Weekly-ish News - Episode 27 (September 19, 2021)

What's the Alternative?

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to find me on Twitter @archduketyler

Electric Vehicles:

GM is allegedly asking owners of Chevy Bolts not to park within 50ft (15m) of other vehicles.

• I didn't see this recommendation on GM's website, but it was originally reported by Bloomberg and has been widely reported since.

Lucid Air Dream Edition achieves a 520mi (840km) EPA range.

Rivian is officially rolling production vehicles off the line, but we don't know when deliveries start yet.

Ford has dedicated $250m more towards their F-150 Lightning efforts, which will provide 450 new jobs.

• This goes hand-in-hand with their recent announcement of increased production targets for the F-150 Lightning.

The F-150 Lightning appears to still be on track for Spring 2022 deliveries and pre-production vehicles have been made.

Consumer Reports wrote a review of the new Tesla Model S steering yoke. They didn't like it.

Bridgestone is partnering with EVBox to deploy 3500 new EV chargers across Europe.

• This will be a 5-year deployment.
• The project will begin in France and Italy before expanding into the UK, Germany, Poland, Spain, and other European countries.
• The chargers will be a mix of DC Fast Chargers and "regular chargers" (presumably Level 2).

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has continued work on their megawatt-scale charging project, going up to 3.75MW!

• The charging standard would provide electricity up to 1250V and 3000A, which is a bonkers amount of power.
• The system is called MCS or Megawatt Charging System.
• It's a partnership with several industry members and NREL.
• This work will be incredibly important for heavy-duty electrification.

Another banger of a video by Engineering Explained that looks at whether it's better to keep your current car, or buy a new (more efficient) vehicle.

Energy:

Hyundai is going to deploy some battery storage in Texas using old EV batteries.

• The article is *very* scant on details.
• They say the battery setup will "store a half-megawatt power, enough to power some 100 homes for a day".
• Hyundai has previously stated that they want to have "lease" programs for their batteries so they can have more control over the batteries' lives and improve reuse/recycling. (Ep. 5)

A proposed 320MW solar farm in Kansas (which would be the largest in Kansas) is facing pushback over people trying to keep their idyllic views.