Sumitomo Corporation will launch a full-scale project to design and develop an ammonia-fueled dry bulk carrier jointly with Oshima Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. The ship is expected to be 229m in length, with a beam of 32m and deadweight of 80,0000-81,000MT. Speed is to be 14.3 knots. A dry bulk carrier... Read more →

A team from McMaster University in Canada has published a comprehensive review of recent progress in low-temperature combustion (LTC), alternative fuels (AF), over-expansion Atkinson cycle, and waste heat recovery (WHR) techniques as applied to hybrid-specific engines. Their open-access paper is published in the journal Energy Reports. As a midterm technology... Read more →

Business Finland has granted Keliber Technology Oy, a Finnish mining and battery chemical company that aims to start the sustainable production of battery-grade lithium hydroxide utilizing its own ore, investment funding of a maximum of €7 million. The funds are designated for the acquisition of technology that significantly improves environmental... Read more →

Tesla is recalling some 475,000 of its vehicles to address defects in design/assembly. The largest recall is for all Model Year 2017 to 2020 Model 3 vehicles—potentially 356,309 units. The defect with the Model 3 is that the trunk harness is equipped with a solid-core coaxial cable that provides the... Read more →

Samsung SDI has launched its battery brand PRiMX (pronounced as Praimax). PRiMX stands for ‘Prime Battery for Maximum Experience.’ The brand was developed under the three keywords, ‘Absolute Quality,’ ‘Outstanding Performance,’ and ‘Proven Advantage.’ Samsung SDI has strengthened quality control for the whole process from battery development to manufacturing and... Read more →

Tesco is launching the UK’s first commercially used fully electric heavy-duty freight articulated (tractor-trailer as opposed to rigid) trucks. Two new 37 tonne DAF CF Electric trucks will transport food and other products from Wentloog rail terminal outside Cardiff to Tesco’s distribution center in Magor, Wales, in partnership with logistics... Read more →

Northvolt has assembled the first battery cell at the newly commissioned Ett gigafactory in northern Sweden. The cell is the first to have been fully designed, developed and assembled at a gigafactory by a homegrown European battery company. The first cell of Northvolt Ett represents a milestone which Northvolt has... Read more →

TuSimple, a global autonomous driving technology company, successfully completed the first fully autonomous semi-truck run on open public roads without a human in the vehicle and without human intervention. The run took place on 22 December and required TuSimple’s upfitted autonomous semi-truck to begin its journey from a large railyard... Read more →

ÖBB Postbus in Austria has ordered five hydrogen buses from Solaris. has landed a deal with Solaris for the delivery of five hydrogen buses. The hydrogen-fueled vehicles will be deployed in the picturesque city of Villach in south-east Austria. This is the first order placed under a framework agreement concluded... Read more →

Waymo is collaborating with Geely to integrate the Waymo Driver into a version of the new mobility-focused, all-electric Zeekr vehicle, designed in Sweden specially for autonomous ride-hailing (earlier post). The rider-first vehicle features a flat floor for more accessible entry, easy ingress and egress due to a B-pillarless design, low... Read more →

As part of the Hybit (Hydrogen for Bremen’s industrial transformation) project, ArcelorMittal Bremen, swb AG and EWE AG have received a subsidy of more than €10 million from the state of Bremen for the construction of an electrolysis plant. The funding corresponds to about half of the total investment budget.... Read more →

The University of Michigan - Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU JI,) Professor Qianli Chen and her collaborators are proposing a new design principle for perovskite materials with high proton conductivity for use as electrolyte materials in solid oxide fuel cells. A paper on their work is published in... Read more →

The full New Jersey state Senate approved legislation Monday that would require the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) to develop and implement an electric school bus program. The bill (S4077), of which Senator Patrick J. Diegnan Jr., D-Middlesex, is the primary sponsor, would fund for three years the... Read more →

Nidec Corporation announced that its in-wheel moto... Read more →

Arrival, the developer of a new method of design and production of affordable electric vehicles (EVs) by local microfactories, has started trials of the Arrival Bus at a testing facility (MIRA) in the UK. The vehicles will be going through rigorous validation and testing ahead of certification. The Arrival Bus... Read more →

MORAI, a developer of full-stack autonomous driving simulation technology, will unveil MORAI SIM Cloud, which uses the cloud to build a myriad of simulation environments without hardware restrictions and enable simultaneous testing, at CES 2022. MORAI SIM Cloud is the Software as a Service (SaaS) model of the existing MORAI... Read more →

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is hosting the National Energy Storage Summit—Jumpstarting America’s Energy Storage Future on March 8-9, 2022 to discuss harnessing science, technology, and policy to accelerate energy storage solutions for the nation. This virtual event will include significant focus on lithium recovery and development of a domestic battery... Read more →

Ammonium is one of the specific components of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that has been linked to a higher risk of death compared to other chemicals found in it, according to a new study in the journal Epidemiology. This finding stems from the largest global analysis of its kind, led... Read more →

Researchers led by Andreas Stierle at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) have laid the foundations for an alternative method for storing hydrogen, using iridium-seeded palladium nanocluster superlattices with 1.2 nanometer cluster diameters. The team, which also includes researchers from the Universities of Cologne and Hamburg, published its findings in the journal ACS... Read more →

RoboSense (Suteng Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.), a developer of smart LiDAR system technology, announced a strategic investment agreement and a strategic cooperation framework agreement with BYD. RoboSense’s technology portfolio comprises LiDAR sensors, AI algorithms and IC chipsets. RoboSense says that it will keep pace with BYD, continuously upgrade its technology... Read more →

Daimler Greater China Ltd. and its long-term Chinese partner BYD Auto Industry Co., Ltd. (BYD) signed an equity transfer agreement to realign the structural setup of their originally 50:50 joint venture Shenzhen DENZA New Energy Automotive Co., Ltd. (DENZA). (Earlier post.) Both partners intend to complete an equity transfer in... Read more →

The largest asset-based transportation company in Europe, Girteka Logistics, was one of the first road freight transport companies to be given the Green Carrier Certificate by one of its partners, DHL. (Earlier post.) The certificate was established by the German-based logistics company to certify its subcontractors, increasing the transparency behind... Read more →

To overcome the slow charging times of conventional lithium-ion batteries, scientists from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have developed a new anode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) that allows for ultrafast charging. Produced via a simple, environmentally sound and efficient approach involving the calcination of a bio-based... Read more →

bp and Maersk Tankers, with support from the Danish Maritime Authority, have successfully completed trials using biofuel-blended marine fuel in product tankers, demonstrating that sustainable biofuels can be used as a marine drop-in fuel to help reduce carbon emissions in shipping. The trials were completed on Maersk Cirrus and Maersk... Read more →

Chin-based EV maker NIO recently unveiled its fifth mass-production model, the ET5 (earlier post). The mid-size sedan’s AI features are powered by the NIO Adam supercomputer, built on four NVIDIA DRIVE Orin systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), achieving a total of more than 1,000 TOPS of performance. In addition to centralized compute, the... Read more →

Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ Suiso Frontier, the world’s first liquefied hydrogen carrier, has left Japan to pick up its first hydrogen cargo in Australia. A return to Japan is expected around late February. This vessel was developed to provide a means of transporting liquefied hydrogen at 1/800 of its original gas-state... Read more →

sennder, Europe’s leading digital road freight forwarder and Cabot Corporation, a leading global specialty chemicals and performance materials company, transported one of Europe’s first zero-emission cross-border heavy duty loads. In a pilot electric trucking project, sennder transported 17+ tonnes of product for Cabot from the port of Rotterdam to Antwerp,... Read more →

Deutsche Post DHL Group is introducing a global DHL Green Carrier Certification to reward road transport subcontractors for their efforts to become more sustainable. As part of its sustainability roadmap, Deutsche Post DHL Group aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 29 million tons by 2030 and net-zero by... Read more →

Vaekstfonden, the Danish Growth Fund, and the German engine manufacturer DEUTZ AG, are investing €15 million in methanol fuel cell company Blue World Technologies. The aim is to bring the company’s green fuel cell products and solutions to the global market. The Blue World Technologies fuel cells are based on... Read more →

A research team has developed a new artificial photosynthesis device component with remarkable stability and longevity as it selectively converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into two promising sources of renewable fuels: ethylene and hydrogen. The researchers’ findings, which they recently reported in the journal Nature Energy, reveal how the device... Read more →

NASA has selected four university-led teams for potential awards in the agency’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI) that will have them spend up to five years exploring novel ideas for improving aviation, including eliminating emissions and autonomy research in support of Advanced Air Mobility. Three of the four teams are working... Read more →

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWi) has approved €900 million for the innovative funding instrument H2Global. The aim of the project is to advance the international market ramp-up of green hydrogen and to use double-auction procedures for this purpose. This means that hydrogen or hydrogen derivatives... Read more →

Methane pyrolysis technology company Monolith, a leader in clean materials production (e.g., hydrogen, earlier post; carbon black, earlier post), has received conditional approval for a $1.04-billion loan from the US Department of Energy (DOE). Established via the Title XVII Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program, the loan will allow Monolith to... Read more →

The City of New York will invest $420 million in electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and alternative fuels to accelerate the transition to an all-electric municipal vehicle fleet. The new investments, the largest ever made in the electrification of a public vehicle fleet, will help the City achieve an all-electric fleet... Read more →

Australia-based Syrah Resources Limited signed a binding offtake agreement with Tesla to supply natural graphite Active Anode Material (AAM) from its vertically integrated AAM production facility in Vidalia, Louisiana. Tesla will offtake the majority of the proposed initial expansion of AAM production capacity at Vidalia at a fixed price for... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released a new Request for Information (RFI) on the scale-up and demonstration of renewable fuels. The RFI, titled “Overcoming Barriers to Renewable Fuel Scale-Up and Demonstration,” (DE-FOA-0002615) seeks input from biofuels producers and technology developers about their readiness to scale process technologies to... Read more →

The zero-emission electric commercial vehicle market has a challenge at its core: battery sourcing and supply conditions. Now, CALSTART has released Commercial Vehicle Battery Cost Assessment: Strategic Sourcing Challenges for North American Truck and Bus OEMs and Tier 1 Suppliers, authored by YUNEV LLC, to provide insight on the factors... Read more →

Swiss energy storage company Leclanché has carved out its eTransport business into a wholly owned Swiss entity, Leclanché E-Mobility S.A.. Leclanché has also signed a mutually exclusive Letter of Intent with a US-listed Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) for merging with Leclanché E-Mobility S.A. The company is working with its... Read more →

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University may have found a way to revitalize rechargeable lithium batteries, potentially boosting the range of electric vehicles and battery life in next-gen electronic devices. As lithium batteries cycle, they accumulate little islands of inactive lithium that are... Read more →

Plus (formerly Plus.ai), a global provider of self-driving truck technology, will collaborate with Teledyne FLIR on a development project to explore the addition of thermal cameras to the sensor stack used with Plus’s Level 4 autonomous driving technology. Plus takes a multi-modal sensor approach and currently uses lidar, cameras, and... Read more →

General Motors will offer EV technology beyond its own portfolio and automotive applications more broadly, one component at a time. This approach will enable GM to expand its reach to a larger, more diverse group of commercial customers, helping organizations meet the growing demand for zero-emissions technology while achieving their... Read more →

A consortium comprising Solaris Bus & Coach and Škoda Electric will deliver 48 more Trollino trolleybuses to Budapest. The vehicles will be fitted with an additional battery power supply that will allow them to drive without being connected to overhead wires. The new order is another batch covered by a... Read more →

Cummins Inc. and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) have formed a 50:50 joint venture: Cummins Enze (Guangdong) Hydrogen Technology Co., Ltd. The joint venture will accelerate the affordability and availability of green hydrogen through increased technological innovation, research and development, and manufacturing capacity. Cummins Enze, located in Foshan, Guangdong Province... Read more →

INNIO Waukesha Gas Engines has been selected to receive more than $2.2 million in funding from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The funding is part of ARPA-E’s “Reducing Emissions of Methane Every Day of the Year” (REMEDY) program that was unveiled earlier this year (earlier... Read more →

Rolls-Royce is focusing on methanol as a fuel for climate-friendly shipping; Rolls-Royce business unit Power Systems is currently developing mtu engines for use with methanol. The new high-speed four-stroke engines, which are based on proven mtu technologies, are planned to be available to customers as soon as possible for use... Read more →

Volvo Trucks has received an order for an additional 25 heavy electric trucks from DFDS, Northern Europe’s largest shipping and logistics company. The new vehicles are on top of the record order of 100 Volvo FM electric trucks that was made in October, adding up to a total of 125 electric... Read more →

Heniff Transportation Systems has reached an agreement initially to acquire 10 Nikola Tre BEV trucks from Thompson Truck Centers, a member of the Nikola Corporation sales and service dealer network. The agreement between Heniff Transportation and Thompson Truck Centers is a fleet-as-a-service model where Thompson will provide the sales, service,... Read more →

Gaussin and Terminal du Grand Ouest (TGO), concessionaire and sole operator of the Montoir-based Multipurpose Cargo and Container Terminal (MCCT) near Saint- Nazaire, France, are partnering to test a hydrogen-powered heavy-duty terminal tractor. These full-scale tests will take place at the Montoir container terminal in spring 2022. A Gaussin APM... Read more →

Aurizon, Australia’s largest rail freight operator, and leading global mining company Anglo American will work together on a feasibility study to assess the introduction of hydrogen-powered trains for bulk freight. The study will explore the application of Anglo American’s proprietary hydrogen fuel cell and battery hybrid power units in heavy... Read more →

The available Pro Power Onboard feature enables the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning and F-150 PowerBoost Hybrid trucks to function as power sources on wheels with multiple uses. Now, Ford is adding another benefit: vehicle-to-vehicle charging using the Ford-exclusive Pro Power Onboard 240-volt outlet. When connected to an F-150 Lightning or... Read more →