Green Car Congress

MAY 8, 2017

A new study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) estimates heavy fuel oil (HFO) use, HFO carriage, the use and carriage of other fuels, black carbon (BC) emissions, and emissions of other air and climate pollutants for the year 2015, with projections to 2020 and 2025. According to the report, potentially large increases in BC emissions may occur in the Arctic, further exacerbating warming, if ships are diverted from the Panama and Suez canals to take advantage of shorter r

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Green Car Reports

MAY 12, 2017

It's clear that incentives to buy specific cars work best when they can be applied directly at the time of sale. That's why purchase rebates are widely preferred by electric-car advocates to tax credits, which may take up to 15 months to be usable, depending on the timing of the purchase and tax filing. While the federal electric-car incentive is.

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Green Cars News

MAY 10, 2017

It’s fifty years to the day (10 May 1967) since a blood alcohol limit was first introduced for drivers in the UK, yet government figures suggest drink

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Green Car Congress

MAY 12, 2017

As California policymakers consider options to extend the state’s landmark climate change laws to 2030 and beyond, 155 businesses and industry groups sent a letter to California Governor Jerry Brown, Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon in support of the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS)—in its current form and also in its potentially more stringent future state.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

China-based automobile manufacturer Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC Group), the parent company of GAC Motor, has begun construction of a large industrial park for electric and intelligent vehicles as part of its efforts to boost its electric vehicle business. Located in Guangzhou’s Panyu district in China’s southern Guangdong province, the industrial park has a planned area of 5 square kilometers.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 8, 2017

About 756,000 plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) were sold in the world in 2016, with 95% of those sales in China, Europe, the United States, Japan, and Canada, according to figures compiled by the US Department of Energy (DOE). China alone accounted for 42% of sales (316,800 units). China’s 2016 PEV sales grew by 53% from 2015’s 207,000 units—most of which were all-electric vehicles (EV) (244,400 units, or 77%).

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Green Car Congress

MAY 12, 2017

The new Audi A8, scheduled for release in 2018, features a multi-material body structure ( earlier post ) consisting of more than 40% steel. That’s a marked turnaround from the all-aluminum body-in-white which Audi developed for the A8 in 1994, in which steel was essentially used for the B-pillars alone, and accounted for about 8% of the body structure.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 11, 2017

TM4 and Cummins are jointly developing a plug-in hybrid powertrain for Class 7/8 transit buses that can reduce fuel consumption by at least 50% compared to conventional hybrid buses. The project aims to provide transit authorities with a flexible, more efficient drivetrain and a longer range zero-tailpipe-emission capability for inner-city routes. The range-extended electric drive system comprises a gen-set (Cummins’ Euro 2019 B4.5 diesel engine coupled with TM4’s LSG130 electric generator); an

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Green Car Congress

MAY 10, 2017

Wrightspeed Inc., a developer and manufacturer of heavy-duty range-extended electric vehicle (REV) powertrains ( earlier post ), has partnered with AxleTech International, a leading manufacturer of heavy-duty specialty drivetrain systems. The partnership integrates decades of axle engineering experience into Wrightspeed’s electrification technology to meet growing demand from the company’s customers and partners, including Mack Trucks and New Zealand Bus (NZB).

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Green Car Congress

MAY 12, 2017

Gevo has been selected to collaborate with Argonne National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) received funding to develop a predictive octane blending model for isobutanol and gasoline blendstocks for oxygenated blending (BOBs). While it is known that isobutanol increases octane when blended into BOBs, the effect is non-linear, and dependent on a BOB’s properties.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 11, 2017

The California Energy Commission awarded more than $24 million in grants today for clean energy freight transportation projects in Los Angeles and Long Beach and more than $12 million for other clean transportation projects. The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) and Long Beach Harbor Department received $10 million each and the Los Angeles Harbor Department received $4.5 million to conduct field demonstrations of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and cargo handling equipment tha

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Green Car Congress

MAY 10, 2017

Chemists from the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and their collaborators have definitively identified the active sites of a catalyst commonly used for making methanol from CO 2. The results, published in the journal Science , resolve a longstanding debate about exactly which catalytic components take part in the chemical reactions—and thus which should be the focus of efforts to boost performance.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 10, 2017

Global fertilizer company Yara and technology group Kongsberg are parterning to build the first autonomous, electric container feeder ship. Container feeder ships collect shipping containers from different ports and transport them to central container terminals, at which they are loaded onto larger container ships or onto rail. Named YARA Birkeland after Yara’s founder Kristian Birkeland, the vesselwill will reduce diesel-powered truck haulage by some 40,000 journeys a year, the partners estimat

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

The US Department of Energy is awarding nearly $3.9 million for 13 projects designed to stimulate the use of high performance supercomputing in US manufacturing. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office’s High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) program enables innovation in US manufacturing through the adoption of high performance computing (HPC) to advance applied science and technology relevant to manufacturing. ( Earlier post.).

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Green Car Congress

MAY 8, 2017

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has entered into an exclusive license agreement with Forge Nano to commercialize NREL’s patented battery materials and systems capable of operating safely in high-stress environments. A particular feature of the technology is the encapsulation of materials with solid electrolyte coatings that can be designed to meet the increasingly demanding needs of any battery application.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 12, 2017

Researchers at Brunel University London are developing a new generation of ultra-light car parts that will reduce fuel costs and carbon emissions. The three-year, £7.5-million (US$9.6-million) project is a partnership driven by Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST), Jaguar Land Rover and others. Liquid metal engineering experts will work on it from Brunel’s Advanced Metals Casting Centre (AMCC) and Advanced Metals Processing Centre (AMPC) at its Uxbridge campus in West Lon

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Green Car Congress

MAY 12, 2017

Groupe PSA, Direct Energie, Enel, Nuvve, Proxiserve and the Technical University of Denmark have launched the GridMotion project with the aim of evaluating possible savings achieved by real-life electric vehicle (EV) users through the implementation of smart charging and discharging strategies for EVs. An electric vehicle driver’s electricity bill could be reduced, with no impact on transportation use, by shifting charging times from periods when electricity prices are higher to periods when ele

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Green Car Congress

MAY 12, 2017

Alberta Innovates has teamed up with Natural Resources (NRCan) and industry partners to take three clean oil sands technologies to commercial demonstration. This announcement is a result of NRCan’s Oil and Gas Clean Tech Program. NRCan is contributing $21 million and Alberta Innovates is investing $5.2 million, for a total of $26.2 million over two years.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 12, 2017

Continental is eagerly awaiting today’s decision by the Germany’s Bundesrat regarding changes to the German Road Traffic Act. This would make Germany one of the first countries in the world to obtain a legal framework for the introduction of highly and fully automated vehicles. Further technological development depends on a modern legal framework. —Kurt Lehmann, Corporate Technology Officer (CTO) at Continental. 33 years after the first electronic brake system was introduced, this change i

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Green Car Congress

MAY 11, 2017

An increasing number of travelers are using free-floating carsharing from car2go. In the first quarter of 2017, the number of cross-border rentals increased by 80% to 33,000 journeys. This figure includes both business travel as well as tourist visits in European car2go locations. The sharing of vehicles in Germany by customers from other European locations is popular.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 11, 2017

MotivPower Systems, in partnership with Type-A school bus manufacturer Trans Tech, is bringing electric school buses to the Sacramento, California region. A $7.5-million grant from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) will support the building of 13 battery-electric school buses as part of the Sacramento Regional Zero-Emission School Bus Deployment Project.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 11, 2017

BorgWarner supplies its sprag one-way clutch for the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, the first FCA US LLC mass-produced plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and the industry’s first PHEV minivan. ( Earlier post.) Depending on driving mode, BorgWarner’s one-way clutch enables the secondary motor to generate electricity or work with the traction-drive motor to transfer torque through the differential to the front wheels.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 11, 2017

Renewable Energy Group will acquire approximately 82 acres of land at its Geismar, Louisiana biorefinery from Lion Copolymer. REG has agreed to purchase the land it has leased for its Geismar operations, as well as more than 61 adjacent acres, which the company plans to improve and utilize to support existing production capacity and future expansion opportunities.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 11, 2017

Electric bus manufacturer Proterra has introduced the Proterra Diagnostic Tool and the Proterra Cold Weather Package to its growing suite of products and services. The Diagnostic Tool is the only diagnostic platform that allows technicians to access all vehicle systems in one place, with one intuitive interface. . A simple dashboard displays the vehicle’s functional layout, enabling users to monitor operation levels, see faults and resolve many issues directly through the interface without physi

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Green Car Congress

MAY 10, 2017

The Volkswagen Group has invested some €3 billion (US$3.3 billion) in alternative drive technologies over the past five years and will triple this amount in the course of the next five years, said Matthias Müller, CEO of Volkswagen AG, at the Group’s Annual General Meeting in Hanover. “ The future is electric. We intend to be the Nº 1 in e-mobility by 2025 ,” said Müller at the meeting.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 10, 2017

Nitin Gadkari, India’s Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, recently inaugurated Praj’s cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant near Pune, India. The plant is India’s first integrated bio-refinery, built to showcase Praj’s proprietary process technology to produce ethanol from agricultural waste. The demonstration plant has the capacity to produce 1 million liters (264,000 gallons US) of ethanol annually from a variety of biomass such as rice and wheat straw, cotton stalks, sugarca

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Green Car Congress

MAY 10, 2017

Turkey-based Karsan will introduce its first “Buy America” compliant vehicle at the upcoming UITP World Global Transport Summit, 15-17 May at Palais des Congrès de Montréal, QC Canada. Having successfully completed Altoona testing, the 40' (12m), CNG-powered vehicle is currently completing FMVSS/CMVSS certification and will be ready for sale before the end of 2017.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 10, 2017

The 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee mid-size SUV has become the second gasoline-driven, US-made, US-brand vehicle to qualify for Japan’s Eco-Car tax break. The 2016 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk was first. Jeep is Japan’s top-selling US vehicle brand; sales hit a record high of 9,388 in 2016—a 31.7% jump, year-over-year. Equipped with versions of the award-winning Pentastar V-6 engine, the 2017 Grand Cherokee and its predecessor met the strict fuel-efficiency and emissions standards allowing them to be

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

Global Bioenergies is partnering with Clariant, INEOS, IPSB, TechnipFMC and Linz University in a €16.4-million (US$18-million) project to convert currently poorly valorized residual wheat straw into second-generation renewable isobutene for subsequent conversion into oligomers usable in lubricants, rubbers, solvents, plastics, or fuels. The 48-month project will receive €9.8 million (US$10.7 million) from the EU’s Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking ( BBI-JU ), with the remainder being contri

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Ames Laboratory have discovered a method for making smaller, more efficient intermetallic nanoparticles for fuel cell applications, and which also use less of the expensive precious metal platinum. A paper on the work is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The researchers succeeded by overcoming some of the technical challenges presented in the fabrication of the platinum-zinc nanoparticles with an ordered lattice struct

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

Toyota Motor Corporation has begun accepting applications today for this year’s Toyota Environmental Activities Grant Program , which is designed to support environmental revitalization and conservation activities aimed at sustainable development both in Japan and overseas. Toyota established the annual program in 2000 in commemoration of Toyota’s receipt of the Global 500 Award in 1999 from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); this year marks the program’s 18 th year.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

ChargePoint, the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) charging network, continues to advance its strategic European expansion ( earlier post ) with a new partnership with a major customer. InstaVolt, a brand committed to deploying the latest DC rapid charge technology and building a premium EV network across the UK, has signed a contract to purchase more than 200 ChargePoint rapid charge systems, making long distance EV travel easier for UK drivers.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has secured a patent for technology that allows unmanned aerial systems to cooperate with unmanned ground vehicles, providing more information about the surrounding environment and enabling safer maneuvers. The technology has immediate military applications, and the system also is helping SwRI to develop future commercial solutions for remote inspection systems.

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Green Car Congress

MAY 9, 2017

Materials researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Switzerland have, in collaboration with the Université Grenoble Alpes (France), developed a simple method that can improve the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries by 25-30%. In a study published in the journal Nature Energy , the team reported that the additional of silicon dioxide (SiO 2 , quartz) powder to the liquid electrolyte slows the rapid capacity loss that can plague lithium-sulfur batteries.

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