The boxy Mercedes G-Wagen will go electric. Trump’s ethanol push isn’t actually making it to many pumps. Lucid moves earth to build Air. Volvo is using tech from cryptocurrencies to track its raw materials for batteries. And is the German auto industry falling behind? This and more today at Green Car Reports.
In the interest of responsible sourcing of raw materials like cobalt for battery production, Volvo is turning to a blockchain-based traceability program that maintains a “digital ledger.”
It seems the strong boost that the Trump administration gave to potentially more smog-prone gasoline with higher ethanol levels isn’t actually changing much about what consumers see at the pump. That’s because state laws, push-back from consumers, and costly pump retrofits are keeping it away.
Mercedes-Benz has a whole suite of electric vehicles on the way—most of them via its EV-focused electric brand. Last week Daimler CEO Ola Källenius revealed that even the brash, boxy G-Wagen SUV—long one of the company’s top gas-guzzlers—is due to go electric.
Lucid is readying the site of its Arizona factory for production of its Air electric sedan—with production to be overseen by former Tesla production VP Peter Hochholdinger. Bear in mind too that Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson was the chief engineer of the original Model S.
The first production Lexus electric vehicle—likely to be a version of the Lexus UX dubbed the UX 300e—is due this month at the Guangzhou auto show.
And over the weekend, we considered a lengthy, well-crafted editorial about how Tesla, Google, and other tech companies may have gotten a huge leap ahead of traditional automakers. What made this all the more unexpected and compelling was that it came from Germany’s Spiegel, and the industry it’s pointing to as in danger of being left behind is the German auto industry.
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