The much-discussed London Taxi Company has relaunched itself as the London EV Company (LEVC), as part of its general transition towards the emerging electric vehicle fleet market.
Porsche will power its new office in Berlin with a $900,000, 88 ton solar pylon that will provide all the electricity needed to power the new building. It is also a symbol of the company’s commitment to electric cars.
The battle over whether a plug-in hybrid is really an “electric car” continues and BMW is doing nothing to tamp down the controversy. The latest EPA figures show the BMW 530e and 530e xDrive both have a minuscule all-electric range of just 16 miles or less. Hardly the “compelling electric car” Elon Musk has been begging legacy manufacturers to build for several years.
The electric car revolution is coming. In fact, it is picking up speed as companies like Volvo say that all of their cars will have a battery and electric motor by 2025. Whole nations such as India and France are suggesting they may ban the sale of cars with internal combustion engines in coming years. Most people assume that lack of charging infrastructure is the primary barrier to more electric cars being on the road, but Volkswagen believes (as others do) that a lack of batteries will be the biggest factor. In fact, Volkswagen believes the world will need the equivalent of 40 Gigafactories by 2025 to meet the demand.
Used electric vehicles are an amazing value for the money right now. With the market for new EVs showing record sales, it’s perhaps easy to forget that some of the best buys are on the used market. A press release reports that the overall used market for electric vehicles has increased 7% this year in the UK.
As part of a new $5.3 billion transportation funding package passed by the Oregon Senate and House, Oregon will finally be instituting a plug-in electric vehicle purchase rebate program.
GM is now aiming to sell 150,000 “new energy vehicles” a year by 2020, and 500,000 a year by 2025 — as revealed at a recent 20th anniversary of the company’s launch of its first two joint ventures in China with SAIC.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance has a new prediction about electric cars — they will account for more than half of all new car sales globally by 2040 and account for a third of all light duty vehicles on the road. The latest report was put together by an advanced team of BNEF analysts and takes several factors into account. Its predictions are significantly more optimistic than the last BNEF report just one year ago, which projected sales of electric cars would reach 35% of the market by 2040.
Tesla Model 3 production starts tomorrow, unless there was some kind of dramatic surprise since Monday. It seems that tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people who have never before had an electric car have a reservation for a Model 3. They have a bit of planning to do.
Volvo has announced that every car it makes will come with a battery and an electric motor starting in 2019. It will also bring its first all electric car to market that year.
