Royal Dutch Shell will build an 820,000-tonnes-a-year biofuels facility at the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Rotterdam, the Netherlands, formerly known as the Pernis refinery. Once built, the facility will be among the largest in Europe to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel made from waste. Shell expects... Read more →

BASF SE (BASF) and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) announced a strategic partnership on battery materials solutions, including cathode active materials (CAM) and battery recycling. The collaboration aims at developing a sustainable battery value chain, in support of CATL’s localization in Europe and contributes to achieving both companies’ global... Read more →

South Africa-based Sibanye-Stillwater will establish a joint venture company with Australia-based ioneer with respect to ioneer’s Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project. Sibanye-Stillwater will contribute US$490 million for a 50% interest in the joint venture, with ioneer maintaining a 50% interest and retaining the operational management responsibility for the joint venture. The... Read more →

Solvay announced the installation completion of its new thermoplastic composites (TPC) manufacturing facility at its Greenville, South Carolina site. At full production capacity, the new line will add more than 30 positions at the 27,000-square-foot facility. The project represents a major milestone in Solvay’s efforts to industrialize its TPC capacity.... Read more →

Hyundai Motor Group introduced Factory Safety Service Robot, a robot for industrial site safety, and announced its pilot operation at Kia’s plant in South Korea. The Robot is based on Boston Dynamics’ quadruped robot, Spot, with applied artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous navigation, teleoperation technologies, and computing payload (AI Processing Service... Read more →

Lucid Group announced that the Lucid Air Dream Edition Range has received an official EPA rating of 520 miles of range. It is the longest-range electric vehicle ever rated by the EPA, delivering at least 100+ miles of additional range over its closest competitor. One of two distinct versions of... Read more →

Volta Trucks has raised €37 million (US$44 million) in a Series B funding round. Existing investor Luxor Capital Group led the round. Pre-orders for the Volta Zero now exceed 2,500 vehicles, with an order value of more than €600 million (US$706 million), having doubled in the past three months. The... Read more →

The first Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck pre-production units have begun leaving the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center; the all-electric F-150 Lightning goes on sale next spring. With 150,000 reservations for F-150 Lightning to date, Ford said it is investing an additional $250 million in the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center,... Read more →

Ballard Power Systems launched the FCmove-HD+ fuel cell module. FCmove-HD+ is designed for buses and medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and is the latest product in Ballard’s 8th generation heavy-duty power module portfolio. Ballard has been developing a family of FCmove products since 2019 to serve the commercial vehicle market. The... Read more →

New Flyer of America has received a new contract from the Lane Transit District (LTD) in Oregon for 19 battery-electric forty-foot Xcelsior CHARGE NG heavy-duty transit buses. The order includes six depot chargers and commissioning by New Flyer Infrastructure Solutions, supporting electric bus deployment in Eugene-Springfield, Oregon, and Metro Area... Read more →

Jacobs Vehicle Systems and Tula Technology have signed a cooperation agreement to accelerate the development of Jacobs Cylinder Deactivation (CDA) valve actuation technology in conjunction with Tula’s Dynamic Skip Fire (DSF) control algorithms (earlier post). Cylinder Deactivation leverages Jacobs’ well-established componentry to disable engine valves in selected cylinders allowing a... Read more →

Xtreme Diesel Performance (XDP), an automotive parts manufacturer and retailer based in Wall Township, New Jersey, with a sales distribution center in Las Vegas, Nevada, has agreed to stop manufacturing and selling parts for diesel pickup trucks that, when installed, bypass, defeat, or render inoperative EPA-approved emission controls and harm... Read more →

Romeo Power and Dynexus Technology, a provider of battery sensing solutions and data-driven battery intelligence, will collaborate to integrate Dynexus Technology’s actionable battery performance and health sensors into Romeo Power’s battery ecosystem. The technology developed by Dynexus will initially be utilized for incoming cell quality control and end-of-line verification, as... Read more →

TWAICE, a provider of predictive analytics software that optimizes the development and operation of lithium-ion batteries, and pepper motion GmbH (formerly etrofit), a company offering solutions for the electrification (retrofitting) of used and new commercial vehicles such as trucks in distribution transport, buses in local public transport (LPT) and municipal... Read more →

Ricardo has won a national competition to demonstrate the benefits that transport location data can have on urban air quality. The project addresses both the existing vehicle fleet and also extends to long-term improvements in air quality. The award of funding was made by the Geospatial Commission in partnership with... Read more →

IVECO and Nikola formally unveiled the manufacturing facility in Ulm, Germany for Nikola Tre electric heavy-duty trucks; production will begin by year end. The first Nikola Tre models produced here will be delivered to select customers in the United States in 2022. On the occassion of the launch, the two... Read more →

Ford Motor Company, Argo AI and Walmart are working together to launch an autonomous vehicle delivery service in Miami; Austin, Texas; and Washington, DC—Walmart’s first multi-city autonomous delivery collaboration in the US. The last mile delivery service will use Ford self-driving test vehicles equipped with the Argo AI Self-Driving System... Read more →

Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB), the public transport operator for the Barcelona metropolitan area has ordered 24 Solaris Urbino 12 electric buses, which will arrive by the end of 2022. The value of the contract, concluded as a result of a tender, stands at more than €12 million. The public... Read more →

by Michael Sivak, Sivak Applied Research. The energy intensity of a transportation mode is calculated by dividing the amount of fuel used by the number of passenger miles traveled and converting the result into a common measure—Btu (British thermal units) per passenger mile traveled. Until recently, the energy intensity of... Read more →

Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution have begun construction of an electric vehicle (EV) battery cell plant in Indonesia to secure leadership in the global battery electric vehicle (BEV) market. Hyundai and LG Energy Solution announced that they held a virtual groundbreaking ceremony with the Government of Indonesia at... Read more →

Embark Trucks, a developer of self-driving software for the trucking industry (earlier post), announced a joint initiative with HP to combine electric and autonomous truck technology and create a more sustainable distribution network. The two companies launched an electric truck drayage pilot in the Los Angeles area, where local loads... Read more →

DeepRoute.ai has closed a Series B funding round with the investment totaling to more than US$300 million. The funding will further research and development, help scale automaker collaboration and fleet operation, and support the expansion of the team. DeepRoute.ai’s long-term strategy includes developing medium-duty trucks for urban logistics, improving transit... Read more →

NITI Aayog, the Government of India’s official think tank, with support from RMI and RMI India, has launched a campaign to transform last-mile deliveries and eliminate pollution through consumer engagement. Based on the Sanskrit word for zero, Shoonya will create a verification and branding system for electric delivery vehicles and... Read more →

Rio Tinto and Caterpillar have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for Caterpillar’s development of zero-emissions autonomous haul trucks for use at one of Rio Tinto’s Western Australian mining operations. The collaboration will see Rio Tinto work with Caterpillar to advance the development of the manufacturer’s future 220-tonne 793 zero-emissions... Read more →

Rolls-Royce and Flanders Electric have agreed to develop a retrofit concept for hybridizing mining trucks that can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 30%. It integrates mtu engines, batteries and hybrid control systems, and Flanders drive train solutions. The two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding enabling them to... Read more →

Volkswagen of America announced another round of fuel economy figures for the 2021 ID.4 electric SUV. The ID.4 AWD Pro has an EPA-estimated 249 miles of range on a full charge and the AWD Pro S has an EPA-estimated 240 miles of range on a full charge. The ID.4 Pro... Read more →

Mercedes-Benz do Brasil has presented the fully electric eO500U bus chassis. The bus chassis was specially designed for Latin American cities and will be produced in São Bernardo do Campo, in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, from 2022 on. The fully electric bus chassis has a range of up... Read more →

KULR Technology Group, a developer of lithium-ion battery safety and thermal management technologies, will provide its KULR-Tech Safe Case to lithium-ion battery recycler Heritage Battery Recycling (HBR), a new platform company of The Heritage Group, for the safe transportation logistics of HBR’s battery collection operations across North America. (Earlier post.)... Read more →

A new working paper from the the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) estimates the order of magnitude in scale and pace of national infrastructure investment required to meet the goal of 100% sales of zero-emission tractor-trailers (Class 7 and Class 8)—battery-electric and fuel-cell electric—by 2040. For battery-electric trucks, the... Read more →

Researchers from the Monash Energy Institute, with colleagues from CSIRO, have used a saccharide-based binder system to develop a durable sulfur cathode with minimal polysulfide escape in a lithium-sulfur battery. The saccharide-based binder system regulates polysulfides due to its reducing properties. The binder also promotes the formation of viscoelastic filaments... Read more →