The Government of Canada is setting a mandatory target for all new light-duty cars and passenger trucks sales to be zero-emission by 2035, accelerating Canada’s previous goal of 100% sales by 2040. The Government of Canada will pursue a combination of investments and regulations to help Canadians and industry transition... Read more →

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a Standing General Order requiring manufacturers and operators of vehicles equipped with SAE Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) or SAE Levels 3-5 automated driving systems (ADS) to report crashes. NHTSA’s core mission is safety. By mandating crash reporting, the agency... Read more →

The European Environment Agency (EEA) has published its provisional data about the CO2 emissions of newly registered passenger cars and vans in Europe in 2020. For cars, the data show a 12% decrease in average cO2 emissions, compared with 2019. Average van emissions decreased slightly, by about 1.5 %. According... Read more →

Cummins Inc. and Rush Enterprises, Inc. signed a Letter of Intent for Cummins to acquire a 50% equity interest in Momentum Fuel Technologies from Rush Enterprises. Momentum Fuel Technologies delivers the industry’s first complete compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel system solution for Class 6-8 vehicles. A division of Rush Enterprises,... Read more →

Constellium SE has expanded its longstanding partnership with Audi to supply advanced aluminum solutions for the Audi e-tron GT. Electric vehicles require strong, yet lightweight solutions to optimize range and prioritize safety. Constellium provides ASI-certified aluminum Auto Body Sheet solutions for closures and inner parts, as well as extrusion-based components... Read more →

Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have created a lithium-metal battery that lasts for 600 cycles, far longer than other reported results. It can be fully charged and discharged 600 times before it dies. A paper on the work is published in the journal... Read more →

Researchers working on the Faraday Institution project on the recycling of lithium-ion batteries (ReLiB) at the Universities of Leicester and Birmingham say they have solved a critical challenge in the recovery of materials used in electric vehicle batteries at the end of their life, enabling their re-use in the manufacture... Read more →

BASF will build a battery recycling prototype plant in Schwarzheide, Germany, at the site of its cathode active materials (CAM) plant. The prototype recycling plant will allow for the development of operational procedures and optimization of technology to deliver superior returns of lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese from end-of-life lithium-ion... Read more →

Mayor Eric Garcetti launched the second phase of the Metro NextGen Bus Plan, a strategy to boost ridership through faster, more reliable, and more frequent service as riders return to the system. The second phase of the NextGen Bus Plan brings hundreds of new bus trips on weekdays and weekends,... Read more →

Andreas Scheuer, Germany’s Federal Minister for Transport and Digital Infrastructure, signed a memorandum on cooperation with the four German Urban Air Mobility (UAM) model cities and regions of Aachen, Ingolstadt, Hamburg and North Hesse to start a new innovation network for the use of drones in Germnay. Today we are... Read more →

In the BrineMine research project, researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, together with their partners, are developing strategies and methods for extracting mineral resources directly in geothermal power plants. Here, not only energy and minerals are to be extracted, but also drinking water. Important process steps have already been successfully... Read more →

Ford and State Farm are working together to improve the safety and overall cost of vehicle ownership by better matching price to risk. After completing a year-long pilot project, Ford’s new Vehicle Build Data API product has allowed State Farm to better understand how ADAS on specific vehicles impact the... Read more →

The United States is the third-largest electric vehicle (EV) producer behind China and Europe; a new study from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) finds that the gap has widened. The ICCT study finds that the United States’ share of cumulative global EV production decreased from 20% to 18%... Read more →

The European Council adopted its position at first reading on the European climate law, ending the adoption procedure and setting into legislation the objective of a climate-neutral EU by 2050. This follows a political agreement reached with the European Parliament on 21 April and the Parliament’s adoption of its position... Read more →

The US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announced approximately $182 million in funding for low- and no-emissions buses and the facilities that support them. The project selections were approved as part of the Low- or No-Emission (Low-No) Grant program, which funds the deployment of zero-emission and low-emission... Read more →

Tula Technology, Inc., a leader in propulsion efficiency, will release the findings of a recent simulation study to evaluate the efficacy of its newest technology at the FEV Powertrain Conference. The study validated that Tula’s Dynamic Skip Fire (DSF) developed for mild-hybrid diesel vehicles reduced CO2 emissions in a 2.3... Read more →

More than half of all battery cells used in plug-in electric vehicles (BEVs and PHEVs) since 2010 have been produced in the US, as have nearly 90% of all battery packs, according to a recent study of the Li-ion battery supply chain by a team at Argonne National Laboratory. Annual... Read more →

Loop Energy, a developer and manufacturer of hydrogen fuel cell-based solutions, reports that the pilot transit bus fleet of Skywell New Energy Vehicles Group (Skywell) in Nanjing, China has now been fully operational for 45 days and has already accumulated 75,000 kilometers of in-service operations. Loop Energy announced in April... Read more →

Honda’s first new volume ba ttery-electric vehicle—an electric SUV coming to market in early 2024—will be named “Prologue,” signaling a new electrified era that will lead to the company’s vision for 100% zero emission vehicle sales in North America by 2040. More specific details about the new vehicle will be... Read more →

Crane Carrier, a Battle Motors truck company, is now a UFC sponsor. The partnership aligns Battle Motors with UFC as the inaugural sponsor in two distinct categories within the US market. Battle Motors will become the “Official Light Duty Truck of UFC,” as well as the first presenting partner of... Read more →

Autonomous vehicle company Local Motors and in-wheel motor company Protean Electric expanded their long-standing partnership, inking a further three-year deal valued at $7.3 million. Under this new order, Protean Electric will deliver thousands of its ProteanDrive in-wheel motors (IWMs) to power Local Motors’ Olli 2.0 electric autonomous shuttles, accelerating their... Read more →

The Renault Group has entered two major partnerships for the production of Li-ion batteries in France. The first is with Envision AESC—a long-standing partner of Nissan; the second is with Verkor, a Grenoble-based start-up specialized in development of EV battery cells. Envision AESC which will develop a gigafactory in Douai... Read more →

The EU-funded research project HyFlexFuel recently successfully produced biocrudes via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) from a variety of biomasses, including sewage sludge, food waste, manure, wheat straw, corn stover, pine sawdust, miscanthus and microalgae in a pilot-scale continuous HTL plant at Aarhus University (Denmark). HyFlexFuel, Process overview. Copyright: Bauhaus Luftfahrt Biocrudes... Read more →

A study by researchers at RWTH Aachen University in Germany has found that synthetic dimethoxymethane (DMM) is not only a promising fuel or blend component because of its outstanding combustion characteristics, but that it could be very attractive from a production point of view as well. In an open-access paper... Read more →

MAN Truck & Bus and Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) are jointly testing autonomously driving prototype trucks in real-world applications. The practical test drives at the HHLA Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) showed that automation can be integrated efficiently and safely into customers’ actual logistics workflows. German lawmakers recently created... Read more →

Researchers in Hong Kong have developed a new lithiated silicon-sulfur (Si–S) full battery by developing pomegranate-structured hosts for both the anode and cathode. The pomegranate-like sulfur host with titanium nitride-carbon dual-layer hollow nanospheres (Pome-TiN@C) not only effectively suppresses the polysulfides diffusion by multiple layers of chemical and physical barriers, but... Read more →

A team at Chalmers University (Sweden) has tested blends of OME3-5, HVO and RME in a light- and heavy-duty CI engine. For the study, which is published in an open-access paper in the journal Fuel, OME3-5 was blended with hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), rapeseed methyl ester (RME) and the C8-alcohol... Read more →

Project AIR—an industrial concept to produce methanol from a large variety of recovered end-of-life streams and hydrogen from electrolysis—has been awarded approximately €30 million by the Swedish Energy Agency, and is now applying for EU Innovation Fund to realize the project. The project is being carried out by the Swedish... Read more →

In an interview with Merkur.de, Volkswagen sales director Klaus Zellmer said that the brand would exit the combustion engine vehicle business in Europe between 2033 and 2035, and a little later in the US and China. In South America and Africa, he said, “due to the lack of political and... Read more →

McPhy, specialized in zero-carbon hydrogen production and distribution equipment (electrolyzers and hydrogen stations), is opening a new industrial site dedicated to the development and mass production of hydrogen stations. Operational from March 2022, this new factory will bring together the research and innovation, engineering and production activities currently based in... Read more →

Neste, the world’s leading provider of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), has set up a supply of Neste MY Sustainable Aviation Fuel at Cologne Bonn Airport. AFS, the leading provider for aviation fueling services in Germany, supports Neste to serve this market. The first flight fueled with Neste MY SAF was... Read more →

Turkey has begun work on Canal Istanbul, a $15-billion canal project intended to relieve pressure on the Bosphorus Strait, with the ground-breaking for the first bridge. The canal, which will connect the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara—and thence to the Aegean and Mediterranean seas—is aimed to manage the... Read more →

In the US, ethanol production is limited in large part by its reliance on corn, which isn’t grown in large enough quantities to make up a significant portion of US fuel needs. To try to expand biofuels’ potential impact, a team of MIT engineers has now found a way to... Read more →

Researchers at Ariel University in Israel have developed a new type of hydrogen generator for “on-demand” use with fuel cells. Hydrogen is produced in a catalytic hydrolysis reaction of sodium borohydride (NaBH4) with ruthenium powder as a catalyst. The proposed generator is portable and lightweight; has high energy density; is... Read more →

Robomart, the store-hailing platform (earlier post), announced its official launch in West Hollywood, California. Using the proprietary Robomart app, consumers can hail an automated store on wheels and have it arrive at their location in less than 10 minutes, making it the fastest delivery service available today. For this launch,... Read more →

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, launched England’s first hydrogen double-decker buses. The 20 new buses are the first of their kind to be launched in England; the new hydrogen fuel cell double decker buses are first being introduced on route 7 between East Acton and Oxford Circus. The buses... Read more →

Some of the world’s cities suffer disproportionate economic losses because of the health consequences of in-car air pollution, according to a new study by an international team led by researchers at the University of Surrey (UK). Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) set out to investigate whether the... Read more →

Renault Group and STMicroelectronics announced a strategic cooperation on the design, development, manufacturing, and supply to Renault Group of STMicroelectronics’ products and related packaging solutions for the power electronics systems of battery-operated and hybrid vehicles. These technologies will have significant impacts on electric vehicles’ driving range and charging by reducing... Read more →

Arkema has launched its new sustainable Kynar PVDF range. These new grades will claim 100% renewable attributed carbon derived from crude tall oil (CTO) bio-feedstock, according to a mass-balance approach. Kynar CTO PVDF grades using the mass balance approach under the ISCC+ certification process will be produced first in Arkema’s... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced more than $30 million in federal funding, matched by more than $35 million in private sector funds, for 68 projects that will accelerate the commercialization of promising energy technologies—ranging from clean energy and advanced manufacturing, to building efficiency and next-generation materials. The awards... Read more →

The Danish Energy Agency’s Danish Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP) has awarded 81 million DKK (app. €11 million) to the green ammonia project managed by the three partners Skovgaard Invest, Vestas, and Haldor Topsoe. The project aims at building a 10 MW green ammonia plant directly coupled to... Read more →

An international team led by chemical and biomolecular engineer Haotian Wang of Rice’s Brown School of Engineering and Yongfeng Hu of Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada has assembled what they say may transform chemical catalysis by greatly increasing the number of transition-metal single atoms that can... Read more →

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and PBF Chalmette Refinery Manager Steven Krynski announced that the company is studying the possible conversion of an idled refinery unit into a renewable diesel production complex. The refinery’s parent company, PBF Energy, would make a $550-million capital investment to retrofit a hydrocracker unit—out of... Read more →

The Port of Antwerp is converting a tug to methanol propulsion. The ‘methatug’ is part of the European Union-funded Fastwater project, which aims to demonstrate the feasibility of methanol as a sustainable marine fuel. The European Commission approved the project this week. Rhine-based inland navigation craft must comply with the... Read more →

OCI N.V. announced that Fertiglobe has signed an agreement with TA’ZIZ to join a world-scale blue ammonia production project in Ruwais, Abu Dhabi. The agreement further strengthens the UAE’s hydrogen value proposition, building on the deep experience in carbon capture and storage of ADNOC, and the ammonia capabilities of Fertiglobe,... Read more →

A public-private partnership between Los Alamos National Laboratory and Southern California-based Oberon Fuels has secured funding from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to scale-up steam reforming technology to produce renewable hydrogen (rH2) from renewable dimethyl ether (rDME)—a novel pathway for reducing the carbon content of the global hydrogen supply.... Read more →

The Finnish company UPM-Kymmene has selected Siemens Energy to supply electrification, automation, and digitalization (EAD) packages for a next-generation biorefinery currently under construction in Leuna, Germany. The biorefinery will be the first industrial-scale facility of its type. It will apply novel process innovations to convert sustainable hardwood into bio-based mono-ethylene... Read more →

Electric Last Mile, Inc. (ELMS) will reveal its working prototype of the Urban Utility electric medium-duty cab-forward truck, and begin taking orders, at the Route Consultant Contractor Expo on 30-31 July. Held in Nashville, Tennessee, the annual Expo is the largest independent gathering of FedEx Ground contractors in the country.... Read more →

Canada-based Vicinity Motor Corp. (formerly Grande West Transportation Group), a supplier of electric, CNG, gasoline and diesel vehicles, released specifications for the new VMC 1200, a fully electric Class 3 medium-duty commercial truck. Powered by a 150 kWh Li-Ion battery pack an electrical powertrain that provides up to 150 kW... Read more →

As of June 2021, Moscow’s fleet of electric buses has reached 600 vehicles and will expand to 1,000 by the end of the year—more than in any other European city. Most of the battery packs and propulsion equipment for the Russian capital’s electric buses are made by Drive Electro, which... Read more →