In late 2016, the Chevy Bolt became the first affordable long range EV (electric vehicle), beating the Tesla Model 3 to market. As of this writing, in February 2020, GM has once again moved the goal posts. You can now buy a Bolt for around $26,000, underselling every affordable EV you can buy in America and having a longer range than all of them. Is it worth it? Let’s take a look.
This section is meant as a primer to the world of climate change and renewable energy. CleanTechnica has posted over 40,000 articles since its inception in 2008, however, reading all of them would take months, so the following is a distillation of the key pieces of the puzzle.
Hawaii has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and yet there are serious water quality issues to content with, primarily due to the large quantity of cesspools in the State. This is a huge issue for all of the islands, and impacts the health of humans, animals, and our ocean ecology. Here’s the story of a local non-profit that’s working to fix this crappy situation.
I recently had a chat with Christoffer Holmsteen, founder of Greenelimo, an international booking company for zero-emissions limousine service that operates the only 100% zero emissions limousine fleet in Denmark. Below are his response to a few of my questions.
The first 3,000 Audi e-tron buyers* in the US after February 3 are getting a 10-year subscription to solar power for their electric driving, according to a press release from Audi. The German automaker has partnered with Arcadia** to provide the clean energy bonus. The subscription is completely free for the consumer.
January saw fossil fuel passenger vehicle sales plummet in Sweden by almost 40% year on year, with diesels more than halved, as plug-in vehicle market share climbed to over 30%. Sweden’s auto industry organization expects 30% to be maintained through the full year of 2020.
UK combustion vehicle sales fell 18% year on year in January as plug-in electric vehicles took almost 6% of the market, up from 2.2% a year ago. Diesel sales were hit particularly hard, selling 36% less volume than January 2019. Will the UK government’s recent target of phasing out combustion vehicles by 2035 be overtaken by consumer preferences?
Tesla now has as high a market cap that is nearly as large as BMW and VW combined. An article by Spiegel noted a few days ago that Tesla [TSLA] had surpassed the two, but the stock has dropped a bit since then. Nonetheless, it’s still close.
Europe’s largest auto market, Germany, saw January fossil fuel vehicle sales drop by over 15% year-on-year, with gasoline vehicles alone down over 17%. Meanwhile, EVs increased their market share to 6.5% from 2.5%. Europe’s big five markets are now at a combined 6.0% EV market share. What progress will full year 2020 bring overall?
Disruptive advances in solar technology are unusual, with industry-wide design improvements often taking place in very small increments. These small changes create the buzz at solar trade shows like Intersolar North America, which is wrapping up this week in San Diego.
