From smooth, quiet running to industry-leading active safety systems, Volvo VNR electric semis offer plenty of compelling reasons for fleet owners to buy them. Now, there’s even more — 120,000 more to be exact, because the Volvo VNR is now officially eligible for California’s Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus … [continued]
Normally Norway is the biggest Tesla market in Europe. When the Dutch market absorbs nearly three times the Norwegian number of Model 3s, that is crazy.
At the end of August, Tesla reached the #3 spot in terms of 2019 Dutch auto sales, as Zach wrote yesterday. That was a memorable achievement for a model that started deliveries only halfway through February in earnest. But we also have September sales data for the top 3 automobiles, and September is a last-month-of-quarter month. All Tesla watchers know what that entails — the end-of-quarter delivery rush that Tesla still hasn’t gotten rid of.
Governments in Europe and China are trying to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles by offering subsidies and incentives, and it’s working. In Norway, EVs are exempt from taxes, and drivers receive perks such as free parking and reduced tolls. Almost 60 percent of new cars sold in the country in March were fully electric. China’s combination of incentives and mandates is acting as a magnetic force, sucking the global EV industry out of America and Europe and into China, where over a million electric cars were sold in 2018.
By all accounts, Teslas are technological marvels, safe, dependable, and fun to drive. But cheap? Well, there’s no question that an EV will save you money on fuel and maintenance compared to a legacy vehicle. And a Tesla isn’t a particularly expensive vehicle if your alternative is a BMW, a Mercedes, or an Audi, the brands to which the Californian EV is usually compared.
In just three years, new numbers tell us, more than half of the states in the US may have rooftop solar available at the same price as the local grid’s electric rates. And that’s even without considering state and local incentives! The Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists has just published … [continued]
Interestingly, the US natural gas fracking scenario seems to be repeating itself right now in the United Kingdom. BBC News announced this morning that David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, in power since 2010, has begun a vast bidding round for fracking permits that could cover around half of the United Kingdom. This is somewhat … [continued]
Wind energy is a tremendous success story world wide, with staggering amounts of innovation. It isn’t given sufficient credit for that and is even unfairly attacked by those opposed to it as old technology. Every aspect of construction, operation, and the business of horizontal axis wind turbines has been subject … [continued]
Community renewable energy has significant political and economic benefits, but is often hindered by five major barriers. Read on for a summary of the five barriers, watch them in a 17-minute presentation, or check out the vividly illustrated slideshow. Barrier one is tradition. Utilities are simply used to operating a … [continued]
A friend at Fresh Energy generously called me the “architect” of Minnesota’s new solar energy standard (signed last week), and although that may be a bit generous, I’d like to provide a detailed description of the nation’s newest solar energy standard. The topline: 1.5 percent solar standard for the state’s … [continued]
