Tugboats combine brief demands for very high thrust with repeated operation inside the same ports, making their duty cycle unusually well suited to electrification.
Tugboats do not initially look like good candidates for battery propulsion. A harbour tug has to shove, pull and control ships weighing tens or hundreds of thousands of tonnes, sometimes in wind, current and confined channels where losing thrust is not an acceptable outcome. Modern ship-assist tugs consequently carry propulsion … [continued]
I don’t remember how long ago it was that I first heard about potential racism issues at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, but I think it was about a decade ago. At the time, I figured it was a case of some bad seeds in management or even just on the … [continued]
BYD’s big focus at the moment seems to be finding ways to expand globally and grow its sales outside of China as fast as possible. The Chinese market is not the hottest, which is surely part of it, but it’s also clearly a prime time in the transition to electric … [continued]
On the morning of September 8th in Guangzhou, China, XPENG’s IRON humanoid robot autonomously walked off the production line. While much of America is getting ready to return to work from the Labor Day holiday, the result of years of hard work is coming to fruition at XPENG. The initial … [continued]
Electrolyzer stacks are manufactured, but hydrogen plants are built. Much of the apparent learning challenge—and most of the project cost—lives outside the stack factory.
Hydrogen cost forecasts often borrow one of the clean-energy transition’s most useful empirical tools: the experience curve. If a technology has historically fallen by a given percentage in cost every time cumulative deployment doubles, analysts can estimate how many doublings lie ahead and compound the learning rate into a future … [continued]
BYD vehicles recently showed up in my RedNote feed testing in Canada. While the entry of BYD into Canada is widely anticipated, the models, representing BYD’s latest generation of mid-priced SUVs, is perhaps even more significant. Europe has the Seal U (aka, Sealion 6) that is essentially a previous generation … [continued]
Poland succeeded in creating hydrogen-bus demand, but Polenergia still backed away from the local green-hydrogen supply intended to serve it.
Poland did something hydrogen advocates have spent years saying governments need to do: it created real demand. Public subsidies helped put hydrogen buses into Polish cities, refueling infrastructure received support, and renewable-hydrogen projects were offered public money as well. By April 2026, Poland had 153 hydrogen buses registered, 140 already … [continued]
There’s been a push for the past several years to get more cleantech products produced in the United States. One of the key target products is solar panels, as well as the various components of solar panels. That has been encouraged through a variety of strong production incentives (brought into … [continued]
China’s aluminum output is still rising. A sectoral CO₂ peak now depends on emissions per tonne falling faster.
Earlier this year I argued that China’s aluminum-sector carbon emissions had probably peaked around 2024. Since then, the output data have weakened one important part of that case. China produced 45.02 million tonnes of primary aluminum in 2025, 2.4% more than the year before, and another 23.19 million tonnes in … [continued]
Tesla has plans for two new giant factories in Texas. Let’s have a look. Tesla’s “Project Crystal Sun” Solar Factory Tesla is reportedly planning a giant solar cell factory in Texas. The factory, named “Project Crystal Sun” within Tesla at the moment, is expected to require a $10.1 billion investment … [continued]
