PolyPlus Battery Company a privately-held company focused on the development of the first rechargeable Li metal battery with a ionically conductive glass separator, has entered into the first stage of a joint development agreement with SK Innovation Co. Ltd., Korea’s first and largest energy and chemical company. SK selected PolyPlus... Read more →

New Flyer Industries Canada ULC, the Canadian subsidiary of NFI Group, announced an award from the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) for an additional ten forty-foot, zero-emission, battery-electric Xcelsior CHARGE heavy-duty transit buses. TTC New Flyer Industries XE40 Xcelsior electric demo bus. This award follows on the original TTC order from... Read more →

Renesas Electronics Corporation announced the development and successful operation verification of an automotive test chip as a technological stepping stone toward the realization of next-generation automotive-control flash Microcontrollers (MCUs) employing a 28 nanometer (nm) low-power process. The MCU features four 600 megahertz (MHz) CPUs with a lock-step mechanism and a... Read more →

Audi of America announced an expansion of Traffic Light Information to include Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA), another industry first in vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technologies from the brand. GLOSA can provide speed recommendations to Audi drivers of select 2017 and newer models that can assist drivers in catching the “green... Read more →

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is leading the DISCOVR (Development of Integrated Screening, Cultivar Optimization and Verification) project to help find the best algae strains for biofuels and bioproducts to reduce the cost of producing bioenergy from algae feedstocks. Along with PNNL, Los Alamos National Laboratory,... Read more →

Volvo Trucks delivered its first all-electric vehicles on 19 February: a refuse truck to waste and recycling company Renova, and a distribution truck to the logistics company DB Schenker and partner haulier TGM, operating in Sweden. The Volvo FL Electric, Volvo’s first all-electric vehicle, is developed for distribution, refuse handling... Read more →

Reciprocating internal combustion engines (piston engines), which are typically used for backup, standby, or emergency power, are now becoming increasingly popular for larger utility-scale power generation applications, especially in areas with high levels of electricity generation from intermittent sources such as wind and solar, according to the US Energy Information... Read more →

A team from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has shown by modeling that the wafer cost of an emerging Ga2O3 wide bandgap semiconductor can be more than 3-times lower compared to SiC. This lower cost of the Ga2O3 wafers should lead to less-expensive high-performance power electronic devices in the... Read more →

The European Parliament and the Council have reached provisional agreement on a regulation setting, for the first time in the EU, strict CO2 emission standards for trucks. Under the agreement, emissions from new trucks will have to be 15% lower by 2025 and 30% lower in 2030 compared to 2019... Read more →

Evonik has developed a new polymer powder for applications in higher temperature range as part of its polyamide 6 series. The product further expands Evonik’s portfolio of high-performance materials for powder-based 3D printing technologies. Evonik’s new polyamide powder features high mechanical strength as well as excellent chemical and temperature resistance.... Read more →

Bye Aerospace’s electric Sun Flyer 2 successfully completed the first official flight test with a Siemens electric propulsion motor 8 February at Centennial Airport, south of Denver, Colo. The Sun Flyer family of aircraft, including the 2-seat Sun Flyer 2 and the 4-seat Sun Flyer 4, aims to be the... Read more →

BMW is seeking alternative cooling technologies for vehicle batteries to further improve peak cooling capacity during fast charging while reducing cooling components’ vibration and noise emission. Solutions that meet the need criteria will be invited to work with BMW to evaluate and develop the idea. Faster charging creates more heat... Read more →

YASA, a leading manufacturer of axial-flux electric motors and controllers, signed a long-term joint innovation agreement with a global automotive OEM. The partnership will focus on developing custom electric motor and controller solutions for the OEM’s high-performance hybrid and pure electric vehicles. YASA’s innovative axial-flux electric motor and controller designs... Read more →

Cooking, cleaning and other routine household activities generate significant levels of volatile and particulate chemicals inside the average home, leading to indoor air quality levels on par with a polluted major city, according to a study by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. Furthermore, airborne chemicals that originate inside... Read more →

The production of an electric vehicle currently generates significantly more CO2 than that of cars with a combustion engine—around 150% on average. From a lifecycle view, this additional carbon burden is offset compared to the combustion engine vehicle during the use phase, as EVs rack up zero-emission miles that eventually... Read more →

Together with E.ON, Audi is building a solar energy park on the roofs of the two logistics centers of its plant in Győr covering about 160,000 square meters. This will create Europe’s largest photovoltaic system installed on a building at the Audi Hungaria plant in Győr. The system will have... Read more →

Researchers in France have shown the versatility of siloxene, a 2D silicon structure (Si6O3H6), as an anode material for Li-, Na- and K-ion batteries. In a paper in the Journal of Power Sources, the researchers report that lamellar siloxene obtained from the topotactic deintercalation of Ca from CaSi2 delivered reversible... Read more →

The International Tin Association (ITA) released a new report detailing its latest research on potential new market opportunities for tin in lithium-ion batteries. ITA concluded that if tin does gain market share, lithium-ion batteries could grow to represent a significant new tin use in the 2025-2030 timescale—up to 60,000 tonnes... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has launched its first lithium-ion battery recycling center, called the ReCell Center. Recycled materials from lithium-ion batteries can be reused in new batteries, reducing production costs by 10 to 30 percent, which could help lower the overall cost of electric vehicle (EV) batteries to... Read more →

Rivian announced an equity investment round of $700M led by Amazon. The investment comes on the heels of Rivian’s reveal of the all-electric R1T pickup and R1S SUV at the LA Auto Show last November. (Earlier post.) GM was also reported to have an interest in an investment in the... Read more →

Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) and biogas producer Calgren Dairy Fuels announced that renewable natural gas produced at Calgren’s dairy digester facility in Pixley, California is being injected into SoCalGas pipelines. The project marks the first time that carbon-negative renewable natural gas produced from cow manure has been injected directly... Read more →

Autonomous vehicles relying on light-based image sensors often struggle to see through conditions such as fog. MIT researchers have now developed a sub-terahertz-radiation receiving system that could help steer driverless cars when traditional methods fail. Sub-terahertz wavelengths, which are between microwave and infrared radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, can be... Read more →

Mercedes-Benz Trucks has handed over a fully electric eActros truck to Murg Valley (Southern Germany)-based logistics company Logistik Schmitt. As part of the eWayBW project, commercial transport will be electric on the B462 federal road around Rastatt with the test operation of catenary trucks as of 2020. On an approximately... Read more →

Kalmar, part of Cargotec, has selected Cummins to be the electrification solution provider for the next-generation electric terminal tractor offering for the European market. The Cummins driveline solution eliminates need for a transmission on a terminal tractor, simplifying the overall system and reducing maintenance needs. Cummins will provide powertrain technology,... Read more →

GTI has released a site-specific engineering design titled “Low-Carbon Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) from Wood Wastes”. GTI led a team of engineers and scientists to produce a blueprint for converting an existing biomass facility into an RNG production site, using the wood waste feedstock and some of the existing infrastructure.... Read more →

Rice University scientists have developed a detection system capable of alerting for Li dendrite formation in a two‐electrode battery with a Li metal anode with no additional electrodes required. A paper on the work is published in the journal Advanced Materials. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour made test... Read more →

GM announced ARĪV as the name of its new eBike brand, which includes two innovative, integrated and connected eBikes: the Meld, a compact eBike, and the Merge, a folding eBike. The name ARĪV was selected as part of a global crowdsourcing campaign announced in November 2018. ARĪV eBikes are launching... Read more →

University of Michigan researchers are teaching self-driving cars to recognize and predict pedestrian movements with greater precision than current technologies. The approach relies on a novel objective function that incorporates the periodicity of human walking (gait), the mirror symmetry of the human body, and the change of ground reaction forces... Read more →

OXIS Energy Ltd UK has signed a contract with CODEMGE PARTICIPACOES SA, a public company incorporated in the city of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, to establish the world’s first digital manufacturing plant for the mass production of OXIS’ lithium-sulfur cells. OXIS Energy Brazil Holdings will... Read more →

StarMetro, the city of Tallahassee’s public transit system, has agreed to purchase 22 Proterra Catalyst FC buses to service Florida State University (FSU), bringing the StarMetro fleet to 27 battery-electric buses. FSU is one of the first universities in the nation to decommission its entire fossil-fuel powered fleet and upgrade... Read more →