The Scottish government has increased funding to schemes that support its ambition to phase out the need for new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2032.
The overall budget for the Low Carbon Transport Loan has risen from £8m to £20m for 2018/19.
The scheme encourages businesses and consumers to switch to electric vehicles.
Another fund, Switched on Fleets, has been increased from £1.2m to £4.8m.
Read more: BBC
With the success of the Zoe, Renault has become a leader in electric vehicles in Europe.
Now the French automaker wants to keep the momentum going with an investment of over 1 billion euros to accelerate electric vehicle production in France.
The new plan includes several initiatives.
Renault listed them in a press release today:
Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of Renault, said about the announcement:
“The acceleration of our investments in France for electric vehicles will increase the competitiveness and attractiveness of our French industrial sites. Within the framework of its Drive the Future strategic plan and with the Alliance, Groupe Renault is giving itself the means to maintain its leadership in the electric vehicle market and to continue to develop new sustainable mobility solutions for all.”
Read more: Electrek
It didn’t take long after the second-generation Nissan LEAF entered the European market in February for it to take the lead among all-electric cars in Europe.
It just knocked the Renault ZOE from its pedestal.
According to EagleAID, Nissan LEAF sales in Western Europe amounted to 11,441 in the first four months of 2018 (up 48% year-over-year) and that was enough for it to overtake the Renault ZOE.
5,790 delivered in March (Western Europe) and another 3,309 in April. The LEAF is of course the best-selling plug-in model in all of Europe as the Western part represents almost all sales.
Read more: Inside EVs
New technologies to create safer, high-powered electric car batteries have been supported by £22 million of industrial strategy funding.
A new pioneering technology to ensure a next generation of safer, high-powered electric car batteries can be charged by drivers in ultra-fast time is just one of 12 innovation projects to receive the green light from the government’s Faraday Battery Challenge.
The PowerDrive Line project being led by Southampton-based company Ilika is focusing on sold state battery cell development, in particular how to manufacture at scale in the UK and how to build in ultra-fast charging technology of less than 25 minutes for a vehicle as is seen in some current battery systems.
In total £22 million grants are being rewarded to consortia across the UK as part of the latest round of funding through the Faraday Battery Challenge, part of the government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
The funding is key to realising the government’s ambitions for innovative energy solutions as set out in our modern Industrial Strategy. The Faraday Battery Challenge brings together world-leading research and business to accelerate the research needed to develop battery technologies.
Read more: Gov.UK
Kia wants to keep its Soul lineup exclusively electric in Europe. The decision was made against the backdrop of falling sales of the fossil-fuelled versions of their little car. A turbo Soul called the Final Edition marks the change.
Kia have made up their mind and so there will be no other Soul but the Soul EV be available at dealerships across Europe. For the Koreans the switch reflects the reality of a market, where most people opted for the all-electric version, particularly at a time when there were not many EVs on sale.
But also today, sales are strong. In Germany for example, of those 2,245 Kia Soul sold this year so far, 1,899 had an electric drive.
Moreover, Kia is about to release the next generation, this time sitting on the same platform also used for the Kona and Niro plug-ins.
Read more: Electrive
Octopus Energy has launched a new “time of use” energy tariff especially designed for bringing down the charging cost for electric vehicle (EV) owners.
The new tariff, called Octopus Energy Go, lets EV owners charge their cars for only 5p per kilowatt hour for four hours each night, which could make owning an EV 10 times cheaper than having a car running on fossil fuels.
Other existing initiatives to bring down the power cost for EV owners include the Economy 7 tariff, also known as the differential tariff, which has reduced rates for seven hours per night. However, the Go tariff could be up to 25 per cent cheaper.
Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, director of product for Octopus Energy, said:
“Octopus is passionate about driving the UK’s switch to electric vehicles.”
“We’re delighted to use our innovative tech both to offer the cheapest kWh charge in the market and enable your car to automatically charge itself, a brilliant way to unlock those electric car savings.”
Read more: City AM
EV sales are rising in the UK as political changes in Europe help fuel the transition away from fossil-fuel engines
Sales of hybrid and electric vehicles in the UK hit a record high in May as buyers turned their back on diesel cars.
Data for May released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) this week showed that 11,240 units were sold last month, a 38% increase on 2017, while the market share for EVs and hybrids also increased to 5.8% on the previous year’s figure of 4.4%. So far, in the first five months total sales are at 57,000, representing a rise of 19.5%.
Political shifts in Western Europe in recent weeks are also expected to support momentum towards faster adoption of electric vehicles.
The populist Five Star Movement that has become the majority partner in a new Italian coalition government has been strongly supportive of a reduction in the use of vehicles powered by diesel and petrol engines. The new socialist-led government in Spain’s radical demands for more ambitious EU renewable energy transition targets suggest it will also likely push Brussels for faster adoption of EV transition targets.
Under the Paris Agreement and air quality rules, Europe needs to achieve total emissions cuts of 40% by 2030.
Globally, the sales picture is similarly bullish, with new electric car registrations rising more than 50% in 2017, the International Energy Agency said in its flagship EV report at the end of May.
China, the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles, saw sales grow by about half – although the market share remained small at 2.2%.
“Looking ahead, the strongest current policy signals emanate from electric car mandates in China and California, as well as the European Union’s recent proposal on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions standards for 2030,” wrote the IEA.
Beijing wants 7 million electric vehicles by 2025, while California wants 5 million by 2030. The EU is yet to produce a mandate, but has targeted a 30% fall in emissions from the EU fleet of new cars from 2021 to 2030.
The IEA sees EV adoption gathering speed in the years ahead towards those targets, as government initiatives start to bite. “Supportive policies and cost reductions are likely to lead to significant growth in the market uptake of (electric vehicles) in the outlook period to 2030,” the report said.
Read more: Petroleum Economist
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has confirmed the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) will be expanded to reach the North and South circular roads from 25 October 2021.
It will be an expansion of the upcoming central London ULEZ, which goes live in April 2019.
Non-compliant vehicles will be charged £12.50 a day to enter the ULEZ – and, unlike the London Congestion Charge, fees apply 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Controversially, the ULEZ is particularly onerous for diesel car drivers. Only vehicles meeting Euro 6 emissions standards, introduced in 2014, will be exempt from the charge. The rules are more lenient for petrol vehicles; only those that don’t meet Euro 4 standards, introduced in January 2005, need to pay the charge.
It means that by 2021, says the Mayor of London’s office, petrol cars aged up to 15 years old will be exempt from the charge – but only diesel cars no more than six years old will escape it.
Expanding the 2019 central London Ultra-Low Emission Zone in 2021 will see it become 18 times larger. The Mayor’s office estimates this will affect 100,000 cars, 35,000 vans and 3,000 lorries a day.
Read more: Motoring Research
Come 2025 the switch to electric vehicles (EV) will start to impact the demand for gasoline, which will be bad news for shipping.
While charging infrastructure and range limits remain a concern for EVs the fact they are much cheaper to manufacture on a large scale than their petrol powered cousins will see a shift in the market by the middle of the next decade according to James Leake, an analyst at NS Lemos.
Speaking at the Bimco Power Panel at Posidonia 2018 Leake said:
“EVs do represent a serious threat but not for the time being, if you ask me to put a date on it 2025 would be the point where it really starts to hurt.
“What is to me the killer fact is ultimately manufacturing an electric vehicle is much cheaper than manufacturing an internal combustion engine when you are producing them on scale.”
An electric powered car requires significant less components than one with an internal combustion engine making the structural production cost lower if the scale is large enough, and this why Leake said the likes of Volkswagen is investing $40bn into electric cars with an aim to be the world’s number one player in electric mobility by 2025.
With lower production costs car manufacturers will be much more keen to sell electric powered vehicles than petrol ones. “We will educated as customers to buy the product that will give them a higher profit.”
Read more: SeaTrade Maritime
Sir Richard Branson says plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2040 need to be brought forward.
The Virgin founder funds a team in Formula E, the motorsport which is pioneering new technologies for electric cars.
He says the deadline should be brought forward to 2025, in line with some other European countries.
Roads minister Jesse Norman says 2040 is a “sensible compromise”.
Newsbeat has spent the last seven months following Formula E, the competition where electric cars reach 140mph racing on streets around the world.
We’ve followed DS Virgin Racing, the team owned by Sir Richard, who says that “every month the technology is getting better and better”.
“The teams want to be the best out there, so they’re pushing for improvements in battery technology.
“That will mean that when more cars are driving on batteries, they’ll be able to go hopefully a few hundred miles rather than maybe 150 or 200.”
Read more: BBC