The Porsche Taycan Turbo has received its official EPA range rating, achieving a very disappointing 201 miles. This is a significantly lower range than EVs costing a quarter of the price, and just over half the range of the base Tesla Model S. It’s yet more proof that engineering prowess in the era of gas vehicles is no guarantee of success in the age of EVs.
The Dutch plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) market is back at year-end-rush mode, doubling sales in November to 7,205 registrations. That translates into a PEV share of 18% in November, and pulls the 2019 PEV share to a record 11%.
CleanTechnica has a new report out today, one highlighting the results of several thousand surveys of electric vehicle drivers in the US, Canada, and Europe. This initial report covers findings from North America and the UK. A coming report will cover the findings from the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, & France, and another one will cover the results from surveying non-EV drivers.
Tracking monthly US auto sales by company or brand is one of the oddest-feeling things I’ve done in my decade or so covering cleantech. Perhaps that’s because the focus is on tracking non-clean tech. The fact is, though, it shocks me every month to see how many people still buy gasoline cars. Gasoline cars are far worse than electric cars currently on the market for the same cost (or even less). Nonetheless, there are so many people buying clunky, noisy, slow, high-maintenance, low-tech, high-depreciation gasoline vehicles every single day. Objectively, it doesn’t make sense.
Denmark Planned Tax Increase For BEVs Scrapped — Hurray!
Tax Increase For ICEVs Scrapped Too — What?
The South Korean electric vehicle market doesn’t get the most attention, but it is bubbling up, with 2% of passenger vehicle sales in the country now EV sales. Similar to the USA, though, the market is dominated by just a few models.
When it comes to electric vehicle adoption, Norway is king of the hill. Nearly 2 out of every 3 passenger vehicles sold in Norway come with a plug. In October, the plug-in vehicle share was 59%, a bit higher than the 56% plug-in vehicle hold for January–October.
Norway gets most of the glory for electric vehicle sales leadership, or China does for the sheer volume of sales there (approximately half of the global market), but there are a few other country markets with notable electric vehicle market share (if not volume) that are fun to track and interesting to compare to Norway. One of those markets is Sweden, which very quietly sits near the top of EV market share rankings.
The European passenger plug-in vehicle (PEV) market recorded some 48,000 registrations in October (+46%), and this time it was the plug-in hybrids (+75% growth year over year, or YoY) that pulled the PEV market up. Fully electric vehicles (BEVs) remained at cruising speed (+26%), leading to a nearly even (51% BEVs / 49% PHEVs, vs. 65% / 35% YTD) breakdown between both technologies in October.
The recent excellent article by my colleague Jennifer Sensiba about the advantages of a body-on-frame architecture for trucks created a heated discussion. The versatility of a body-, or better, structure-on-frame architecture for the hundreds of different special purpose applications of professional vehicles is beyond dispute. The cost advantage of building one-off structures on such a platform are huge.
