Tesla is now expanding its energy storage business from simply supplying the battery systems, to also remote control of installed storage systems to make the grid cleaner and more efficient.
Tesla calls it aggregation – the next step in energy storage.
Tesla Powerwall
The idea is to enable Powerwall owners to give utilities access to the battery – for use when energy demand is at its highest. Naturally, in turn owners would gain compensation for the extra capacity.
The first Tesla partner with the project is Green Mountain Power in Vermont.
Tesla and Green Mountain Power are excited to announce a program where you can get a Powerwall to back up your home with reliable energy for only $15/month.
In some ways, it’s similar to renting autonomous car, as Tesla would also build a platform joining those who have product, with those who are in need of using a product.
Too many U.S. states, and their electric utilities, think electric vehicles are linked to urgent action on climate change. They see EVs as an environmental solution to a problem that has yet to gain political consensus, at least in the U.S.
But they’re wrong: Electric vehicles, like the rest of the products emerging from what I and other economists call the green economic revolution, will win mass-market adoption because they cost less. And that day is fast arriving.
Electric vehicles anchor a critical mass of technologies poised to slash transportation costs through a new business model often called mobility as a service, or MaaS.
Google tests a self-driving car prototype in Palo Alto, California.
Some posit that MaaS will win price-competitive advantage by:
Displacing fossil fuels with lower-cost renewable electricity
Reducing vehicle maintenance costs by displacing mechanical systems with electronics
Reducing labor with autonomous vehicles
Lowering consumer costs with digitally-purchased, incremental mobility services compared to vehicle ownership
Recent estimates project that MaaS will be four to 10 times cheaper than owning a car in less than 15 years. The average American household is projected to save $5,600 annually. Such a massive cut could potentially drive our national economy to a 3 percent annual growth rate.
Vehicles designed as consumer devices
MaaS innovators are not focused on improving existing car design. Instead they seek to design vehicles as consumer electronics. These five technologies will drive the redesign of vehicles into consumer electronic devices:
5G: 5G is the next wave of mobile connectivity. It has gigabyte speeds and bandwidth compared to today’s 4G speeds. As early as 2018, MaaS will use 5G to create real-time convenience and efficiency between smart, autonomous vehicles and consumers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is the autonomous electric vehicle’s operating system and “steering wheel.” It will autonomously steer electric vehicles from customer to customer and curb to curb. It will optimize for safety, on-time performance and lowest cost.
Digital commerce: Car loans will be displaced by cheaper, easier and more convenient digital payment for incremental mobility service. Think of Uber-like services supplying whatever you need (drones, SUVs, pick-up trucks or non-emergency medical vehicles). through a digital payment system accessed through a smart phone or wearable device.
Renewable electricity: Renewable electricity will fuel vehicles designed as consumer devices. Electricity is the preferred energy for consumer electronic, and renewables will eventually take over as they become cheaper than fossil fuels or fossil-derived electricity.
Batteries: Batteries are on a downward cost curve driven by innovation and manufacturing economies of scale. Battery costs have already fallen by 75 percent and are projected to win another 75 percent cost decline by 2030. Battery range is being extended even as costs decline. And this month a company claimed its new-generation battery technology put up a 300-mile driving range with five-minute recharging times.
Earlier this month, wee flew out out to Germany to test the new 530e iPerformance in the German Alps and on the Autobahn to demonstrate its impressive capabilities.
The BMW 530e sets a best in class pure electric range at 50 km or about 30 miles, and Bavarian engineers say this longer pure electric range should allow most owners to commute to work without using any petrol.
As for its power source, trailblazing BMW eDrive technology teams up an eDrive electric motor with a 4-cylinder 2.0-liter TwinPower Turbo combustion engine to create an exceptionally efficient and powerful plug-in hybrid drive system.
OPINION: The 2006 documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” presented a fairly depressing account of why electric vehicles are rarely seen on our roads.
The message was that we could have them, but big business didn’t want us to have them. General Motors had developed an electric vehicle, the EV-1, which customers drove on a lease agreement, and absolutely loved, until GM took them all back and unceremoniously crushed them.
An electric Tesla 3 with a licence plate that cocks a snoot at the internal combustion engine.
Something has changed since that documentary was produced. Now it seems like big business does want us to have electric vehicles. GM would love to sell you one today, if you were in the United States, and there is no shortage of options for those of us in New Zealand. BMW have a very BMW-like electric car, with Nissan and others looking after more budget conscious drivers.
However, the reason for the change falls short of a fascinating tale of intrigue involving globalist powers living high on oil riches. There is money involved, but at the root of it all are, rather anticlimactically, science nerds developing battery chemistry, and engineering nerds building factories to produce what the scientists come up with.
The fact is that there has only ever been one problem with electric vehicles: the batteries. It turns out, thanks to nature, that storing lots of electrical energy in a small volume that doesn’t weigh a huge amount, is very difficult. On the flip side of this we have oil which, thanks to nature, it turns out is really very easy to do the same with. Early on we sensibly went all in for the oil option, because it was there, big companies could sell product and make money, and consumers were happy.
The rate of battery development was no doubt hurt by our love of oil, but it didn’t stop. In fact, there was an unexpected saviour of the electric car, which began its heroic march in the 1990s, in the form of an army of laptops and mobile phones.
SINGAPORE/KUALA LUMPUR: Demand for petrol in Asia may peak much earlier than expected as millions of people in China and India buy electric vehicles over the next decade, threatening wrenching change for the oil industry, oil and auto company executives warned.
They said refiners should prepare for a future in which petrol, their biggest source of revenue, will be much less of a cash cow.
Change is being prompted by policy moves in India and China, where governments are trying to rein in rampant pollution, cut oil imports, and compete for a slice of the fast-growing green car market.
Refiners should prepare for a future in which petrol, their biggest source of revenue, will be much less of a cash cow as electric vehicles gain traction. — Reuters
In its “road map”, released in April, China said it wants alternative fuel vehicles to account for at least one-fifth of the 35 million annual vehicle sales projected by 2025.
India is considering even more radical action, with an influential government think-tank drafting plans in support of electrifying all vehicles in the country by 2032, according to government and industry sources interviewed by Reuters late last week.
“We will see a clear shift to electric cars. It’s driven by legislation so electric cars are coming, it’s not a niche anymore,”
Wilco Stark, vice president for strategy and product planning at German car maker Daimler, told Reuters.
Stark and other executives were interviewed during the Asia Oil & Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur this week.
Daimler sees electric vehicles contributing 15% to 20% of its overall sales by 2025 and at least an additional 10% of sales coming from hybrids, he said.
Electric cars currently make up less than 2% of the global car fleet, and any faster-than-expected growth in that percentage will materially impact oil demand and the refining business.
No more petrol or diesel cars, buses, or trucks will be sold anywhere in the world within eight years.
The entire market for land transport will switch to electrification, leading to a collapse of oil prices and the demise of the petroleum industry as we have known it for a century.
Are fossil fuelled cars set to become extinct?
This is the futuristic forecast by Stanford University economist Tony Seba, founder of technology consultants RethinkX . His report, with the deceptively bland title Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030, has gone viral in green circles and is causing spasms of anxiety in the established industries.
Prof Seba’s premise is that people will stop driving altogether. They will switch en masse to self-drive electric vehicles (EVs) that are ten times cheaper to run than fossil-based cars, with a near-zero marginal cost of fuel and an expected lifespan of 1m miles.
One by one, EVs are decimating records set by internal combustion engine vehicles. NIO/NextEV’s $1.48 million electric supercar, the NIO EP9, has set a new lap record around one of the world’s most famous and grueling racetracks, the Nurburgring Nordschleife.
The car managed a time of 6:45.90, which is the fastest lap ever set by an electric vehicle around the track – and in fact is faster than any production vehicle, electric or otherwise, beating the Lamborghini Huracan Performante by just over 6 seconds.
This would be the fastest lap ever done by any production vehicle – assuming we count the EP9 as a production vehicle. Currently, NIO has built seven EP9s, and plans another production run of ten more cars. While this is certainly a small number of units, other cars with smaller production runs (and similarly-high prices, like the McLaren F1 XP5 prototype, of which 5 were built) have qualified as “production” vehicles for these purposes, so the EP9 probably deserves the title.
We haven’t seen the new lap yet, but NIO plans to release a video sometime within the week. For now, have a look at their edited video of the previous EV-record-setting lap here:
On current trends, the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2040.
THOSE who doubt the power of human beings to change Earth’s climate should look to the Arctic, and shiver. There is no need to pore over records of temperatures and atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations. The process is starkly visible in the shrinkage of the ice that covers the Arctic ocean. In the past 30 years, the minimum coverage of summer ice has fallen by half; its volume has fallen by three-quarters. On current trends, the Arctic ocean will be largely ice-free in summer by 2040.
Climate-change sceptics will shrug. Some may even celebrate: an ice-free Arctic ocean promises a shortcut for shipping between the Pacific coast of Asia and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and the Americas, and the possibility of prospecting for perhaps a fifth of the planet’s undiscovered supplies of oil and natural gas. Such reactions are profoundly misguided. Never mind that the low price of oil and gas means searching for them in the Arctic is no longer worthwhile. Or that the much-vaunted sea passages are likely to carry only a trickle of trade. The right response is fear.
MINI has released full specs, further details, and an extensive photo gallery ahead of the launch of its first production plug-in hybrid – the MINI Cooper S E Countryman ALL4 plug-in hybrid.
The MINI Countryman PHEV (which is the name we are going with from here on out), begins sales in Europe and the US and in June.
In UK prices (without plug-in car grant) start at £31,585 OTR (‘On-the-road’).
MINI Cooper S E Countryman ALL4
MINI Countryman PHEV quick specs:
all-wheel drive with 1.5L 3-cylinder TwinPower Turbo Technology petrol engine (100 kW/136 hp), 6-speed Steptronic automatic transmission and 65 kW (87 hp) electric motor. System output of 165 kW/224 hp and 385 Nm.
up to 42 km (26 miles) of all-electric range NEDC – one can mostly likely expect around 28 km/17 miles EPA
Combined power consumption: 2.3 – 2.1 l/100 km (average fuel consumption of 134.5 mpg); combined CO2 emissions: 52 – 49 g/km
7.6 kWh battery
0-60 mph in 6.8 seconds
top speed in all-electric mode of 78 mph (125 km/h)
