All posts by Trevor Larkum

Renault Launches Electric Car-Sharing Service in Paris

July 19, 2018Electric Cars, Electric Vans, Kangoo Z.E., Master Z.E., News, Reviews and Comment, Renault, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40Trevor Larkum

The automaker and city officials will also collaborate on future mobility services

Many European countries are considering ending sales of new gasoline and diesel cars, but the city of Paris isn’t waiting around. The French capital has already tested a “day without cars,” and has discussed banning internal-combustion cars by 2030. That makes Paris the perfect place to launch an electric car-sharing service.

The Renault Electric Z.E. Range (Image: Renault)

Renault has teamed up with the city government to give Parisians access to electric cars. The automaker hopes the to continue working with Paris officials on future mobility services. For now, Renault is deploying a fleet of electric cars in Paris that residents will be able to access 24/7.

Cars set aside for longer journeys will be kept in designated parking lots and accessed via special stations. Other cars, designated for shorter journeys, will be accessible without the stations. Available cars will include the Renault Zoe hatchback, the Twizy neighborhood electric vehicle, and the Kangoo ZE and Master ZE vans. Renault hopes to have a fleet of 2,000 vehicles in operation by the end of 2019.

As a next step, Renault and city officials will initiate a “working group,” open to other cities and companies, “whose aim will be to think collectively about the integration of changes in mobility in the city,” a Renault press release said. The automaker hopes to involve the C40 network, a coalition of some 100 cities chaired by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Global Plug-In Electric Car Sales Booming – Market Expands 75%

July 18, 2018Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesTrevor Larkum

Globally, plug-in electric car sales in May exceeded 159,000, which is second best result ever. A new all-time record is now expected in June.
The 159,346 deliveries reported for May translates into an outstanding growth rate of 75% year-over-year. 63% of sales came from BEVs, compared to 37% for PHEVs.

After the first five months of 2018. sales almost hit 600,000 (estimated 597,757, up 71%) at an average 1.5% market share.

The BAIC EC-Series, thanks to 12,624 sales in May, managed to move back into first place in the YTD rank with nearly 40,000 deliveries.

With such a strong contender in China, the second-generation Nissan LEAF (7,069) was left behind at #2.

Big Oil, Utilities are Lining Up for an Electric Vehicle War

July 17, 2018Electric Cars, Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and Comment, Oil, Peak Oil, PollutionTrevor Larkum

BP and Shell have bought electric-car charging companies
Power utilities are boosting sales to homes, chargers on roads

A red-hot electric vehicle market has triggered a face-off between Big Oil and utilities.

Oil majors, who’ve sold fossil fuels to cars for a century, are now moving into an electricity sector that’s preparing for exponential growth. The problem is that utilities, the primary power suppliers for a century, have the same idea.

BP Plc predicts electric vehicle sales will surge by an eye-watering 8,800 percent between 2017 and 2040, making it an attractive business for oil companies as demand for gasoline and diesel are forecast to slow. Big Oil will have to battle the traditional utilities for charging at people’s homes, on the road and even offices of green-car owners.

eVolt installs rapid charging units for Dundee City Council

July 16, 2018Charging, Electric Cars, Evolt, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

eVolt UK, the nationwide supplier of electrical vehicle (EV) charging units, has installed the latest versions of its rapid charging units for a new hub to help Dundee City Council promote electric taxi use.

eVolt has installed four Raption 50kW Rapid Chargers and three 22kW eVolve chargers at the new hub at Aimer Square. The Rapid Chargers are capable of charging two vehicles simultaneously at full power in approximately 30 minutes.

This is the first of three rapid charging hubs to be introduced in Dundee in 2018 through the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) Go Ultra Low programme. Dundee City Council selected the locations based on commuter routes and also following a questionnaire sent to the city’s taxi drivers considering their opinions on where the hubs should be sited.

Fraser Crichton, Transport Officer at Dundee City Council, has been encouraged by the early usage of the units: “The Rapid Chargers have been in use at Aimer Square since the beginning of April and have already been used over 700 times in the 10 days since opening, including over 100 different users. There are currently 94 pure electric taxis in use in Dundee and we hope to see more drivers make the transition.

“We have worked together with eVolt for a number of years now and have found the products to be high-quality and extremely reliable. They have always provided us with excellent customer service and support.”

A further two Rapid Chargers will be installed at Aimer Square later this year. The other two hubs will also be completed this year, with four Rapid Chargers and two eVolve chargers being installed at Queen Street car park, and six Rapid Chargers and three eVolve chargers being installed on Prince’s Street in the city centre.

Justin Meyer, General Manager of eVolt UK, says the company is pleased to be involved in the project in Dundee:

“With over 100 charge points, including the busiest Rapid Chargers in Scotland, Dundee is leading the way for EV. We are proud to be supporting the council’s project to lower emissions and increase the number of EV taxis by providing highly reliable and efficient charging units for these hubs.”

Source: Gravity London PR

What’s put the spark in Norway’s electric car revolution?

July 15, 2018Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, SalesTrevor Larkum

The Nordic country leads the world due to environmental concerns, but also big subsidies

There is a low hum that Norwegians have grown used to as they walk down their streets. The sound of Teslas, Nissan Leafs, BMW i3s, VW e-Golfs and Kia Souls gliding past each other.

While electric cars are increasingly noticeable in most capital cities, the sheer number in Oslo and throughout the rest of the country can surprise visitors. Norway has been described as a world leader and last year more than half of new car sales were electric or hybrid.

Electric Car Line-up (Image: Go Ultra Low)

The Norwegian parliament has set 2025 as the goal for all new cars to have zero emissions, compared with the UK’s 2040. However, such enthusiastic embracing of electric vehicles by ordinary Norwegians is not all down to ecological benefits but something more simple – money.

While motorists are typically subject to punitive levels of taxation, those who buy a purely electric vehicle are rewarded with a string of incentives worth thousands of pounds. Buyers escape heavy import or purchase taxes and are also exempt from 25% VAT. They also avoid road tax, road tolls, pay half price on ferries, get free municipal parking in cities and can usually use bus lanes.

Which is why the country is the third-largest market for electric vehicles in the world, after the US and China. And with a population of just 5.35 million. So what can the UK learn from the Norwegians?

Oil industry is ‘peddling misinformation’ about electric vehicles

July 14, 2018Electric Cars, Energy and Climate Change, News, Reviews and Comment, Oil, PollutionTrevor Larkum

Electric vehicles are cleaner and more efficient than conventional vehicles.
Reports against EVs are coming from oil-backed studies, leading to skewed public perceptions of battery-run autos.
Electricity powered transportation will cause less pollution and less asthma, cancer and other illnesses associated with pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.

When technological innovation threatens to upend the status quo, the status quo fights back. Every time. I try to keep that in mind when observing oil industry-backed efforts to discredit electric vehicles (EVs) and dismantle progress on transportation electrification by peddling misinformation through industry-funded studies.

To give you a sense of the absurdity of these efforts, imagine Bell Communication publishing a report suggesting cell phones are less convenient than landlines. Or Blockbusters paying for an analysis showing Netflix makes watching movies more difficult.

The vast majority of research institutions and environmental public interest groups support accelerated EV adoption because the science is clear that EVs are much cleaner than conventional vehicles.

Consider this: electric vehicles don’t have tailpipes. They run on electricity, and across the country, our electricity sources are getting cleaner. Even factoring in emissions from electricity used to power EVs today and pollution from battery manufacturing, electric vehicles are already significantly to vastly lower in emissions than conventional vehicles, depending on how the electricity is produced in different regions of the country.

Classic cars experiencing royal rebirths as electric vehicles

July 13, 2018Electric Cars, Jaguar Land Rover, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are a trend-setting couple on many levels — but there is one movement they’ve championed that has gone relatively unnoticed.

With the world’s cameras set upon them last month, the royal couple rode in style from their wedding ceremony to the evening reception in a 1968 baby blue Jaguar E-type.

What global viewers may not have realized, however, is that the roadster had been refitted with a full battery-powered engine — an apt ride for the environment-conscious couple.

The prototype Jaguar E-type Concept Zero is so far a one-off, but E-type owners with a spare $400,000 can also get the electric conversion. Jaguar hopes it will “future-proof” classic car ownership and lead to a high-end electric fleet of what Enzo Ferrari called “the most beautiful car in the world.”

The E-type is one of several classics experiencing rebirths as zero-emission vehicles for a new generation of drivers.

Smart charging could deliver EVs a decade earlier at lower cost to consumers

July 12, 2018Charging, Electric Cars, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

Smart charging of electric vehicles (EVs) could cut the cost of integration into the UK power system by over £1 billion compared to standard charging, according to a new report that also found running an EV could be ten times cheaper than a conventional car.

WWF commissioned Vivid Economics to deliver a two-part report on the effect of bringing the UK’s proposed 2040 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles ahead by ten years.

Rapid Charging Step 11: Car is Charging (Image: T. Larkum) — Rapid Charging (Image: T. Larkum)

It found that the ‘2030 scenario’, which forecasts 20 million electric cars and vans on UK roads, could be delivered at lower cost than the 13 million under the ‘2040 scenario’. The report argues that this is due to the charging profile rather than the number of EVs, which it said is a more important factor.

“The smartness of the transition to electric vehicles will be the main factor determining how cost effective the transition is, not the speed of the transition,” it states.

The taxi service that’s free… as long as you keep singing

July 11, 2018BMW, Electric Cars, i3, i3 94Ah, News, Reviews and CommentTrevor Larkum

Do you enjoy singing in front of strangers in a confined space? Like the interior of a BMW i3?

Are you going to be in Finland next month and want a free ride to a music festival?

The i3 on our drive (Image: T. Larkum) — BMW i3 (Image: T. Larkum)

Well, if you can say ‘yes’ to all of those increasingly obscure questions, then you are in luck – a Finnish clean energy company is providing a taxi service to the Ruisrock festival that is free, as long as you keep singing.

The Fortum Singalong Shuttle is a taxi service that only accepts singing as payment – as the company says, combining ride sharing with Carpool Karaoke – and only uses pure electric BMW i3 BEVs.

Final testing before the rouen normandy autonomous lab on-demand mobility service opens to the public

July 10, 2018Electric Cars, News, Reviews and Comment, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40Trevor Larkum

Métropole Rouen Normandie, Transdev Group, Groupe Renault, Matmut – partners in the Rouen Normandy Autonomous Lab initiative – are testing, with the support of the Normandy Region and Banque des Territoires, the first on-demand shared mobility service to use autonomous vehicles on open roads in Europe. The service will be made available to the public in the final quarter of 2018 with four autonomous Renault ZOE all-electric vehicles and an i-Cristal autonomous urban shuttle jointly developed by Transdev and Lohr.

The Rouen Normandy Autonomous Lab service will provide extensive coverage in Rouen’s “Technopôle du Madrillet” business park in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray through connections to the “Technopôle” tram stop. The goal is to provide mobility solutions in an area to which conventional public transportation services are poorly suited, in a first-mile and last-mile approach. Users can call a vehicle in real-time from the smartphone app.

Renault ZOE Z.E. 40 Example Colours (Image: Renault) — Renault ZOE Z.E. 40 (Image: Renault)

The vehicles will run on three routes covering a distance of 10 kilometres, with 17 stops across the district and a link to the Rouen public transportation system.

The four Renault ZOE all-electric cars used in the project are already being tested on open roads and are equipped with autonomous systems developed by Transdev and Renault. The tests cover all considerations related to typical traffic conditions, such as other vehicles, intersections, rotaries and building exits. The fleet will also feature an i-Cristal autonomous urban shuttle jointly developed by Transdev and Lohr.

After a period of tests, this on-demand experimental service is due to be made available to the public in September 2018, subject to obtaining the necessary approvals, and will the run until December 2019. This trial will provide an opportunity to fine-tune the technology and gain insight into usage and take-up among local residents to enable necessary adjustments.