Spikes in electricity rates can raise the cost of charging an EV at home, but California has a solution.
As explained in a recent post on The Equation, from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), California is considering adding a fixed charge on electricity bills from its largest utilities in exchange for a reduction in the per-unit price of electricity use. That would keep utilities’ revenue consistent while maintaining lower overall home-charging costs for EV owners.
A proposal from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state’s utility regulator, would establish a monthly flat fee of $24.15 for customers of California’s three major investor-owned utilities—Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).
2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV with GM Ultium Home energy system
The proposal also calls for income-based tiers for the monthly charge. Customers participating in the California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) rate-reduction program would pay approximately $6.00 per month, while those enrolled in the Family Electric Rate Assistance program, those living in affordable housing, and those with incomes at or below 80% of area median income would pay approximately $12.00 per month. All others would pay the full $24.15 monthly fee.
The proposal, which follows up on legislation passed in 2022, wouldn’t be implemented until late 2025 or early 2026. But it could reduce electricity rates by 4.6 cents to 6.8 cents per kwh at that time, according to the UCS.
Hyundai Home
Such a proposal seems just in time, as throughout the nation sharp electricity hikes have for some households soured the home EV charging experience. Before these hikes, the federal Department of Energy found that every new EV costs less than $1,000 a year to “fuel” with electricity.
California has been working on a way to reduce the cost of home EV charging—potentially connected to time-of-use—for several years. More than a third of U.S. EVs are sold in California, so it’s a very important matter for U.S. adoption as a whole. But similar programs in other states will be needed to maintain the momentum established by California.
Source link #Here039s #California #seeks #cut #cost #home #charging
As EV use continues to grow and evolve, we at Knowles Precision Devices are increasingly being asked about managing the self-heating of capacitor components.
In this webinar, we’ll cover why capacitors self-heat, offer tips for managing heat and discuss how factors like spacing, capacitor thickness, air flow and mounting all play a role in heat control, as well as the commonly discussed ESR. We’ll also cover why bigger, thicker capacitors are beneficial and how Knowles Precision Devices’ low loss C0G dielectrics are well suited to provide high temperature AEC-Q200 capacitors required for EV applications.
This webinar will be hosted by CHARGED on Wednesday June 5th, at 12pm US EDT.
A Lion 6 electric truck charging at a Lion facility in Saint-Jerome, Quebec. (Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg News)
[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]
Shares of Lion Electric Co. fell as much as 10.5% after the electric vehicle manufacturer missed estimates for revenue and its cash balance dropped.
The Canadian company, which makes electric buses and trucks, said revenue was $55.5 million, well below the $69.4 million expected by analysts tracked by Bloomberg. It has been hurt by bottlenecks in a government program that helps public transit and school bus operators purchase new vehicles.
More than half of the vehicles in Lion Electric’s $475 million order book are tied to funding from the Canadian government’s Zero-Emission Transit Fund. Delays and challenges with approvals in that program “continue to negatively impact the company’s scheduled deliveries and sales efforts,” Lion Electric said in a filing.
Its order book shrunk to 2,004 units, down about 3% from the end of February.
Some orders may be canceled or renegotiated if they’re not completed before the deadline for sending claims to the ZETF at the end of 2025, which is leading to uncertainty, National Bank Financial analyst Rupert Merer said in a note to investors. But the company may be able to boost orders through U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants and Quebec government subsidies for school buses, he added.
Lion ⚡ announces its financial and operating results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, which ended on March 31, 2024.
📖 Read more about it here: https://t.co/rvMxOklnzY #LionElectric #pressrelease #financialresults #electrification #electric pic.twitter.com/VeiFZZyAyQ
— Lion Electric (@LionElectricCo) May 8, 2024
RELATED: Lion Electric Introduces New Medium-Duty Truck
Merer downgraded his rating on the stock to underperform and lowered his price target to $1 on “elevated risk related to liquidity limitations and continued delays facing the ZETF program.” The shares were around 97 cents in mid-afternoon trading in New York, down nearly 7% from Tuesday’s closing price.
Lion Electric’s cash balance dwindled to $4.8 million from around $30 million at the end of December. The manufacturer, which is 34% owned by Montreal-based holding company Power Corp. of Canada, has been trying to address liquidity concerns. In April, it laid off 120 employees, following layoffs in February and November. It estimates that all of its recent cost-cutting measures will lead to $40 million in savings annually.
Want more news? Listen to today’s daily briefing below or go here for more info:
Southern California truck spotters will have plenty of electric semi trucks to watch out for as Amazon adds fifty Class 8 EVs to its commercial fleet.
The fully electric Volvo semi trucks purchased will haul both heavy cargo containers and customer package loads in Amazon’s first- and middle-mile operations in California. The trucks will join the hundreds of last-mile electric vans from Ford and Rivian that are already delivering packages across the golden state.
These are the first-ever electric trucks in the company’s ocean freight operations, also known as drayage operations. They’ve already started hitting the road at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with a dozen expected to be in service by the end of the year.
“We’re proud to launch our largest fleet of electric heavy-duty vehicles yet in California,” said Udit Madan, vice president of Worldwide Amazon Operations. “Heavy-duty trucking is a particularly difficult area to decarbonize, which makes us all the more excited to have these vehicles on the road today. We’ll use what we learn from deploying these vehicles as we continue to identify and invest in solutions to reduce emissions in our transportation network, and to impact sustainability in the trucking industry more broadly.”
Amazon picks Volvo VNR Electric semi
Volvo VNR Electric heavy-haul Class 8 BEV; via Amazon.
Amazon’s electric semi of choice this time is the Volvo VNR Electric. These class 8 trucks have a range of up to 275 miles with a gross combined vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 82,000 pounds. The heavy-duty Volvo trucks ship with a number of safety features that will be familiar to Volvo Car owners, including active collision mitigation, blind-spot detection, lane departure warning, lane keeping assist, and adaptive cruise control.
Altogether, the Volvo VNRs Amazon just added to its fleet are projected to travel more than 1 million miles each year with zero harmful carbon and diesel particulate emissions coming out of their exhaust pipes.
Electrek’s Take
Volvo VNR Electric in oceanside drayage operation; via Amazon.
On the one hand, Amazon is making a big deal out of buying electric drayage trucks – which isn’t really big a deal in 2024, since that’s a legal requirement at this point. You literally can’t buy a new, internal combustion drayage truck in California as of this year.
That said, I’m a “celebrate every positive change” kind of guy, and the people who live and work around Amazon’s operations will be literally and figuratively breathing easier with these trucks in operation. As such, I’m willing to give California Governor Gavin Newsom a victory lap.
“California continues to lead the way in setting world-leading climate goals. No other state has created the kind of environment where Amazon and other businesses can lead on sustainability and take major steps forward like deploying this fleet of electric trucks,” said Gavin, in a statement. “California’s climate action continues powering our economy and creating jobs.”
The auto research portal says that’s a $50 drop in the monthly payment with $2,050 less required at signing. As a result, the effective cost fell $126, from $547 per month to $421 before taxes & fees.
The Polestar 2 Dual Motor – list price $55,300 – is a much better deal to lease than the Single Motor model – list price $49,900 – because amazingly, they have the same lease price. That’s basically a free upgrade to the Dual Motor model.
The Polestar 2 first made its debut in 2019 as the automaker’s first fully electric car. It launched in mid-2020 and the milestone 150,000th car rolled off the assembly line in August 2023.
The Polestar 2 is expected to be phased out in 2027, and company says the Polestar 7 will succeed it.
Read more: 2024 Polestar 2 first drive: Dual motor shines on the road, but the single motor’s range is a big win
If you’re an electric vehicle owner, charge up your car at home with rooftop solar panels. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing on solar, check outEnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –ad*
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Source link #Polestar #lease #price #drops #month #10k #discount
US EV manufacturer Rivian has received an $827-million incentive package from the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity to expand the capacity of its plant in the state.
The funding will enable Rivian to upgrade the facility over the coming months to manufacture the R2, its midsized SUV model. At the same time, the plant will continue to produce its R1S, R1T, and commercial electric delivery vehicles.
Since production began in 2021, the facility has manufactured over 100,000 EVs, the company said.
“The support from the state will allow us to quickly bring our midsize SUV, R2, to market and provide even greater consumer choice for EVs,” said RJ Scaringe, Rivian founder and CEO.
Elon Musk has given an update with an outline for Tesla’s upcoming Full Self-Driving (FSD) software updates.
With FSD v12 and the upcoming launch of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi, there’s a lot of excitement around Tesla’s self-driving effort.
Musk is again in the too-familiar position of predicting that the automaker is close to releasing a true self-driving system, but the path to get there is still far from clear.
Now the CEO is providing some new comments on the upcoming release schedule for FSD:
“12.4 has almost completely retrained models. The final touches are for comfort, as it sometimes accelerates or brakes too fast for most people’s taste.”
Tesla FSD drivers are currently on 12.3.6 and the .4 update is expected to be a bigger step change, which Musk appears to confirm by saying that Tesla “completely retrained” the models.
The CEO recently said that Tesla is no longer constrained by training compute power after bringing more capacity online, giving the FSD team more opportunities to retrain neural nets with increasingly cleaner data.
Musk then continued about Tesla’s upcoming updates:
12.5 and 12.6 are in various stages of testing. We’re getting into rare, complex situations, for example: going down a narrow, one-way road, encountering a road closure and having to reverse out to find a new route. That closure also needs to be communicated to the rest of the fleet, so you don’t get a whole bunch of Teslas stuck down a road.
There’s no timeline for these upcoming updates beyond the fact that they are currently in internal testing, but Musk did say that v12.4 could come to the Tesla fleet as soon next week.
Electrek’s Take
Again, I’ve been impressed with v12.3.3-4. I’ve just got v12.3.6, but I haven’t had time to test it yet. I plan to do that this weekend. Also, I’ve been saying that if I start seeing decent improvements with the upcoming updates, I think I’ll start to see a clearer path to Tesla finally delivering on its promise – or at least a level 4 self-driving system.
However, as usual, when talking about FSD and especially when praising the system, I think it’s important to remind everyone that the keyword in ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ is ‘Supervised.’ Drivers need to remain attentive at all times and ready to take control.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Source link #Elon #Musk #outlines #upcoming #Tesla #Full #SelfDriving #updates
Nikola delivered 40 Tre hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles to end-customers in the first quarter, exceeding the high end of prior guidance. (Nikola Corp.)
[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]
Losses at Nikola Corp. in the first quarter of 2024 narrowed year-over-year, and executives are more bullish than in previous quarters about the truck maker’s prospects even as production costs soar.
Phoenix-based Nikola posted a Q1 loss of $147.72 million, down 12.6% compared with $169.094 million in the year-ago period. The Q1 loss also was lower than the Q4 2023 loss of $153.6 million.
However, the company posted a Q1 operating loss of $145.36 million, up 14.3% compared with $127.2 million a year earlier, as it continues to build far fewer trucks than its Coolidge, Ariz., manufacturing facility has the capacity for — with the cost per truck soaring. Nikola said its truck sales costs nearly doubled to $61.75 million in Q1 from $33 million a year earlier. The company built 43 trucks in Q1, compared with 63 in the 2023 period.
That said, the company delivered 40 Nikola Tre hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) to end-customers in Q1, exceeding the high end of prior guidance as it previously expected to deliver between 30 and 35 trucks during the quarter. Serial production of the truck began July 31.
Nikola expects its 2024 FCEV truck deliveries to be in a range of 300 to 350 this year, unchanged from the Q4 2023 earnings forecast, executives said.
Efforts to ramp up production at Coolidge after a May 2023 shutdown and retooling continue, but so do attempts to expand the geographic focus of Nikola’s sales, particularly with costs and cash burn remaining elevated.
Newly appointed chief financial officer Thomas Okray, hired March 4, told analysts May 7 that Nikola would widen its sales focus to states outside of California as well as larger national carrier accounts.
“Absent meaningful volume, our profitability will be below our expectations,” said Okray, who formerly has worked for General Motors, Eaton Corp. and Advance Auto Parts.
While Nikola has previously passed on larger national accounts due to pricing concerns, Okray said the company now is chasing those large fleets to build its order book and cut manufacturing costs through scale. Okray acknowledged the company has left business on the table by not catering to national fleets.
Today, another milestone was achieved in Coolidge, AZ! Check out the 100th production Nikola hydrogen fuel cell electric truck officially coming off the line this afternoon at our manufacturing facility. Thank you to our incredible team for making this milestone possible!… pic.twitter.com/mBEpVcfIA3
— Nikola Corporation (@nikolamotor) April 30, 2024
“We need volume. We need to have Nikola trucks running around the road and delivering freight. And once that starts to happen in great numbers, great things will happen,” he said.
“We’re confident that once we get the big national accounts, there will be what [CEO] Steve Girsky] called the ‘fear of missing out’ with the not-as-big national accounts, who see the bigger ones doing this and want to get in on the game,” said Okray.
National accounts are classified by Nikola as carriers with more than 1,000 tractors, which Okray said represents at least 250 potential customers. “It’s a meaningful number of customers to go after and delight,” he said.
Nikola expands hydrogen network with inauguration of second HYLA refueling station in southern California. Read about today’s news here: https://t.co/Xef4J326Uz
— Nikola Corporation (@nikolamotor) May 8, 2024
To service larger accounts, Nikola is speeding the buildout of its Hyla refueling network. Previously, the company said nine stations would be in place in California by the end of 2024. It now expects to provide nine hydrogen fueling points by midyear 2024 and 14 by year-end.
“Going to these national accounts you need that fuel in place — otherwise that discussion doesn’t go as smoothly as you want it to,” said Okray, when asked by an analyst why Nikola was investing resources and capital on the Hyla ecosystem.
“Remember, we’re juggling three balls — we got customers, we got trucks, and we got fuel,” said Girsky. “And at any one time, one of those balls is ahead and one of those balls is behind. Fuel has been behind, and we’re trying to move fuel [from] being a quarter or two behind to being a quarter or two ahead. Not too far, because we don’t want stranded capital out there, but we need it to be ahead. So, we are dropping more fueling locations in place.”
While Nikola’s hydrogen refueling infrastructure expands to support new FCEV customers, owners of the company’s recalled battery-electric models may have to wait longer for the return of their trucks.
Nikola in August recalled all battery-electric Tre semis built or in testing to fix faulty battery packs produced by the company’s one-time subsidiary Romeo Power. During the company’s Q4 2023 earnings call, Girsky said Nikola intended to return all revamped BETs to customers by late Q2 or early Q3 of this year. However, Nikola now expects to complete return by year-end. The company returned the first of the 209 trucks recalled to its owner in Q1, it added.
In addition, Nikola’s plans to deliver 100 new BETs to customers in 2024 are becoming less likely, it said, citing battery supply problems.
“We now expect to opportunistically sell on-hand inventory for revenue in 2025,”the company said.
Want more news? Listen to today’s daily briefing below or go here for more info:
Manufacturing firm Alexander Battery Technologies has commissioned an IPG Photonics EV Flex advanced laser welding machine at its UK facility.
The equipment enables the company to produce large custom battery packs for on-highway vehicles and similar high-voltage applications. It features data logging and weld inspection capabilities to meet industry standards.
The laser welder uses machine vision technology and adaptable optics for the micrometer-precise welds that are key to the integrity and reliability of battery cell connections. Its Laser Depth Detection (LDD) ensures exact control over weld depth, to enhance the structural resilience of large battery packs, the company said.
“Our battery packs, crucial for high-end applications like e-mobility and robotic technology, are now produced with a high level of precision and quality,” said Mark Rutherford, CEO of Alexander Battery Technologies. “Our enhanced production capability has become a cornerstone of our robust growth strategy.”
Just after the reveal of its more affordable R2, R3, and R3X models in March, Rivian announced plans to rejigger its production capacity at its existing plant in Illinois, to accommodate the R2 electric SUV at that plant instead of an even larger one in Georgia that remains on the drawing board.
Recognizing that the R2 is critical to the company’s survival, it included the following in its Q1 financial report, released Tuesday: “We believe launching R2 in Normal will create long-term value by driving greater capital efficiency and reducing risk to the R2 launch and associated ramp.”
With the update, Rivian also revealed exactly what that means in intended production numbers. It now intends to make 155,000 of its R2 electric SUV at the Illinois plant annually, with a total of 215,000 units including its other vehicles (consisting of the R1S, R1T, and EDV.
That’s more R2s in a year than Rivian has delivered cumulatively—all models combined—since it started making deliveries in fall 2021. And it will take an expansion for Normal, which Rivian had previously said was limited to a plant capacity of about 150,000 vehicles per year.
Rivian R2
In the meantime, it says that it’s aiming to improve R1 production efficiency by about 30%.
With R2 included, the shift will represent a huge boost in production versus Rivian’s current levels. The company made 57,232 vehicles in all of 2023, while it made 13,980 vehicles in Q1 2024.
In Rivian’s Q1 investor call accompanying the announcement, Rivian’s CFO Claire McDonough said that the maximum capacity has some flexibility and will break out as up to 85,000 R1 models and up to 65,000 EDVs.
Rivian pointed out that the R1S was the fourth bestselling EV in the U.S. over the first quarter of 2024—after only the Tesla Model Y and Model 3, and the Ford Mustang Mach-E.
Rivian R2
The new midsize platform, called MSP, will be the basis for the R2, R3, and R3X, which Rivian underscored “are expected to deliver amazing performance, utility, and range at a significantly lower price point than our flagship R1.”
Rivian pointed to cost efficiencies at the core of the MSP vehicles, which will include the use of high-pressure die castings, a structural battery pack, and “simplified closures.” It’s also teased that it sees the potential for a model with half the carbon footprint of the R1S by 2030.
The R2 is expected to start around $45,000, with production set to start in the first half of 2026, according to Rivian.
Rivian R3
And then, potentially come the R3 and R3X. Rivian didn’t specify where those models would be built, but it again said that the R3 “has been designed with a high level of commonality with the R2,” and would be available internationally following a North American launch.
Whether that means confirming those models for the now-paused Georgia plant, remains to be seen. Either way, Rivian would need another serious expansion to make room for R3 and, perhaps, more production space for R2. It’s potentially a predicament Rivian might be happy to face.
Source link #Rivian #aims #electric #SUVs #Illinois
