Early on, Toyota actively lobbied against battery electric vehicles. Then it realized that as the world’s biggest automaker, it needed to switch sides if it wanted to continue selling cars at scale. Today, it’s announcing a $70-billion investment to electrify its entire lineup by 2030, dedicating nearly half that amount to developing battery-electric, zero-emission vehicles alone. It’s also announcing that […]
Electric vehicles’ battery temperatures must be carefully controlled, both to maximize range and performance, and to minimize degradation. Without adequate cooling, an EV could wind up like the first-gen Nissan Leaf and lose significant range over time. While not as consequential, the absence of a heat pump can still hurt an EV’s range in cold weather. One victim of this […]
You may have heard the news that major 3G cellular networks will be shut down in the U.S. in 2022—yes, at the risk of making anyone feel especially old, we’re far enough along in the 21st century that the tech that helped usher in the era of smartphones is now obsolete. The telecom industry’s preferred euphemism is “sunsetting,” which is […]
In case you missed it, Audi is competing in next month’s Dakar Rally with the RS Q E-Tron, a badass, gullwing-doored, electrified rally truck using powertrain tech sourced from both Formula E and DTM. Namely, it’s got three electric motors from the automaker’s electric-only open-wheel racing effort and a gas-powered generator lifted out from under the hood of a German […]
Toyota announced on Monday that’s it’s investing $1.29 billion over the next four years to create a brand new battery plant in North Carolina. Operations are slated to begin at the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite in 2025 with four production lines at the start. When it opens, the factory will be able to supply lithium-ion batteries for 800,000 vehicles annually. The new facility […]
A United Airlines Boeing 737 has completed a passenger flight with one engine using 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel, the company confirmed earlier this month. The flight, which took place between Chicago’s O’Hare and Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National, is the first-ever to ferry passengers while using the new eco-friendly fuel. But while the test performed successfully under controlled circumstances, it […]
Lotus’s electric hypercar, the Evija, has been public knowledge for a good long time now, having dropped back in 2019. Like certain other electric hypercars though, it seemed to be getting no closer with each passing day, making some wonder if it was just vaporware—and if Lotus’s renaissance was going off half-cocked. As it turns out, though, the Evija’s still […]
It’s official: Tesla is Texan now. The automaker revealed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it has officially relocated its headquarters from Palo Alto, California—in the heart of Silicon Valley—to an area in Austin, Texas next to its all-new Gigafactory. The move should come as no surprise, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been threatening […]
A California Department of Motor Vehicles examiner chose to fail a 16-year-old student driver attempting to acquire his driver’s license, after the student used the Tesla Model 3’s regenerative braking system on the driving portion of the test. According to CBS SF Bay Area, the examiner noticed the car’s automated braking capabilities as soon as the test began, but it […]
The Nissan Leaf may not now be—or has ever been—glamorous. But back when battery electric vehicles were virtually non-existent, it did the job. The first Leaf was delivered in 2010, two years before the first Model S would reach customers; meaning that Nissan didn’t have to invent a Tesla-challenging car like everyone else is now scrambling to do. They’d done […]
