Green Car Congress

APRIL 4, 2018

Benzene, an aromatic hydrocarbon, is a natural component of crude oil and is one of the elementary petrochemicals. It is used as a precursor to the manufacture of more complex chemicals, and, with a high octane number, is an important component of gasoline. Researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany have now developed a two-step, one-pot process for the synthesis of benzene from the five-fold unsaturated fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), a component of microalgae oils.

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Oil EPA Hydrogen Renewable 277

Green Car Reports

APRIL 2, 2018

Sales of plug-in electric vehicles in China were almost four times those in the U.S. last year, and the gap is expected to widen this year. The world's largest car market is engineering a massive shift over the next two decades away from cars with combustion engines toward battery-powered cars. It is a way for China to address hazardous air.

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China Standards Global Electric Cars 135

Green Fleet Magazine

APRIL 4, 2018

Work Truck named Isuzu Commercial Truck of America's Class 6 FTR cabover it's 2018 Medium-Duty Truck of the Year. Tim Ellsworth, product planning manager for Isuzu, walks us through the features of the FTR at The Work Truck Show 2018 in Indianapolis.

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Isuzu Indianapolis 2018 America 52

Green Car Congress

APRIL 3, 2018

Tesla reported Q1 2018 vehicle production of 34,494 vehicles—a 40% increase from Q4 and its most productive quarter. Of the total, 24,728 (72%) were Model S and Model X, and 9,766 (28%) were Model 3. The Model 3 output increased fourfold over last quarter. Tesla was able to double the weekly Model 3 production rate during the quarter by addressing production and supply chain bottlenecks, including several short factory shutdowns to upgrade equipment.

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2018 Production Tesla Vehicles 262

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Climate Change

Green Car Congress

APRIL 4, 2018

Lightning Systems, a global developer of zero-emissions solutions for commercial fleets, is taking its new Ford Transit LightningElectric model ( earlier post ) on the road, showcasing the recently released vehicle efficiency ratings of 61 MPGe on in-town routes and 66 MPGe on highway. The LightningElectric is a battery-electric drivetrain package for the heavy-duty Ford Transit, a product used extensively by commercial and government fleets.

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Ford Los Angeles New York City Long Beach 257

Green Car Congress

APRIL 6, 2018

A team of engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) recently discovered that a naturally occurring bacterium, Thermoanaerobacterium thermosaccharolyticum TG57, isolated from waste generated after harvesting mushrooms, is capable of directly converting cellulose to biobutanol. In an open-access paper in the journal Science Advances , the research team, led by Associate Professor He Jianzhong, reported that TG57 is capable of using microcrystalline cellulose directly to produce but

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Singapore Universal Waste Carbon 247

Green Car Congress

APRIL 1, 2018

Numerous studies have tackled the future environmental impact of battery-electric vehicles; the resulting assessments are highly uncertain. Now, a team of researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, with colleagues at Leiden University (Netherlands) and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency have used Monte Carlo and global sensitivity analysis to quantify parametric uncertainty of the impacts.

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Future Netherlands Climate Change Climate 231

Green Car Congress

APRIL 4, 2018

The city of Gdynia in Poland has signed a contract with Solaris for the delivery of 30 trolleybuses worth more than 95 million PLN (US$28 million) in total. The order includes 16 articulated Trollino 18s, and 14 Trollino 12s, which are already well-established in Gdynia. Apart from featuring traditional trolleybus drivelines—i.e., an electric drive powered by overhead wires—the Solaris vehicles commissioned by Gdynia will be fitted with additional batteries which enable driving off t

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Li-ion Nickel Cadmium Poland Battery 225

Green Car Congress

APRIL 5, 2018

A team of Idaho National Laboratory (INL) researchers, with colleagues at Georgia Tech, has pioneered an electrochemical process that could eliminate the need for high-energy steam cracking. In an open-access paper in the RSC journal Energy and Environmental Science , the researchers suggest that their study provides a disruptive approach for petrochemical manufacturing, shifting the paradigm from thermal chemical practice to a clean energy regime.

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Idaho Energy Hydrogen Manufacturer 218

Green Car Congress

APRIL 2, 2018

Buick will add two new models to its China portfolio—the VELITE 6 plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) and VELITE 6 battery-electric vehicle (BEV)—to tap into the fast-growing domestic demand for new energy vehicles. In April 2017, Buick introduced the Velite 5, its first extended-range electric vehicle, in a global debut in Shanghai. ( Earlier post.

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Buick PHEV China Extended Range 210

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Green Car Congress

MARCH 31, 2018

Catalytic converters for cleaning exhaust emissions are more efficient when they use nanoparticles with many edges, according to a study carried out at the the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), a research center of the Helmholtz Association, X-ray source PETRA III. A team of scientists from the DESY NanoLab watched live as carbon monoxide (CO) was converted into CO 2 on the surface of noble metal nanoparticles such as those used in catalytic converters of cars.

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Convert Carbon Exhaust Emissions 207

Green Car Congress

APRIL 5, 2018

Autotalks , a developer of V2X (Vehicle to Everything) communication chipsets, and the Israeli startup Griiip , which is developing a next generation single seater race car, have demonstrated the first motorsport Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) application on a racetrack. As part of the demonstration, which took place on 15 March 2018 in a new motorsport park in Be’er Sheva, Israel, Griiip equipped all their G1 racecars on the track with Autotalks’ V2X solution, based on the CRATON2 chipset.

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Israel Italy 2018 Light 199

Green Car Congress

APRIL 4, 2018

NASA has awarded a contract for the design, building and testing of a supersonic aircraft that reduces a sonic boom to a gentle thump. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company was selected for the Low-Boom Flight Demonstration contract, a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract valued at $247.5 million. Work under the contract began 2 April and runs through 31 December 2021.

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Building 2003 2004 Design 199

Green Car Congress

APRIL 3, 2018

Lignosulfonate, a sulfonated carbon waste material, is a major by-product in the papermaking industry. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have now developed a method to use this cheap and abundant waste byproduct to build a components for lithium-sulfur batteries. Reported in an open-access paper published in the RSC journal Sustainable Energy & Fuels , the method uses lignosulfonate as both the donor (decomposition of sulfonic groups (–SO 3 H)) of sulfur and the sulfur accept

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Lithium Sulfur New York Battery Batteries 199

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Oil

Green Car Congress

APRIL 2, 2018

Researchers at KAUST in Saudi Arabia, with colleagues from Saudi Aramco and the National University of Ireland Galway, have developed a new method for investigating the auto-ignition behavior of bioethanol-blended gasolines. Their work, reported in a paper in the journal Combustion & Flame , explores the oxidation behavior of two oxygenated certification gasoline fuels and the variation of fuel reactivity with molecular composition.

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Gasoline Auto Saudi Arabia Fuel 199

Green Car Congress

APRIL 2, 2018

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced the completion of the Midterm Evaluation (MTE) process for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards for cars and light trucks for model years 2022-2025, and his final determination that the current standards are not appropriate and should be revised. Administrator Pruitt also announced the start of a joint process with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to develop a notice and comment ru

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EPA Standards Emissions Light 199

Green Car Congress

APRIL 6, 2018

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a new approach for creating new catalysts to aid in clean energy conversion and storage. The design method, reported in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , (PNAS) also has the potential to impact the discovery of new optical and data storage materials, catalysts that impact pharmaceutical synthesis and catalysts that allow for higher efficiency processing of petroleum products at much lower cost.

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Design Chad Polymer Conversion 191

Green Car Congress

APRIL 5, 2018

A research team led by the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed an economical and industrially viable strategy to produce graphene. The new technique addresses the long-standing challenge of an efficient process for large-scale production of graphene, and paves the way for sustainable synthesis of the material. Graphene is a two-dimensional material with a honeycomb structure of only one atom thick.

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Production Water Singapore Universal 186

Green Car Congress

APRIL 3, 2018

Magnesium offers a number of advantages over lithium for rechargeable batteries: it is safer and earth-abundant, and doubles the total charge per ion, delivering larger theoretical volumetric capacity compared with a typical lithium-ion battery. Further, in Mg batteries (MB) the anode is energy-dense Mg metal (~?3,830 ?Ah? l ?1 )—surpassing the theoretical volumetric energy density of graphite anodes (~?

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Battery Batteries Lithium Ion Recharge 186

Green Car Congress

APRIL 6, 2018

Nemaska Lithium Inc. has entered into an investment agreement with SoftBank Group Corp. for a private placement of common share subscription receipts at a price of CAD 1.12 (USD 0.88) per receipt for aggregate gross proceeds of up to CAD 99,075,000 (USD 75,000,000). Under the investment agreement, SoftBank will acquire up to 9.9% of Nemaska Lithium’s outstanding common shares.

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Financing Purchase Fusion Energy Storage 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 5, 2018

The Haber-Bosch process developed in the early 1900s relies on non-renewable fossil fuels and large, centralized chemical plants for the large-scale synthesis of ammonia at elevated temperatures (~700 K) and pressures (~100atm). Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have now developed a sustainable low-temperature and -pressure ammonia synthesis process using plasma-based catalysis.

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Production 2018 Renewable Insight 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 5, 2018

Global Bioenergies is beginning the road-testing phase of renewable gasoline derived from its fermentative isobutene pathway. ( Earlier post.) Global Bioenergies will use an EN228-compliant gasoline blend containing more than 34% of renewable, isobutene-derived, compounds to fuel a car on a circuit. In preparation for commercial uses, Global Bioenergies developed several gasoline blends with two isobutene-derived compounds: Isooctane, obtained by the condensation of two molecules of isobutene fo

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Gasoline Audi Renewable Global 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 4, 2018

Porsche Digital GmbH has purchased a minority stake in Israeli start-up Anagog as a strategic expansion to its digital innovation portfolio. Founded in 2010, the Tel Aviv-based start-up currently has around 30 employees and specializes in developing artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of mobility. Daimler also recently took a stake in the company. ( Earlier post.).

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Porsche Asia 2010 Personal 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 3, 2018

Researchers from Soochow University in China and the University of Toronto have developed a new photocatalyst for the hydrogenation of CO 2 to methanol with 50% selectivity under simulated solar irradiation. A paper on their work appears in the journal Joule. The solar methanol production of the defect-laden indium oxide, In 2 O 3-x (OH) y , with a rod-like nanocrystal superstructure, can be stabilized at a rate of 0.06 mmol g cat -1 h -1 at atmospheric pressure.

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Hydrogen CO2 Solar Renewable 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 2, 2018

A team from Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, in collaboration with Bengt Johansson at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia, reports that blending gasoline with high cetane number (CN) gas-to-liquids (GTL) fuel appears to be a promising route to improve not only efficiency, but also PM and NO x emissions, particularly when operating in partially premixed combustion (PPC) mode.

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Gasoline Emissions Saudi Arabia Diesel 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 2, 2018

Cellulose—the primary building block of the walls of most plant cells—is synthesized at the plasma membrane by cellulose synthase complexes (CSCs). The ability to deliver CSCs to discrete sites at the cell surface is critical for cellulose synthesis. Now,researchers at Penn State have identified the major steps in the process as well as the tools used by plant cells to create cellulose, including proteins that transport critical components to the location where cellulose is made.

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Insight 2018 Transportation Building 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 2, 2018

Xinhua reports that Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) start-up Singulato Motors plans to invest some $2.39 billion in eastern China’s Suzhou over the next five years. A partnership between the company and the Suzhou city government covers research and development, production and industrial investment in the NEV industry. Singulato’s first production car will be iS6 SUV, due to be on market this year.

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China SUV 2014 Industry 170

Green Car Congress

APRIL 1, 2018

Ryder System, Inc. announced that W.B. Mason, the US’ second-largest privately owned office products dealer, has taken delivery of Workhorse E-GEN electric, range-extended step vans. The company has expanded its fleet with the Workhorse electric vehicles to support its national business product delivery operations. Workhorse’s E-GEN step van demonstrates a 40 MPGe fuel efficiency in on-the-road applications, which reduces vehicle emissions by 75% and is six times more efficient than conventional

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Green Car Reports

APRIL 6, 2018

As Tesla has shown, not all fast charging is created equal. Now owners of the new 2018 Nissan Leaf are complaining that the car's "fast" charging is not always as fast as advertised. Owners have found that the car's electronic management software dials back charging speeds with each successive fast charge on any given trip. Nissan says this.

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2018 Nissan Charging Electric Cars 131

Green Car Reports

APRIL 5, 2018

As a nation, the U.S. takes lots of road trips, because most of the country has no viable mass transit between city pairs. If electric cars are ever to enter the mass market in North America, they have to be usable on those road trips. Last year, our reader Jay Lucas of Alexandria, Virginia, wrote an account of his road trip in a new 2017.

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North America Virginia 2017 America 131

Green Car Reports

APRIL 6, 2018

The U.S. sales history of the Smart two-seat minicar started with a bang in 2008, when gasoline prices soared, and has waned since then. A complete redesign of the little ForTwo in the 2016 model year, with the Cabrio soft-top following for 2017, didn't do much for sales. That led parent company Daimler to make a radical decision: For the 2018.

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Green Car Reports

APRIL 3, 2018

Tesla reported Tuesday that it built 34,494 electric cars in the first quarter of 2018, by far its largest quarterly production total ever. But all eyes were on one number: the production of Model 3 sedans, which was 9,766 vehicles out of that total. Of the rest, 11,730 were Model S hatchback sedans and 10,070 were Model X crossover utility.

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Production Tesla 2018 All-Electric 126

Green Car Reports

APRIL 2, 2018

Hydrogen fuel first went on sale in California in January 2015, more than three years ago, though it had been dispensed free at a dozen or so prototype locations before that. Five years ago, the state set a goal of 100 hydrogen fueling stations throughout the state by 2020, a deadline that now appears unlikely to be met. On Friday, the state's.

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Hydrogen California Fuel 2015 120

Green Car Reports

APRIL 2, 2018

With more than 300,000 Nissan Leaf electric cars on the road, some more than six years old, battery degradation is becoming more and more of an issue. The different rates of capacity loss are a topic of much discussion among Leaf owners, but it now seems likely that Nissan's choice of passive air cooling rather than active liquid cooling has.

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