Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 3, 2018

California’s SunLine Transit Agency has put into service a new zero-emission bus that will have the capability to cover any route in its service territory—even with the air conditioner operating at maximum levels in the middle of the summer. With funding from the private sector, the Federal Transit Administration, and the California Energy Commission, SunLine Transit unveiled an electric bus with a fuel cell range extender to support a 250-300-mile daily route.

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Green Car Reports

FEBRUARY 2, 2018

The average vehicle on U.S. roads these days is more than 10 years old, despite three successive years of record new-vehicle sales. That's a result not only of the 2008-2010 recession but also vastly more durable and reliable vehicles compared to those of previous decades. All of those vehicles provide a ready stream of service revenue to.

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Green Fleet Magazine

FEBRUARY 19, 2018

Very few new power plants have been built in the U.S. in the past 10 years, yet demand for electric energy is rising, fueled by a boom in battery electric vehicle sales. Does the grid have the capacity to handle it?

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EV Driver

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

As the EV revolution rolls on and picks up steam (remember that!) in 2018, more and more businesses are looking into what will be required to keep up. As it is clear that hybrids will be the first step for the majority of adventurous drivers, a lot of new hybrids come with the ability to be plugged in. So, you are surely asking yourself, why not use the little EV engine in a hybrid to reduce your CO2 emissions each and every commute to work you do.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

Ionic Materials has secured $65 million in a Series C financing round from a leading group of financial and strategic investors. The investors include companies from the battery manufacturing, consumer electronic and electric vehicle ecosystem which will be working with the company to speed the development of its solid polymer electrolyte battery material.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 4, 2018

Three of Hyundai Motor Company’s next-generation NEXO fuel-cell-electric vehicles ( earlier post ) have completed a self-driven 118-mile (190 km) journey from Seoul to Pyeongchang. This is the first time that level 4 autonomous driving has been achieved with fuel-cell-electric vehicles. Five Hyundai vehicles completed the journey. Three vehicles are based on Hyundai’s next-generation fuel cell electric SUV NEXO, scheduled to be released in Korea next month, and the other two are Genesis G80 auto

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 20, 2018

Toyota Motor Corporation has developed the world’s first neodymium-reduced, heat-resistant magnet. Neodymium (Nd) magnets are used in various types of motors such as the high-output motors found in electrified vehicles. The new magnet uses significantly less neodymium, a rare-earth element, and can be used in high-temperature conditions. The newly developed magnet uses no terbium (Tb) or dysprosium (Dy)—rare earths that are also categorized as critical materials necessary for highly heat-r

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Rio Tinto’s fleet of autonomous haul trucks recently hit a significant milestone at the company’s operations in Australia by moving their one-billionth tonne of material. Since commencing trial operations in 2008, haul trucks fitted with Autonomous Haulage System (AHS) technology have now moved more than one billion tonnes of both ore and waste material across five sites in the Pilbara including the newly commissioned Silvergrass mine.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 10, 2018

Volkswagen will stage the world premiere of the new third-generation Touareg SUV—which the brand is calling its flagship—on 23 March 2018 in Beijing. China is the world’s strongest growing SUV market and Volkswagen’s largest individual market. The SUV C-segment is currently one of the fastest growing segments in global automotive markets and is expected to double its volume by the year 2023 in China.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 27, 2018

Driveline engineering consultancy Drive System Design (DSD) has partnered with software specialists Altair and FluiDyna to develop and enhance FluiDyna’s computer modeling technique, nanoFluidX , that significantly improves the analysis of lubrication flow. nanoFluidX utilizes a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) methodology and increases the accuracy of analysis while reducing the simulation time from weeks to just a few days, when compared to traditional methods.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 17, 2018

Researchers at WMG at the University of Warwick (UK) have developed a method to assess the maximum current for commercial 18650 Li-ion batteries, using novel instrumentation methods enabling in operando measurements. In an open-access paper in the journal Electrochimica Acta , they reported that the maximum charging current that could be safely applied to the evaluated high-energy cells is 6.7 times higher than the manufacturer-stated maximum.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 19, 2018

The US Department of Energy launched three Bioenergy Research Centers just over ten years ago ( earlier post ). Of them, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center ( GLBRC ), led by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, had a goal of turning more of the corn plant—the stalk and leaves that makes up the stover—into ethanol, while developing perennial plants like switchgrass and miscanthus (also called silvergrass) into potential feedstocks.

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Conversion Wisconsin Climate Change Renewable 279

Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 10, 2018

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) Sub-Committee on Pollution Prevention and Response (PPR) has agreed to move forward with a prohibition on the carriage of high-sulfur fuel oil for use on board ships, when that fuel oil is not compliant with a new low-sulfur limit which comes into force from 2020. The aim of the new limit is to reduce sulfur oxide (SO x ) emissions from ships to improve air quality and protect the environment.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 2, 2018

Four rare earth elements (REEs) recovery projects managed by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) ( earlier post ) have made significant progress in the development of a domestic supply of REEs from coal and coal by-products by successfully producing REE concentrates. DOE research has identified coal and coal by-products as a promising domestic source of REEs, which are critical elements in numerous modern technologies s

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Analysts at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) have reviewed recent research into the greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The ICCT analysis is in the overall context of life-cycle emissions of electric cars as compared to conventional internal combustion vehicles in Europe.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Toyota Motor Corporation has developed a new continuously variable transmission (CVT) featuring a launch gear; a new 6-speed manual transmission; a new 2.0-liter engine with 40% thermal efficiency (41% in hybrid applications); a new 2.0-liter hybrid system; and new 4WD systems—one for gasoline-engined cars, one for hybrids—based on the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA).

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

Consumer products such as shampoo, cleaning products and paint now contribute as much to emitted volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in cities as tailpipe emissions from vehicles, according to a new study led by NOAA. The results, published in an open-access paper in the journal Science , suggest that the focus of efforts to mitigate ozone formation and toxic chemical burdens need to be adjusted, the authors suggested.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have selected nine projects to receive approximately $6.5 million in federal funding for Phase I of the Fossil Fuel Large-Scale Pilots funding opportunity announcement (FOA). This FOA, issued in August 2017, is a $50-million funding opportunity for projects supporting cost-shared research and development to design, construct, and operate two large-scale pilots to demonstrate tran

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 8, 2018

Ronald Grover, staff researcher at General Motors (GM) Research and Development and GM colleagues Jian Gao, Venkatesh Gopalakrishnan, and Ramachandra Diwakar are using the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (LCF), a US Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to improve combustion models for diesel passenger car engines with an ultimate goal of accelerating innovative engine designs while meeting strict em

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

A bespoke development of GKN’s coaxial eAxle powers the rear wheels of the LEVC (London EV Company, formerly known as London Taxi Company)’s electrified TX model. GKN Driveline launched its coaxial eAxle in its first application across Volvo’s range of T8 Twin Engine plug-in hybrids, picking up an Automotive News PACE Innovation Award in 2016. In these models, GKN’s system has an axle-split secondary drive role, with a 60 kW e-motor providing motive power to the rear wheels, working in conjuncti

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

Ozone levels across much of North America and Europe dropped significantly between 2000 and 2014. Even so, during 2010-2014, people in parts of California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, the Midwest and the Middle Atlantic still experienced more than 15 days a year in which ozone levels exceeded the US health-based air quality standard of 70 parts per billion (ppb) averaged over eight hours.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 22, 2018

A new study by researchers at the Bourns College of Engineering, University of California, Riverside (UCR) and colleagues at the Manufacturers of Emission Controls Association (MECA) has found that catalyzed gasoline particulate filters (GPF) are effective not only at reducing particulate mass, black carbon, and total and solid particle number emissions in gasoline direct injection engines (GDI) but also polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and nitrated PAHs.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

Researchers from Shinshu University in Japan have developed a method to suppress the growth of lithium dendrites in Li-S and Li-air batteries. As reported in a paper in the RSC journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics , they used magnesium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)amide [Mg(TFSA) 2 ] as an electrolyte additive to suppress the growth of Li dendrites, leveraging the occurrence of an alloying reaction between the initially substrate-deposited Mg and the subsequently deposited Li.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 8, 2018

In Q4 2017, Tesla posted its largest quarterly loss yet, even while combined Model S and Model X deliveries in Q4 grew 10% globally compared to the prior record in Q3 and 28% compared to Q4 2016. In Q4, Tesla delivered 28,425 Model S and Model X vehicles and 1,542 Model 3 vehicles, totaling 29,967 deliveries. Telsa reported a GAAP Q4 2017 net loss of $675.35 million, with a full-year loss of $1.961 billion.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

In collaboration with the Berlin-based start-up XAIN , Porsche is currently testing blockchain applications directly in vehicles—making Porsche the first automobile manufacturer to implement and successfully test blockchain in a car. Transactions based on this technology are both secure and can be processed far more quickly than anything that has come before.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 23, 2018

Researchers at the University of Maryland have designed a flexible lithium-ion conducting ceramic textile featuring fast lithium-ion conductors, good electrochemical stability, and scalable processing approaches to device integration for solid-state lithium metal batteries. Based on the garnet-type conductor Li 7 La 3 Zr 2 O 12 , the material exhibits a range of desirable chemical and structural properties, including: lithium-ion conducting cubic structure, low density, multi-scale porosity, hig

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

New analysis of V2X (vehicle to everything) conducted by ABI Research finds that the cost of implementing DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communication) above cellular communications is expected to be $13.50 to $15 lower per Telematics Control Unit than implementing a C-V2X (CellularV2X) solution. The global automotive industry has been extensively comparing DSRC and C-V2X as technology alternatives for enabling V2X in vehicles in order to prevent accidents.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 17, 2018

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy has selected seven projects to receive approximately $44 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development through the funding opportunity announcement, Design and Testing of Advanced Carbon Capture Technologies. The projects will target one of two areas: 1) engineering-scale testing of transformational solvent- or membrane-based carbon dioxide (CO?

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 8, 2018

Ford unveiled the redesigned Transit Connect Wagon at the Chicago Auto Show. The wagon, which comes in 5- or 7-passenger models, offers a choice between a new 2.0-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine with direct injection with Auto Start-Stop as standard equipment, or the new 1.5-liter EcoBlue diesel, both paired with a new 8-speed automatic. Ford is targeting the 1.5L EcoBlue diesel to deliver an EPA-estimated fuel economy rating of at least 30 mpg (7.8 l/100 km) highway; final EPA 2019 Transit

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 15, 2018

Rapid increases in pollution may be as harmful to the heart as sustained high levels, according to new research published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. The authors urgently call for confirmatory studies as even residents of clean air cities could be at risk. There is longstanding evidence that exposure to high concentrations of air pollution increases the risk for several diseases including heart attacks; accordingly, European Union (EU) statutory pollution limits are based o

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 27, 2018

XL Hybrids will display three fleet-ready, electrified pickup truck solutions at NTEA’s Work Truck Show next week in Indianapolis. XL is unveiling the industry’s first XLH hybrid-electric F-250 pickup in its booth, while also displaying an XLP plug-in hybrid-electric F-150. Both trucks in XL’s booth will be displayed on vehicle lifts so attendees can step under the trucks and see how easily XL systems integrate with the Ford trucks.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded the University of Illinois a $10.6-million, five-year grant to transform two of the most productive crops in the US into sustainable sources of biodiesel and biojet fuel. The new research project Renewable Oil Generated with Ultra-productive Energycane (ROGUE) kicked off on 25 February with a team meeting held in conjunction with the 2018 Genomic Sciences Program Annual Principal Investigator Meeting in Tysons, Virginia.

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

Responding to fleet market demand for complete, body-ready chassis, Motiv Power Systems is introducing the EPIC (Electric Powered Intelligent Chassis) all-electric family of chassis for 2018. Debuting at Ford’s booth and based on the E-450, F-59, and F-53 platforms, the EPIC all-electric chassis are production-line ready, drop-in replacements for the equivalent ICE chassis and are available for a wide range of medium-duty body applications including walk-in vans, box trucks, school buses, shuttl

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Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 2, 2018

Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) sold more than 1.52 million electrified vehicles (hybrids on up) worldwide in 2017. This represents an increase of eight percent over the prior record set in 2016, marking back-to-back years of growth and accomplishing one of Toyota's Environmental Challenge 2050 targets—i.e., selling more than 1.5 million electrified vehicles in a single year—three years in advance of the original target set for 2020.

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