Norwegian road assistance company NAF has completed the world’s longest EV range test. The company tested 29 of Norway’s most popular EVs. They tested the actual range in the summer, what happens when EVs go into power-saving mode, and how they charge in heat degrees.
The worst is over for global car sales, following the coronavirus black swan that has put an indelible mark on 2020. With every nation slowly enacting new phases of reopening, the car industry can breath a sigh of relief, as car sales everywhere pick up momentum after an awful few weeks at near-zero. Fast in bouncing back is Italy’s market, which – although still about 50% down year-on-year – is way up from the April lows that saw it crater by 97.5% from the same month last year. So does this mean we’re back to business as usual? Not quite.
Since BMW launched the i3 (and i8) with a ton of marketing around its “born electric” future, electric vehicle hopefuls have seen their enthusiasm for BMW slowly go downhill.
Last month I published that the Audi e-tron was the king of Norway. That hasn’t changed, and it doesn’t look likely that anyone’s going knock its crown off this year. But never count Tesla out.
The Australian EV market has been a surprisingly slow market. This could be due to several factors, including a limited choice of models and the price of EVs in a market with limited incentives (unlike the awesome incentives we see in Norway).
Bloomberg reports that GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, recently said that it will take decades for electric vehicles to be the dominant form of transportation in the U.S.
On January 22, 2020, I wrote that Tesla overtook Volkswagen to become the world’s 2nd largest auto company by market cap. At that point in time, Tesla had just crossed $100 billion in value.
Toward the end of President Obama’s time in office, the US Department of Energy (DOE) launched a “Battery500 Consortium.” The goal is in the name: reaching 500 Wh/kg battery energy density with lithium-metal battery cells, a target which was reportedly triple the battery energy density at the time.
With the Netherlands overall market dropping 53% year over year (YoY), the local plugin vehicle market also once again slipped into red, dropping 28% YoY in May to 2,023 plugin registrations.
Bjorn Nyland (aka Teslabjorn) wanted to use the PlugShare App as a map for one of his now famous electric road trips, but he realized the map would just be too cluttered, as Norway has a lot of fast chargers! Ah yes, first world problems, in Bjorn’s words.
