Pam Fletcher, Max Warburton.
“If you’re driving through the mountains, we don’t want you to be crawling up grades, or to be limited on any terrain.”
According to Pam Fletcher, chief engineer for EVs at GM, this is one reason why the Chevrolet Volt comes with a four-cylinder range extender and not with a two-cylinder engine like the BMW i3 has.
green.autoblog.com
“If you’re driving through the mountains, we don’t want you to be crawling up grades, or to be limited on any terrain.”
Max Warburton, analyst with Bernstein Research, sees the key to Tesla’s success in the positioning at the high end of the market rather than in technology or costs.
forbes.com
“Tesla is selling cars to emotional buyers who are comparing the Tesla S to other emotional, irrational and expensive products – such as the Mercedes S class and Maserati. That’s the genius of the product – consumers are not doing any cost/benefit calculations – but rather just saying ‘I want one’.”
Peugeot electric van for Germany: Peugeot now offers its ‘Partner’ electric van in Germany. It costs 24,752 euros without battery which can be bought for 6,037 euros or leased on a monthly payment. In UK, the Partner EV has been available since last year.
Scania tests electric trucks: The Swedish carmaker is trying out different methods of charging with electric trucks. At the Siemens test track in Groß Dölln, Germany, the EV is charged conductively via pantograph and overhead wires, while in Mannheim, Germany, Bombardier installed a 200 kW-inductive charging system.
“The reason that we did not choose to do this is that the auto dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between promoting gasoline cars, which constitute virtually all of their revenue, and electric cars, which constitute virtually none.”
“Electrification is here to stay, so whether it’s plug-ins or whatever form it takes, we definitely have to continue working with them. This journey has only just started.”
The end for Mia Electric: The Niort Commercial Court has initiated liquidation procedures for the French EV manufacturer. In February, Mia was placed under judicial reorganisation (we reported) but was unable to raise the necessary funds to stay in business. Since mid-December, no car had rolled off the assembly line there.
“I foresee hybrid models pretty soon reaching 20 percent of global sales from about 13 percent to 14 percent now.”
“If we want to face the real problem of e-mobility, we need an open market of services. (…) This question of ‘where is the next charging station?’ should not exist.”
“We believe that Formula E is the perfect platform to help enhance our knowledge and expertise of electric vehicles, while also helping us to transfer cutting edge technology to our road cars.”
“I don’t think we need a dedicated EV to be as efficient as we want to be. We have some PHEV customers getting over 95 percent of their range from the battery alone, and overall, they’re reporting about 75 percent of their miles.”
“In order to give (…) customers what they want within an appropriate timescale, we are committed to developing a broad range of technologies—including plug-in hybrid, electric vehicle and FCV, corresponding to the simultaneous diversification of energy sources.”
“There is no clear direction about which eco-friendly cars will win. We are dividing the roles of Hyundai and Kia, with Hyundai launching fuel cell cars and Kia focusing on electric cars. But the time will come when Kia will introduce a fuel-cell car. Hyundai is also preparing to launch a (battery-powered) electric car in 2016.”
“A Rolls-Royce cannot come with any kind of compromise, and both the recharging times and the range were not acceptable for our buyers – but with hybrid technology that is no longer a problem.”
“We will have to have a zero-emission car in the range in order to meet regulations. We need this by 2025, possibly even sooner for certain markets.”
“The scale of Tesla’s battery production, even for its own use as an auto manufacturer, thrusts the company into ‘key player’ status for grid storage.”
Lit Motors receives new funding: Thanks to a successful funding round collecting 1 million dollars, the startup from San Francisco is now able to hire a full engineering team and build a new driving prototype of its C-1 self-balancing motorcycle. The new prototype is said to go 100 mph and will be able to do 45-degree banked turns.