Monthly Archives: February 2019

Is This The Tipping Point For Electric Vehicles?

February 27, 2019Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesRepost

A new report by McKinsey forecasts a rapid switch from gas guzzlers to electric vehicles on the world’s roads will be boosted by the plummeting costs of owning a battery powered vehicle.

The consulting firm’s 2019 Global Energy Perspective report foresees a two-thirds drop in the cost of EV battery packs by 2030. The tipping point at which EVs will be cheaper to own than internal combustion engine-powered vehicles is forecast to be reached in the early 2020s:

The timing of total cost of ownership (TCO) parity in the U.S. and China is comparable to Europe, with China slightly earlier and the U.S. slightly later, reflecting differences in fuel taxation and subsidies for electric vehicles.

After this tipping point, “economic considerations alone” would be sufficient to accelerate the growth of EV sales, says McKinsey. Car sharing and autonomous driving will add further incentives to go electric. Improving battery technologies will mean that even long-haul trucks could be economically electrified during the second half of the next decade.

Why Electric Vehicles Are Great Winter Cars

February 25, 2019Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, OpinionRepost

Winter is not the easiest season for getting around.

Electric cars, like cars with internal combustion engines, function less efficiently in the cold. But while we accept and ignore the limitations of traditional vehicles, reports from groups like AAA misrepresent cold weather concerns about electric vehicles, fueling anxiety about vehicle range.

The reality is, electric vehicles are great winter cars.

This was the scene when Leighton arrived this morning (Image: T. Heale) — Hyundai IONIQ in the snow (Image: T. Heale)

Being realistic about range

Cold weather range is becoming less of an issue with the rapid advancement of battery technologies. Every year, electric vehicle ranges get longer.

Take my family’s experience as an example. Our first 2012 Nissan LEAF had only 73 miles of driving range. This year the same vehicle has a battery that offers a 151-mile range and in a couple of months you will be able to get a LEAF with an even bigger battery and a range of well over 200 miles. So, range is becoming less of an issue and truthfully we never had any issues with it. My wife has a 35-mile round trip commute so she could manage it even with the 2012 LEAF, but nowadays with longer range electric vehicles, things are really easy. Battery electric vehicles available in Minnesota this year have ranges between 151 to 335 miles and people who want even more flexibility in their daily driving range should choose one of the plug-in hybrids that can take you up to 640 miles. See all plug-in EV models available in Minnesota here.

Many reasons to love electric vehicles in the winter

The best part of electric vehicles for me in the wintertime is the fast heating system. Many electric cars have a heat pump heating system that works like the traditional AC, but in reverse. This system is incredibly fast in heating up the car. I tried it the first time with our 2016 Nissan LEAF. It was a typical 16 degree Minnesota winter day. I went into our cold garage and reversed the car outside to the alley. While I waited for the garage door to close I wondered why the automatic fan was already running and to my surprise it was already pushing lukewarm air from the heating ducts. I drove less than a block and the air coming out was already hot. I had never experienced this kind of heating performance from any car before.

Another rocking feature is the preheating. These cars have a preheating function that we have set up so that when my wife walks to our cold garage at 7:20 in the morning her car is waiting with a warm interior, hot seat, and even a hot steering wheel. It is a nice way to start the commute to work. Naturally I don’t recommend trying this inside a garage with an internal combustion vehicle, because the exhaust gas emissions could be lethal. This feature also mitigates the effects of cold on the range, since the bulk of the heating was done using grid power. Another perk is that you can do this anywhere you want with your phone app. Whether you are ready to leave work or a restaurant, the only thing you have to do is to take your phone and tell your car to please heat up.

Electric car with A.I. to undertake 745 mile Australian ‘road trip’

February 24, 2019Autonomous Driving, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40Repost

An electric vehicle with artificial intelligence (AI) sensors and computers is set to embark on a 1,200 kilometer (745 mile), three-month journey in Queensland, Australia.

The zero-emissions Renault ZOE will be used to map roads in the state, which is in the northeast of the country. Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which is based in Brisbane, will man the car.

“As researchers drive the car across Queensland, onboard sensors will build a virtual map to help refine AI-equipped vehicles to drive safely on our roads,” Mark Bailey, Queensland’s minister for Transport and Main Roads, said in a statement Wednesday.

Bailey added that while it was “early days”, AI technology and smart road infrastructure had the potential to transform the way people travelled in Queensland and “reduce road trauma.”

The project will look at how the vehicle and its AI system adapts to lane markings, traffic lights and street signage. Additionally, it will look to overcome GPS systems’ limitations “in built-up areas and tunnels for vehicle positioning.”

Michael Milford, from QUT’s Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, said that as the vehicle was driven, AI would “watch and determine if it could perform the same as a human driver in all conditions.”

The Mother Who Wants to Put Air Pollution on Her Daughter’s Death Certificate

February 23, 2019Electric Cars, Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and Comment, PollutionRepost

Millions die each year from dirty air. The trauma of a 9-year-old London girl may bring the dangers home.

LONDON — Dirty air kills millions of people around the world every year, but it can be hard to put a face on a danger so vast. Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is fighting to do just that. The face she has in mind is her daughter’s.

Ella Kissi-Debrah was 9 when she died in 2013, after three years of asthma attacks so bad, they sometimes triggered seizures. In photos, her smile is broad and bright, her hair braided. She loved music and swimming, and dreamed of becoming a pilot.

Ella lived with her family just off London’s South Circular Road, a major thoroughfare that is clouded by the diesel fumes that make London’s air — like much of Europe’s — thick and foul-smelling. A scientist’s analysis found that many of her hospitalizations coincided with local pollution spikes.

Now Ms. Adoo-Kissi-Debrah wants to put air pollution on Ella’s death certificate. On Jan. 11, the top legal adviser for England and Wales, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, backed her application for a new inquest, and this week, her lawyer plans to petition the High Court to authorize it.

The coroner who originally investigated Ella’s death ruled she had died of acute respiratory failure, but made no mention of pollution. Ms. Adoo-Kissi-Debrah did not know then what diesel fumes can do to young lungs. It was more than a year after Ella’s death that she first learned dirty air is a known asthma trigger. “It was like putting a picture together” as it finally began to make sense, she told me.

Air pollution has never appeared on a British death certificate, said Ms. Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s lawyer, Jocelyn Cockburn. If a new coroner amends Ella’s to note its role, he or she could also demand that the government take action to prevent future deaths. And the moral and political repercussions could be even wider.

This grieving mother’s fight holds a power far greater than its potential to clarify the cause of one family’s tragedy. It’s bigger than just London and Britain, too. In demanding that dirty air be written into the official record as having contributed to her loss, Ms. Adoo-Kissi-Debrah wants to force us all to recognize a danger that is all around us, but which we have long chosen to ignore.

New Volkswagen Passat Mk8.5 gets new tech and plug-in hybrid boost

February 22, 2019Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, Passat GTE, VolkswagenRepost

The Volkswagen Passat range has been facelifted for 2019, with the GTE model getting longer electric-only range of 35 miles

Within the next month or two, the 30 millionth Volkswagen Passat will have been produced. Eight generations have hit the road since the car’s launch back in 1973, and UK orders for this newly updated Peugeot 508 rival will open in June.

The latest version is still based upon the Mk8, but VW believes the changes are significant enough to consider it a ‘Mk8.5’. Under the subtly massaged metal, the revised Passat packs improved safety tech, updated infotainment and connectivity systems, semi-autonomous driving capability and an overhauled engine range.

Perhaps the most significant change under the bonnet is an improved GTE plug-in hybrid. The power output from the petrol/electric set-up remains the same as before, at 215bhp, but a larger-capacity battery – up to 13kWh from 9.9kWh – sees the electric-only range rise to 35 miles on the latest WLTP standards. That’s an increase of 40 per cent. However, there’s no fast-charging tech, so at best the GTE can replenish its cells in four hours.

Zouk Capital named preferred bidder to run government-backed EV Charging

February 21, 2019Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

Infrastructure fund manager Zouk Capital has been named as the preferred bidder for the government’s much-vaunted EV Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund (CIIF).

The £400 million fund – half of which will be raised from the private sector and matched by the UK government – was announced in the 2017 Autumn Budget amongst a raft of other measures designed to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles in the UK.

The CIIF was launched in a bid to both enable the more rapid expansion of public EV charging networks and to stimulate further capital investment in the sector, with the government aiming for the fund to act as a catalyst for further investment.

A bidding process was launched by HM Treasury’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority last summer, inviting tenders from investment managers to be tasked with either the entire CIIF or a section of it.

All-electric Kia e-Niro sold out after a month on sale

February 20, 2019Electric Cars, Kia, News, Reviews and Comment, Niro EVRepost

The initial UK production run of 900 Kia e-Niros has already sold out, and new orders will be delayed due to a supply chain bottleneck

Kia has sold all 900 e-Niros allocated for the UK market in 2019 in a matter of weeks. Lead times are set to increase for future orders, with the next batch of e-Niros not being set to land in the UK until 2020 due to a manufacturing bottleneck.

Demand for the all-electric Kia e-Niro, as well as its sister-model the Hyundai Kona Electric, has been greater than expected. As a result, the firms’ battery suppliers (which include Samsung and LG) have been unable to cope with the e-Niro’s production volumes, despite doubling their outputs.

Deliveries for the new Kia e-Niro were supposed to commence in April. However, as a result of the e-Niro’s popularity and the production bottleneck, buyers who managed to snag one of the initial 900-model run may have to wait until the end of 2019 before taking delivery.

Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run

February 19, 2019Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesRepost

Petrol and diesel vehicles cost more over four years in UK and four other European nations

Electric cars are already cheaper to own and run than petrol or diesel alternatives in five European countries analysed in new research.

The study examined the purchase, fuel and tax costs of Europe’s bestselling car, the VW golf, in its battery electric, hybrid, petrol and diesel versions. Over four years, the pure electric version was the cheapest in all places – UK, Germany, France, Netherlands and Norway – owing to a combination of lower taxes, fuel costs and subsidies on the purchase price.

Researchers from the International Council for Clean Transportation (ICCT) said their report showed that tax breaks are a key way to drive the rollout of electric vehicles and tackle climate change and air pollution.

Carbon emissions from transport are a big contributor to global warming, but have been rising in recent years in the European Union. Vehicles are also a source of much air pollution, which causes 500,000 early deaths a year in the EU.

Electric cars offer the biggest savings over diesel in Norway (27%) as the battery-powered vehicles are exempt from a heavy registration tax. The ICCT analysis was updated for the Guardian after recent cuts in the UK’s grants for electric car purchases. It shows British drivers see the smallest saving – 5%. In Germany, France and the Netherlands, the saving varied from 11% to 15%.

Could an electric car work for your business?

February 18, 2019Electric Cars, Model S, News, Reviews and Comment, TeslaRepost

We meet the businesses who’ve taken the plunge by buying Teslas to deliver goods – and find out how they’ve never looked back since

We hear a lot about electric cars being the future of transport, but it’s easy to forget there are over four million vans on the UK’s roads, delivering vital goods to homes, businesses and institutions up and down the land.

But while the number of electric vans on sale continues to grow, there has been a wider choice of electric cars for some time. Similarly, although early EV vans had limited ranges, often of 100 miles or less, Tesla’s Model S could travel up to a claimed 300 miles from launch in 2012.

Now the likes of the Jaguar I-Pace and Audi e-tron have caught up, but for years if you wanted a large EV with a long range, the Tesla was the only real option.

Small wonder, then, that instead of a van, some forward-thinking business owners saw the financial and environmental advantages a Tesla could offer, and took the plunge. Auto Express met the owners of two such businesses to see how an EV works as a delivery vehicle.

Amore Bakery

For seven years, Amore Bakery has been selling personalised cupcakes on a business-to-business basis from its rural Buckinghamshire HQ. And the company’s in-house delivery service has been a tremendous success for owner, Paulo Benfeito.

“Cupcakes are quite delicate,” he says. “If you use a courier service, they often end up getting damaged on their way to the customer. What sets Amore apart from our competitors is that we deliver all of our goods ourselves.”

But Benfeito wondered if there were a way of streamlining the cost of running the delivery side. So, in 2014, he bought a Tesla Model S to join his conventional diesel delivery van. He admits this sounds extravagant, joking: “Often, when we want something, we tell ourselves we need it.”

EO Charging partners Bulb for UK’s ‘first fully open’ EV charging network

February 17, 2019Charging, Electric Cars, EO Charging, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

EO Charging has partnered with energy supplier Bulb and Suffolk County Council to launch what the trio claim to be the country’s first “fully open” charging network.

Plug In Suffolk, as the programme has been called, is said to be the country’s first fast charging network that allows EV drivers to charge simply through using contactless payments with no need to register or become a member of any organisation.

The first installation under the Plug In Suffolk scheme has been unveiled at the Urban Jungle Plant Nursery and Café in Beccles, near Lowestoft, comprising two 7kW chargers supplied by EV charge point manufacturer EO, as well as an EO Pay kiosk.

Slow Charging the ZOE at Highgate (Image: T. Larkum) — (Image: T. Larkum)

Up to 400 individual charge points across 100 locations and businesses are to be installed under the scheme once complete.

In addition, businesses participating in the scheme will be offered the chance to sign up to renewable energy supplier Bulb in order to ensure their power supply is green.