A team at University of Science and Technology of China has developed a new material that could potentially help lower the production costs of solid state lithium batteries and accelerate their commercialization into EVs. The new material, lithium zirconium chloride, offers a reduced material cost and necessary performance, all while remaining stable.
GKN Automotive, a maker of electric driveline technology, is accelerating its development of next-generation eDrive technologies. These future 800 V systems are already at advanced stages of development—GKN Automotive is testing them in real-world conditions, and working with global OEMs to prepare the systems for production.
GKN says its future eDrive technologies promise faster charging times and superior performance, as well as greater systems efficiencies, which could enable increased driving range and/or reductions in vehicle cost, complexity and weight.
GKN’s work with Formula E as a partner to Jaguar Racing is contributing to its rapid development of next-generation eDrive systems. “Constant testing to improve efficiency, performance and extending the range of batteries in the ultra-competitive world of electric motorsport creates a direct link from race to road,” says GKN. “Cutting-edge developments currently being developed for Jaguar Racing will likely be available on near-future road cars in just three years.”
“These high-tech 800 V systems will create faster-charging cars with better battery range, improved driving performance and even greater efficiencies,” said GKN Automotive CEO Liam Butterworth. “GKN Automotive intends to continue delivering an increasingly electrified future.”
Sustainable energy provider Gridserve has unveiled plans to develop a £100-million EV infrastructure project in the UK. The Gridserve Electric Highway will offer a network of over 50 electric hubs, each with between six and twelve 350 kW chargers. Ten of these hubs are scheduled to go into service this year. The company also plans to install an additional 300 rapid chargers at motorway service stations.
Gridserve recently took over an existing public charging network that was developed by a company called Ecotricity.
“Anyone who’s driving an electric car in the UK will be aware of what was called the Electric Highway,” said Robert Llewellyn, host of the YouTube series Fully Charged. “It was a very brave first step. They were first out of the gate in many ways. They put a charging network across the entire country.”
Unfortunately, Ecotricity wasn’t able to maintain the Electric Highway (several too-early public charging networks around the world have suffered the same fate), but the company laid down a foundation for Gridserve to build upon.
Within six weeks of acquiring the Electric Highway, Gridserve has installed new 60 kW+ chargers at over 50 locations, and is equipping new sites at the rate of around two per day. It plans to replace the entire network of 300 old Ecotricity chargers by September, and to enable every type of EV to charge with contactless payment options.
The company’s first Motorway Electric Hub is a bank of twelve 350 kW Gridserve chargers alongside twelve Tesla Superchargers, which was opened to the public in April at Ruby Services. This will be the blueprint for the company’s future sites.
“Gridserve is eliminating charging anxiety and making driving electric an enjoyable, ultra-convenient and stress-free experience,” said CEO Toddington Harper. “We’re working at a phenomenal pace to roll out cutting-edge charging infrastructure, and will continue to move heaven and earth to install new chargers en masse in as many locations as we can, and as quickly as possible.”
As commercial fleets electrify, they are finding that they need expert help to design, install and operate their charging infrastructure. During previous tech revolutions, third-party contractors emerged to provide turnkey services to companies for things like data centers and solar installations. Now innovative companies are meeting a similar demand in the fleet charging realm.
Charged had a chat with AMPLY Power CEO Vic Shao (see the feature article in the upcoming issue of Charged), and we asked him what challenges a typical fleet manager would have to face as they electrify. “By now we’ve touched hundreds of fleets all across the country, and it seems to always boil down to three fundamental issues,” he told us.
“The first is the cost of electricity,” said Shao. “Fleet operators are used to a scenario with diesel or gasoline, that pricing goes up or down by, let’s say, 20% in a given year. With electricity, it’s fundamentally a much more volatile fuel pricing structure. In California, electricity costs for charging fleets could be up or down 400% in a single day. And there are something like 2,000 electric utilities across the country, all with their own individual tariff structures, time-of-use schedules, demand charge rates and whatnot. So, it’s highly complex—it’s like going to a gas station and it could be $3 a gallon, or it could be $12 a gallon, and it just depends on all of these extenuating circumstances.
“Now, if you are a fleet operator, and fueling cost is your second-highest operating expense, right behind drivers, well then, if you don’t know what your costs are going to be next week, next month, next year, you’re going to have a really hard time committing to a large production-scale rollout. You’re kind of stuck in pilot mode, and that’s what we see all the time. A lot of fleets that have tried electric, they don’t have a path to scale because of this fueling price issue.
Without exception, every single one of them operates a mixed fleet, with mixed vehicle and charging hardware sets. They need to have an operating system that ties all these hardware sets together.
“The second big issue is that, across these hundreds of fleets that we have touched, we have yet to come across a single fleet that standardizes on one OEM’s products—one make and model of electric vehicle, one charging hardware OEM. Without exception, every single one of them operates a mixed fleet, with mixed vehicle and charging hardware sets. They need to have an operating system that ties all these hardware sets together, that will deliver reliability, charge readiness at the time that they need the vehicles to roll off the lot.
AMPLY Power CEO Vic Shao
“And then the last issue—a big issue—is that it’s not a five-minute fuel-up anymore. No matter how you slice it, it’s going to be several hours of dwell time, so that means, for mission-critical operations, you really need to schedule the charging into the daily workflows of these vehicles. That means dispatch system integration, telematics integration, back-office ERP [enterprise resource planning] integration.
“All three of these problems that I narrated are software-related. It’s not hardware, it’s software-related challenges, so what is required for the industry is an operating system that addresses all these points, and that’s essentially what AMPLY has been working on ever since our founding. We call it a charge management system, and it’s an operating system that tackles all three of these issues head-on. And the end output is that for all of our fleets, the charging infrastructure is 99.9% uptime available, robust with failovers and redundancy, and delivering energy savings versus an unmanaged scenario.
FEV has announced a long-term agreement with Hyliion to support design, development, integration and validation of its Electric Range Extender (ERX) for Class 8 tractor-trailer applications. FEV will also develop the controls strategy for the propulsion system and provide vehicle integration for OEM driver-assistance features, controls and driver interfaces.
Hyliion’s Hypertruck ERX powertrain combines a renewable natural gas (RNG) on-board generator with a series of lightweight batteries to power an electrified drivetrain.
Patrick Sexton, CTO at Hyliion said, “The ERX powertrain has similar range and faster acceleration than a comparable diesel solution, while providing a significant total cost of ownership (TCO) benefit.”
In DK Kim’s first report from Korea, he gets a sneak peek at Hyundai’s incredible Ioniq 6, the production version of the Hyundai Prophecy Concept that was revealed in 2020.
Su Qing, the head of autonomous driving at Huawei, has been removed from his position after making some controversial comments about Tesla — going as far as claiming that Tesla vehicles are killing people.
Rivian last week confirmed plans for a second factory just days after confirming delivery delays for its R1T electric pickup truck and R1S electric SUV. The important piece of news was contained in an announcement of a $2.5 billion funding round, with previous Rivian investors Amazon and Ford contributing. “This infusion of funds from trusted…
Source: Hybrid and Electric Car News and Reviews
Rivian last week confirmed plans for a second factory just days after confirming delivery delays for its R1T electric pickup truck and R1S electric SUV. The important piece of news was contained in an announcement of a $2.5 billion funding round, with previous Rivian investors Amazon and Ford contributing. “This infusion of funds from trusted…
