeable fluoride-based batteries could offer very high energy density. However, current fluoride batteries use molten salt electrolytes, and thus need to operate at high temperatures. Now, a team of researchers from Caltech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (managed by Caltech for NASA), the Honda Research Institute and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory... Read more →

Gevo, Inc. and Renmatix, the leader in affordable cellulosic sugars, announced a joint development agreement to evaluate the commercial feasibility of creating renewable jet fuel by integrating Renmatix’s Plantrose Process (earlier post) with Gevo’s GIFT technology and alcohol to jet process (earlier post). Renmatix’s Plantrose Process converts cellulosic feedstocks such... Read more →

Engineers seeking to significantly improve the efficiency and performance of electric motors could benefit from using aluminum matrix composites (AMCs), according to research from the Innovate UK ‘Make it Lighter with Less’ R&D competition. Metal Matrix Composites are metallic materials that have been reinforced with a secondary high-performance material. The... Read more →

The US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is awarding $12 million in funding for 5 projects as part of its first OPEN+ program. Traditionally, ARPA-E OPEN solicitations issue an open call to scientists and engineers for transformational technologies across the entire scope of ARPA-E’s energy mission. The... Read more →

In total, the Volkswagen brand will invest more than €11 billion in e-mobility, digitalization, autonomous driving and mobility services from 2019 to 2023, of which more than €9 billion (US$10.2 billion) will be spent on Volkswagen’s electrification offensive. The brand currently has two fully-electric cars in its program. This number... Read more →

A team led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has used metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) to set a new record for hydrogen storage capacity under normal operating conditions. A paper on their work is published in the ACS journal Chemistry of Materials. Hydrogen-powered vehicles... Read more →

MAN Cryo, the wholly owned subsidiary of MAN Energy Solutions, has—in close cooperation with Fjord1 and Multi Maritime in Norway—developed a marine fuel-gas system for liquefied hydrogen. Multi Maritime’s hydrogen vessel design for Fjord1, including the fully integrated MAN Cryo – Hydrogen Fuel Gas System, has been granted preliminary approval... Read more →

Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, has set a goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. To achieve this goal, carbon neutral vessels must be commercially viable by 2030, and an acceleration in new innovations and adaption of new technology is required. The maritime industry emitted close to 1000... Read more →

CR&R Incorporated / California Renewable Power LLC (CR&R) has submitted a California LCFS Tier 2 application for its biomethane from anaerobic digestion of green waste to CNG pathway, with a requested carbon intensity (CI) of 0.34 gCO2e/MJ. The CR&R facility produces biomethane from an organic waste anaerobic digester (AD) facility... Read more →

BMW is providing the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis with ten battery-electric, BMW i3 models for 18 months. Eight of the pre-owned vehicles will be available soon for UC Davis faculty and staff to rent through the campus’s UC Drive program, which is managed by the Fleet Services... Read more →

Nova Scotia-based Elcora Advanced Materials Corp. has been awarded a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)-ENGAGE grant with Dr. Heather Andreas, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University. The project will focus on studying Elcora’s high-quality graphene as an electrode material for supercapacitors.... Read more →