The Californian city of Pasadena is opening the Marengo Charging Plaza at 155 E. Green Street. The Plaza is now home to a total of 44 chargers including 24 Superchargers installed by Tesla and 20 fast chargers installed by the City of Pasadena.
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British company Swindon Powertrain has now made its compact HPD 80kW ‘crate’ motor for electric vehicle conversions available to order from its website.
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Nissan has presented its comprehensive renovation package. Europe is no longer considered a core market. The Barcelona plant will be closed while the plant in Sunderland is to continue to operate with alliance partner Renault.
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Tesla has just received approval for foundation-building work for the Giga-Berlin plant in Grünheide near Berlin from the Brandenburg State Office for the Environment. In Berlin itself, the company has also found the location for the planned development and design centre.
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Daniel Abt has been barred for cheating in an incident in online computer-game racing: Audi has surprisingly suspended their regular Formula E driver Daniel Abt with immediate effect.
The reason for the suspension: “Daniel Abt did not drive his car in qualifying and the race at the fifth event of the Race at Home Challenge on 23 May himself, but let a professional Sim-Racer do so.” Abt accepted the ban gracefully and immediately paid a 10,000 euro fine.
What according to Abt was intended as a prank for his YouTube channel was interpreted as an attempt to cheat, or at least as disrespect for his fellow racers. “Integrity, transparency and consistent compliance with applicable rules are top priorities for Audi – this applies to all activities the brand is involved in without exception. For this reason, Audi Sport has decided to suspend Daniel Abt with immediate effect,” the Group then said. Who will take Abt’s place in the upcoming races has not yet been announced.
Incidentally, Abt himself is fully aware of his mistake and has taken responsibility for it. The racing driver explains how the idea came about in a video of his own (in German, link below).
In the video he said that the online sim races are “not about prize money, it’s just about entertaining you fans and at the same time raising money for Unicef, so for a good cause. It’s about a simulation that has nothing to do with real driving, with what I do. It is not about professional (real-life) racing. Despite that, we played the game week for week in order to entertain fans.”
He said the most important thing for him about the online races was to speak to fans and interact with them. There were in fact more people watching the online game than in the actual races, with 350k fans just on YouTube. In his very candid video, Abt says, “I tried to deliver a good show for you at home.” He assures viewers it was nothing to do with trying to get some kind of winning advantage in the race, but rather to have fun with the game and the fans with a funny reveal – a prank. To assure fans he was not trying to cheat, he pointed to the fact that he talked about the swap with the Sim racing who drove for him live on stream. He said wanted a setup that he and the sim racer could then reveal to the entertainment of fans. Once the prank flew open before he and the Sim racer revealed their prank, the media, of course, pitched in. He said “The media has portrayed me as a cheat… It more painful than anything I’ve never experienced in my life.”
Abt delivers a very convincing, quietly emotional apology to Audi, to his team, his partners and his fans, which makes it hard not to wish him the best and hope he gets back into the driver’s seat soon.
carscoops.com, fiaformulae.com, YouTube.com (Abt’s explanation and apology in German)
BMW has given the 5-series a model update and in this context has increased the range of plug-in hybrids to five versions. The small SUV Mini Countryman also has an update on the PHEV.
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Danish wind turbine builder Vestas has announced it will be replacing all new service vehicles with EVs by 2025. Pilots will be introduced in several markets throughout 2020. This policy has already launched in China, where the first EV has now been in operation in the Fuijan Province since January.
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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has launched a joint Vehicle-to-Grid project with Engie EPS at its Mirafiori plant in Turin. In the first phase, 64 bidirectional charging points will be installed, which will grow to include capacity for over 700 electric vehicles in the final stage.
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Daimler is building its battery production capacity globally. Daimler subsidiary Accumotive has increased its production volume and will soon be able to produce more than 500,000 battery systems per year. The plant is also preparing for future electric EQ models in the compact segment.
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Renault UK has confirmed full specifications of new E-TECH versions of the new Captur Plug-in Hybrid and Clio Hybrid. UK prices start from £19,595 for the Clio Hybrid and £30,495 for the Captur Plug-in Hybrid.
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The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi manufacturing alliance is restructuring its cooperation. The guiding principle of the cooperation is the so-called ‘leader-follower’ principle for regions, vehicles and technologies in order to achieve greater efficiency and competitiveness in these areas.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a massive increase in support for the French car industry. The head of state is thus reacting to the crisis at PSA and Renault – the main reason being the slump in sales due to the Corona crisis.
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Tesla has just lowered the prices of its models, in some cases considerably, depending on country and model range. All Tesla models are affected by the price cuts with the exception of the new Model Y. In the USA, the Model 3 will also be around 2,000 dollars cheaper.
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One hundred autonomous and remotely-controlled kick-scooters have recently been introduced in a pilot project in a suburb Peachtree Corners the US city of Atlanta. During the actual ride, the customers retain full control, but the electric scooters roll to the customer and to the charging station independently, or alternatively via remote control.
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From July, BMW will also deliver the X2 compact SUV as a plug-in hybrid. The X2 xDrive25e will then cost at least 47,250 euros – and will also introduce some changes that will also be found in the combustion engine versions in the future.
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Krakow’s public transport operator Miejskie Przedsiębiorstwo Komunikacyjne has ordered 50 electric articulated buses from Solaris. The 50 new electric articulated buses are to be delivered within one year.
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An update was published on the progress of the German ‘AutoStack Industrie’ project launched in 2017. The project will run until the end of 2021, involving five OEMs and various suppliers working together to bring key technologies for the production of stacks for fuel cell vehicles to industrial maturity.
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Kia is examining plans to build a purely electric miniature car in the style of the Citroën Ami. Although the South Korean company has not revealed a timetable for these plans, it seems that Kia is already considering a new distribution model for the electric microcar.
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Mercedes has now opened the order books for the EQV. The premium electric van is initially available in the long-wheelbase version. The price in Germany currently starts at 71,388.10 euros.
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The US specialist Newport Convertible Engineering offers a convertible conversion for the Tesla Model 3. The costs for this conversion is at least $29,500, but Model 3 owners can also go all-in and get an electric power top for $39,500.
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Australian fast-charging station manufacturer Tritium has launched its Plug and Charge solution. The technology leverages the ISO15118 standard and enables an electric vehicle and charger to communicate. Payments are authorised directly from the driver’s account without the need for a card or RFID tag.
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Volvo Buses has received two follow-up orders for hybrid and electric buses. While the Belgian capital Brussels has ordered 128 hybrid vehicles, the Norwegian city of Drammen has ordered another 22 Volvo fully-electric buses.
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Gaussin and Total have developed what they say is the world’s first purely electrically powered refuelling truck for aircraft. The prototype comprises two tank trailers, each with a capacity of 30 tons of fuel, and is expected to go into service at the end of this year.
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The battery system manufacturer Akasol has presented its business figures for the first quarter of 2020. Revenue and EBIT were both below the figures for the same quarter of the previous year – mainly due to corona-related production interruptions from the company’s own customers.
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The all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E will probably not reach Europe this year, but only at the beginning of 2021, according to emails from Ford to reservation holders in some European countries. In the email, the US car manufacturer gives the reason as being the Covid-19 pandemic-induced interruption of production.
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The extremely ambitious electric car plans of the Chinese Evergrande Group are becoming more concrete: In Huzhou in Zhejiang Province, local media reported that the ground-breaking ceremony for a production facility of Evergrande for electric drive systems has now taken place.
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Rome’s transport company ATAC has failed to procure hydrogen buses. Somehow, not a single bid was submitted for a tender for five H2 buses published in February 2020. And this is not the first time: At the beginning of 2019 another hydrogen bus tender for Rome was equally unsuccessful.
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UK transport secretary Grant Shapps announced the government wants at least one city centre to be restricted exclusively to bikes and electric vehicles. In York, councillors are calling for York to bid to become the first such zero-emission city.
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In the UK, Western Power Distribution (WPD) has just released the details of its updated EV strategy. In order to enable the faster rollout of charge points across the UK, WPD is focussing on making the connection process easier for charge point operators.
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The latest CAM data for the electric car sector from Jan to April 2020 paints an uneven development. The study notices a strong increase in electric vehicles sales in Europe in general, the UK in particular, with an increase in PHEV cars in Germany.
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