News

BMW’s X5 mid-size SUV and its coupe-like X6 sibling have been thoroughly updated for the 2024 model year. Revealed late on Tuesday, the updated SUVs benefit from new styling, new powertrains, and an overhauled cabin loaded with BMW’s latest technology. They go into production in April at BMW’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Sales should

For the past few years, automotive pundits have been puzzling over the question of how one of the industry’s most innovative companies somehow failed to emerge from the 20th century. Toyota’s Prius was a historic vehicle, an important milestone on the road to electrification—and it’s sold a few million units to boot. More recently, alas,

Lithium products and renewable energy company Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) reports that its engineering team has improved several process stages, including optimization of brine preparation, to achieve efficient lithium recovery in real time from the company’s Salton Sea geothermal brine resource in Imperial County, California.  CTR says that after evaluating numerous direct lithium extraction technologies,

Porsche has issued a recall on certain versions of the Panamera hatchback and wagon due to a potential fire risk. The recall affects Panameras and Panamera Sport Turismos from the 2017-2021 model years, and specifically the Panamera, Panamera 4, Panamera GTS, Panamera Turbo, and Panamera Turbo S grades. A total of 24,467 examples may be

The Dürr Group, a global mechanical and plant engineering firm, is expanding into battery production. Now the company is delivering a technology for sustainable battery manufacturing to CATL, which the Chinese battery manufacturer will use at a new plant currently being built in Arnstadt, Germany. The order comprises several systems based on an eco-friendly process

School and transit bus manufacturer Pegasus Specialty Vehicles has signed an agreement with bus dealership Creative Bus Sales to sell its Type A school buses and electric shuttle and paratransit buses through Creative Bus Sales’s network. Pegasus will build the electric buses using the Zeus Electric Chassis Z-19 cab-chassis platform. A Pegasus Bus on a

With “Gymkhana 2022,” rally driver Travis Pastrana attempted stunts never before seen in the gymkhana series—increasing the potential for something to go wrong. Subaru of America’s “Launch Control” YouTube show is doing a three-part behind-the-scenes look at the filming of the latest gymkhana installment, called “Road to Gymkhana.” This third episode (all three were filmed

German automotive and arms manufacturer Rheinmetall has received an order for contactors worth over a quarter-billion euros from an undisclosed German automaker.  Rheinmetall will be equipping the new 900-volt generation of EVs with a new type of contactor, starting in 2025. Contactors ensure the EVs can be safely switched on and off, especially in emergencies

TravelCenters of America (Nasdaq: TA), which operates a network of 281 travel centers (truck stops, to use the old-fashioned term) in 44 states under the TA, Petro and TA Express brands, is working with Electrify America to deploy DC fast charging at select TA/Petro locations. TA aims to install some 1,000 chargers at 200 locations

Revived Italian sports car marque Bizzarrini is working on a new V-12 supercar, and we were given a teasing look this week. It’s called the Giotto, after Bizzarrini founder Giotto Bizzarrini, and Giorgetto Giugiaro has been tapped to help design the car. 2024 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R race car Chevrolet is jumping into the customer

Power management company Eaton is partnering with electrification nonprofit Rewiring America “to advance electrification education, awareness and action.” Brian Brickhouse, President of Eaton’s Americas Region, Electrical Sector, has joined Rewiring America’s CEOs for Electrification coalition of US business leaders, which aims to further sustainability through electrification, beginning with the American household. The collaboration, says Eaton,

Should electric utilities be allowed to own EV charging stations? In a free-market economy, it’s generally considered unhealthy for companies that produce a product or service to also own the distribution channels—that’s why liquor companies don’t own bars (in the US), and airlines don’t own airports. For an example of the evils that can result

A 1966 Shelby 427 Cobra once owned by current Ford CEO Jim Farley is up for sale at online auction website Autohunter. The car, which bears chassis number CSX3195, started out life as a regular road-going 427 Cobra but was later converted to S/C (Semi-Competition) specification. It was originally billed to Johnny Bolton Ford of

The Nissan Leaf is a historic and much-loved vehicle. First-generation (2011-2016) Leafs lack the range that current EV buyers expect, but thousands of owners (including your correspondent) still find them to be delightful daily drivers. One of the many nifty things about EVs is that it’s possible to replace a degraded or damaged battery pack

Some European feathers have recently been ruffled by the “Buy American” provisions of the US Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Some say the EU needs to respond by increasing its own support of the EV industry in order to meet the threat from Chinese automakers. So it’s encouraging to see two high-tech companies

The Ford F-150 has the Raptor, and the Ram 1500 has the TRX, but when it comes to the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 there’s still no high-performance option to be found. Some years back, Houston, Texas-based PaxPower stepped in to fill that void with its original Jackal. The conversion added the rugged suspension and flared wheel

EverCharge, an SK Group company, will deploy “a significant number” of EV charging stations at Houston’s George Bush International Airport for Avis Budget Group. The stations will power Avis and Budget’s rental fleet of plug-in vehicles at the airport. Intelligent load balancing allows fleet operators to install more charging stations without straining the existing electrical

The greatest barrier to EV adoption is the steep price premium relative to legacy vehicles—and for the past couple of years, prices have been moving in the wrong direction, thanks to supply-chain constraints and general post-COVID inflation. When Tesla recently announced price cuts of up to 20 percent, the boo-birds crowed about softening demand, but

BMW has filed a patent application for grilles that include headlights and other lighting elements, Auto Express reported on Monday, citing information found in patent documents. Documents filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization show designs that could incorporate headlights, as well as sensors for driver-assist features, into BMW’s signature twin-kidney grille, the report said.

Dutch electric bus and charging infrastructure manufacturer Ebusco has announced its new Ebusco 3.0 18-meter electric bus. The company has used lightweight composite materials to keep the 3.0 18-meter’s starting weight down to 14,500 kg (32,000 lbs). In combination with 350 and 500 kWh LFP battery packs, such a lightweight frame should give the new

Bidirectional charging and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) are two of the buzziest terms in the EV world these days—but the two aren’t quite the same thing. The former is an enabling technology for the latter, which is a package of applications that include using an EV as a backup power source and providing services to electric utilities

Last December, Porsche CEO Oliver Blume said the new 911 Dakar might not be a one-off, but rather the first of several off-road sports cars. After two days of sliding across gravel expanses and kicking up huge sand plumes in the Moroccan desert, all I can say is, please—pretty please—bring it on! The Porsche 911

EV charging management platform AMPECO has raised $16 million in venture capital investment after closing a $13-million Series A funding round led by BMW i Ventures. The round also included LAUNCHub Ventures, Cavalry Ventures and a number of angel investors.   The company offers a white-label, hardware-agnostic EV charging management platform that covers public, private and

DLR Stuttgart has announced that it will coordinate an effort to determine the potential of the so-called calcium-sulfur (Ca-S) battery as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries. The CaSino project, conducted by a consortium of five research institutions, two industrial companies and an industrial advisory board, is being funded with 3 million euros by the German

Electrify America on Monday announced an agreement with TravelCenters of America (TA) to install EV fast chargers at the latter’s rest stops. TA and Electrify America hope to install 1,000 individual DC fast-charging stations at 200 locations along major highways over five years, with the first stations coming online in 2023, according to a joint

British bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis, a subsidiary of NFI Group, has received an order from Transport for Greater Manchester for an additional 50 zero-emission double-deck buses, doubling the agency’s initial order. The Manchester bus fleet, which has been franchised to Go-Ahead Group and dubbed Bee Network, will now include 100 NFI vehicles. These additional 50

Scientists at the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory are researching solutions to the drawbacks of lithium-ion batteries by testing alternate materials such as sulfur. Sulfur, says Argonne, is highly cost-effective, and lithium-sulfur batteries can hold more energy than ion-based ones. In a recent study, researchers created a layer in the battery that increases energy storage capacity

Believe it or not, just two V-12 engine designs have powered 60 years of Lamborghini supercars. Having recently built its last non-hybrid V-12 road car, the automaker is taking a look back at these two epochal engines. The first engine was introduced in 1963 in Lamborghini’s first production car—the 350 GT—and stayed in production until

LiNa Energy, a developer of solid-state sodium batteries, has successfully completed an independent demonstration of its batteries for energy storage systems. In the test, a 1 kW / 1 kWh LiNa system performed dynamic containment. This is a key revenue stream for battery energy storage systems in the UK, which requires rapid injection and absorption

Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory is quite a place—since its 2014 opening, the company has invested $6.2 billion in the region, and the 5.4-million-square-foot, 11,000-employee facility has produced some 7.3 billion battery cells, 1.5 million battery packs and 3.6 million drive units. Now Tesla has announced plans to invest an additional $3.6 billion, hire 3,000 more team