After three years of construction and limited operations, the next-generation Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center production facility in Singapore is officially online and fully functioning. Announced on November 20, the 935,380-square-foot, seven-floor facility relies on 200 robots to handle over 60 percent of all “repetitive and laborious” responsibilities, allowing human employees to focus on “more creative and productive duties,” according to the company.

In a key departure from traditional conveyor-belt factories, HMGIC centers on what the South Korean vehicle manufacturer calls a “cell-based production system” alongside a “digital twin Meta-Factory.” Instead of siloed responsibilities for automated machinery and human workers, the two often cooperate using technology such as virtual and augmented reality. As Hyundai explains, while employees simulate production tasks in a digital space using VR/AR, for example, robots will physically move, inspect, and assemble various vehicle components.

[Related: Everything we love about Hyundai’s newest EV.]

By combining robotics, AI, and the Internet of Things, Hyundai believes the HMGIC can offer a “human-centric manufacturing innovation system,” Alpesh Patel, VP and Head of the factory’s Technology Innovation Group, said in Monday’s announcement. 

Atop the HMGIC building is an over 2000-feet-long vehicle test track, as well as a robotically assisted “Smart Farm” capable of growing up to nine different crops. While a car factory vegetable garden may sound somewhat odd, it actually compliments the Singapore government’s ongoing “30 by 30” initiative.

Due to the region’s rocky geology, Singapore can only utilize about one percent of its land for agriculture—an estimated 90 percent of all food in the area must be imported. Announced in 2022, Singapore’s 30 by 30 program aims to boost local self-sufficiency by increasing domestic yields to 30 percent of all consumables by the decade’s end using a combination of sustainable urban growth methods. According to Hyundai’s announcement, the HMGICS Smart Farm is meant to showcase farm productivity within compact settings—while also offering visitors some of its harvested crops. The rest of the produce will be donated to local communities, as well as featured on the menu at a new Smart Farm-to-table restaurant scheduled to open at the HMGICS in spring 2024.

[Related: Controversial ‘robotaxi’ startup loses CEO.]

HMGICS is expected to produce up to 30,000 electric vehicles annually, and currently focuses on the IONIQ 5, as well as its autonomous robotaxi variant. Beginning in 2024, the facility will also produce Hyundai’s IONIQ 6. If all goes according to plan, the HMGICS will be just one of multiple cell-based production system centers.

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The SUV market is big business, especially in the United States. Even supercar manufacturers like Lamborghini are making five-seat SUVs and thriving. Aston Martin’s DBX crossover represents roughly half of its overall sales. And that’s only on the gas-powered side. All-electric SUVs are just starting to find their groove, and vehicles like the three-row Kia EV9 SUV and Volkswagen ID.Buzz “microbus” are on their way to the U.S. market in 2024. Now, emerging luxury EV builder Lucid just announced the Gravity, a seven-seat SUV with an astonishing claim of 440 miles of all-electric range.

The SUV boasts other niceties like acceleration from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than 3.5 seconds, 1,500 pounds of payload (what it can carry inside) and the ability to tow 6,000 pounds. To compare, Tesla’s Model X can tow 5,000 pounds, haul 1,065 pounds inside the vehicle, and can go for 348 miles with the long-range package.

Here’s how Lucid is pushing other EV automakers to increase range and capability.

Gunning for Tesla

Lucid started producing its first model, the Air, in 2021 after more than a dozen years developing battery technology. Launched with 520 miles of EPA-estimated all-electric range and up to 1,111 horsepower, the Air earned rave reviews from users and journalists alike. Luxurious and uncommonly aerodynamic (more about that below), the Air’s starting price is roughly the same as a Tesla Model S. However, the Lucid model gets 115 more miles of range and  91 more horsepower than the Tesla.

If it sounds like an intrastate basketball rivalry, it may be partially attributed to the cross-pollination across the executive level. Before joining Lucid in 2013, CEO Peter Rawlinson spent three years at Tesla as a top engineer. Rawlinson led the engineering team for the Model S; when he left Tesla, he emerged swinging with the Lucid Air sedan. 

The company’s latest accomplishment is the Gravity SUV, and Lucid says “it can achieve 440 miles of range with a battery pack a little more than half the size of some of our battery-hungry competitors.” For context, a GMC Hummer EV’s battery pack alone weighs in at a hefty 2,818 pounds on the GM’s Ultium platform. 

The entire Lucid Air weighs 5,203 pounds and the Gravity is expected to tip the scales north of 6,000 pounds. Sure, it’s relatively heavier than some three-row SUVs such as the Kia Telluride and Lexus GX, but it’s on par with others like the Grand Wagoneer. 

Advanced battery technology 

Carrying two electric motors, the Gravity is touted as more efficient than its competitors. Rawlinson says the Gravity’s smaller and lighter technology battery pack means consuming fewer precious metals and minerals and results in less energy to charge and less pressure upon the grid. 

The Lucid Air is available with two battery packs–92 kilowatt hours or 112 kilowatt hours–and while Lucid is being vague about its exact specs for now, we expect the Gravity to utilize the larger 112 kWh version. For scale, the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Escalade IQ use packs over 200 kWh. 

Justin Berkowitz, Lucid’s senior manager for technology PR, says the company offers “the most efficient electric motors on the market and ultra-high voltage power electronics (over 900 volts compared to many EVs at 400-500).” All of these are designed, patented, engineered, and manufactured in-house by Lucid, and the company also develops the software powering it all. 

The stellar range is also a result of Lucid’s proprietary winding technique that produces a denser magnetic field along with several other innovations that create a super-compact package. The company holds eight patents related to the motor’s windings and cooling, and continues to find ways to squeeze as much copper into the motor stator as possible to generate big energy in a small package.

Aerodynamics are also a key, and Lucid says the Gravity has a drag coefficient of under 0.24. The lower the number, the more efficient the result. Hyundai’s three-row gas-powered Palisade has a 0.33 coefficient of drag, and the upcoming Kia EV9 hits 0.28. Tesla says its Model X sits at 0.24, so Lucid is sliding just below that with the Gravity. It’s still not as aerodynamic as the five-passenger Hyundai Ioniq 6, which has an impressive 0.21 drag coefficient. Give them time, though. Lucid is poised for major growth. 

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To understand how electric cars work, it helps to keep in mind the ways in which they’re similar to regular gas-burning vehicles. They’re cousins from different generations, not machines from different universes. If you drive, you know the drill: Press down on the pedal with your right foot to get moving, point the vehicle where you want to go, maybe put on some music, and try not to crash. 

“An EV has four wheels,” says Chad Kirchner, the founder of evpulse.com, a news and information site about electric vehicles. “There’s a start button, there’s an accelerator pedal, there’s a brake. In a lot of ways, an EV—and the EV driving experience—is identical to a gas-powered experience.” 

That said, there are key differences in engineering, design, maintenance, and performance between electric cars and internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.   

Electric car battery system 101

To begin with, an ICE vehicle relies on a tank of gasoline or diesel to get the energy it needs. An EV, on the other hand, requires a battery system, which consists of a multitude of individual cells. And just like a gas tank, the battery cells store energy. 

“But [a battery cell] also produces power—and the power is a result of the voltage of that particular cell, and the current it’s able to output,” says Charles Poon, the global director of Electrified Systems Engineering at Ford, which makes the Mach-E, the F-150 Lightning, and the E-Transit electric vehicles. He describes the battery as the car’s heart.

Battery design in EVs will differ between automakers, and one of the main ways is the shape of their cells. To make things a bit more tangible, consider the Mach-E, an electric car that descends from a famous line of gas-burning vehicles that gave birth to the term “pony car.” The cells in the Mach-E are in pouch form, whereas other batteries in the market have cylindrical cells (Tesla uses those) or prismatic cells. A Mach-E battery system has hundreds of cells. 

[Related: This giant bumper car is street-legal and enormously delightful]

The lithium-ion-based electric car batteries can also have slightly different chemistries. For example, a Mach-E can come with nickel, cobalt, and manganese (NCM) batteries or lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. The former are known for being able to hold power for longer and performing well in cold temperatures, while LFP batteries are less expensive and can charge up faster. 

How do electric motors work? 

The term AC/DC is not only the name of an Australian rock band, but also describes two forms of electricity: alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). Both types of power are important for electric cars to work.

The electricity coming out of your wall outlet at home is in AC form, but batteries store their energy in DC form. Because of this, electric cars have a component known as a charger that takes the AC power flowing into the vehicle and switches it to the more battery-friendly DC. A quicker way to charge up one of these cars is by using a DC fast charger, which provides the car with juice in DC form, so the car doesn’t have to convert it. 

“It bypasses the AC charger [in the car], and goes directly into the battery,” Poon explains. 

[Related: What an electric vehicle’s MPGe rating really means]

So the batteries store power in DC form, but there’s a twist: electric motors work with AC power. This means the vehicle has to transform electricity yet again, which it does using a traction inverter that converts the DC back into AC. “And then that is what actually ends up spinning the electric motor, producing power,” Poon adds.  

There are two key components in an electric motor: a stator and a rotor. The rotor sits inside the stator and rotates using the wonders of magnetism that kick in when AC power hits the motor. 

“We send what we call three phases of alternating current through a stator that has wires that are wound radially, sequentially, around the stator,” he explains. “And we are able to create a rotating magnetic field—so the magnetic field rotates, and it pulls the rotor along with it.” 

And voilá! After passing through some gearing, that rotation turns the wheels on your electric vehicle. 

While an ICE car has one engine, Kirchner, from evpulse.com, notes that electric vehicles in the market can have as many as four motors. For example, the rear-wheel drive version of a Mach-E uses one motor, while the all-wheel drive version uses two—one for the front and one for the back. At the other end of the spectrum, a Rivian R1T can have as many as one motor per wheel. 

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source]

The pros and cons of driving an electric vehicle

Could you imagine if taking your foot off the gas pedal in an ICE vehicle magically made more gasoline appear in the tank? Something like that happens in an EV.

This cool trick is called regenerative braking, and allows drivers to start slowing down not by pushing the brake pedal as in regular cars, but by taking their foot off the accelerator. Don’t worry—that brake pedal is still there when you need it. In one-pedal or regen mode, things happen in reverse: the wheels turn the motors so they act like generators and send power back to the batteries. 

“You are actually taking the vehicle momentum and putting it back in as chemical energy into the battery,” Poon says.

Mach-E Chief Engineer Donna Dickson says one-pedal driving still remains an unfamiliar technique for drivers, but notes that it helps prevent wear on the brakes while also adding battery charge.

The power source is not the only difference between electric cars and ICE vehicles. There are other details that set the two apart. For example, Kirchner says that while combustion engines have to rev a little to make torque, EV motors make all of their torque from a complete standstill. This results in great acceleration. “Around town, even electric cars that you would not consider sporty by looking at them feel very quick, which makes them excellent city cars,” he continues. 

Another benefit of driving an electric vehicle is that they need less maintenance. There’s no need for an oil change, although their heavier weight means their tires experience more wear and tear. 

On the downside, you can’t charge up the batteries as rapidly or as easily as gasoline goes into a tank, but if you can charge at home, you have a unique perk: “You start every morning with a full tank,” says Kirchner. But that doesn’t always come as easy as it sounds. 

[Related: How does a jet engine work? By running hot enough to melt its own innards.]

“If you are an EV owner, it’s pretty much imperative at this point to have someplace to plug in and charge overnight,” says Paul Waatti, manager of industry analysis for AutoPacific. However, “there’s a good portion of America that doesn’t live in a single-family home.” People residing in condos, apartments, and other residential setups will have a more challenging time finding a charger to plug in their cars overnight. As for public chargers, Waatti says those networks are “very far off from being seamless at this point,” meaning there are too few and many don’t work properly.

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To put it very simply: the Rimac Nevera electric hypercar is very, very fast. With 1,194-horsepower, a top speed of 256 MPH, and the ability to accelerate faster than an F1 racer, it’s not just one of the most powerful EVs in the world—it’s one of the most powerful cars, period. The $2.1 million Nevera has dashed past so many world records at this point that its makers are now forced to get creative in setting new ones. And they certainly have, judging from a new video released on November 7.

In addition to all its other feats, the Rimac Nevera is apparently now also the Guinness World Record holder for the “fastest speed in reverse.” How fast did it take to earn yet another laurel? 171.34 MPH—certainly an intense speed in any direction.

[Related: Behind the wheel of the bruisingly quick Rimac Nevera hypercar.]

On Tuesday, Nevera chief program engineer Matija Renić revealed that the new stunt actually began as a joke during the hypercar’s development stage.

“We kind of laughed it off,” Renić said via the company’s announcement. Renić noted its cooling and stability systems, not to mention aerodynamics, simply weren’t engineered for putting the pedal to the floor while in reverse. “But then, we started to talk about how fun it would be to give it a shot.”

Simulations indicated a Nevera likely would top 150 MPH while driven backwards, but there was no way to be sure just how stable it would remain while blazing down the road. “We were entering uncharted territory,” Renić added—an understatement if there ever was one.

But as these multiple videos attest, the Nevera is certainly up to the task should it ever improbably become necessary. According to the company’s record-setting test driver, pulling off the stunt “definitely took some getting used to.”

“You’re facing straight out backwards watching the scenery flash away from you faster and faster, feeling your neck pulled forwards in almost the same sensation you would normally get under heavy braking,” Goran Drndak said via Rimac’s November 7 announcement. “You’re moving the steering wheel so gently, careful not to upset the balance, watching for your course and your braking point out the rear-view mirror, all the while keeping an eye on the speed.” Although being “almost completely unnatural” to the car’s design, Drndak said the Nevera “breezed” through the stress test.

It’s hard to imagine what’s left for the Nevera to achieve, but if the latest record is any indication, chances are Rimac designers will think of something.

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In Sweden, the word lagom represents the Goldilocks-esque concept of “not too much, not too little, but just right.” Swedish automaker Volvo had this concept in mind when it created the brand’s newest model, the EX30. At the same time, the electric car had to meet a major objective: have the lowest carbon footprint of any Volvo model to date.

Volvo says that the EX30’s “total carbon footprint” is 25 percent less CO2 than the electrified versions of its C40 and XC40 models, in line with the automaker’s stated goal to cut CO2 emissions per car by 40 percent by 2025. To achieve this, they took into account the manufacturing processes, worked to simplify its design, and reduced the materials it needs. Even the exterior colors like Moss Yellow and Cloud Blue superficially reflect Volvo’s Earth-friendly goals. 

What’s more, the vehicle will cost less than $40,000, which in a world of extra-pricey EVs (the average price for an EV was $53,469 in July of this year, according to Cox Automotive), is impressive. Starting at $36,245 (including destination fees), the EX30 is an attractive package.

Here’s how Volvo achieved its sustainability goals while aiming for that “just right” feel.

Sustainable interior ‘rooms’ 

The company integrated recycled PVC collected from house window frames, PET plastic from single-use water bottles, plant materials like flax fibers, and even discarded denim threads from the blue jeans recycling process into the EX30’s interior. 

Buyers of the new EX30 can choose between four interior expressions for the vehicle. Volvo calls the interior themes “rooms” because people spend so much time in their car, Volvo color and materials designer Camille Audra explained to PopSci. 

Two interior rooms employ recycling themes: they are called indigo, which is made from denim like the blue jeans you may be wearing right now, and breeze, a patterned knit. And two feature natural materials: they are called mist (flax fiber) and pine (tree resin).

“This is inspired from fashion,” Audra says. “People wear blue jeans everywhere in the world.”

Old denim is often recycled into things like pet bed inserts, building insulation, and thermal packaging insulation.  During the process, Audra says, the short fibers that are left over could become waste, but in this case, are instead collected and woven into a new material.

Combined with cellulose (also a plant-based material) to give strength to the material, the fibers become a durable surface for the dashboard and door panels. Bonus: there are no zippers or button flies to get in the way. 

Along with blue jeans material, flax fiber is lightweight and natural. Also known as linseed, flax is exceedingly strong when woven into fibers. (The flowering plant yields seeds that are pressed to extract oil, or dried and sold as a product in grocery stores around the country. Flaxseed meal—the byproduct of the flaxseed oil-pressing process—has a second life as livestock feed.) Volvo is on track with other automakers, like Kia and Hyundai, that are also using flax fibers inside their cars for sustainability and weight benefits.

“We decided to use flax because it’s used to regenerate soil [between crops] and uses less water than other crops, and still has a nice touch and feel,” Audra says.

In the summer of 2021, Volvo revealed its Concept Recharge, which used flax fibers from a Swiss company called Bcomp. By investing in Bcomp, a company that has also provided products to the racing arm of McLaren or Porsche, Volvo now has a mainline to sustainable materials. 

“Bcomp’s calculations show that compared to regular plastic parts, the natural fiber-based composites are up to 50 percent lighter, use up to 70 percent less plastic and generate up to 62 per cent lower CO₂ emissions,” Volvo says. 

Volvo is also featuring a “room” in a pine theme. The manufacturer uses a material called Nordico, which is made from recycled materials such as PET bottles, corks recycled from the wine industry, and pine resin from sustainable forests in Sweden and Finland. 

New colors, natural themes

For one interior trim option, Audra revealed that the design team scanned a piece of granite and then imprinted the granite’s natural patterns onto the recycled plastic. Using a stone grain offers more recycling options later as well, because the texture doesn’t require paint as a finish. 

On the outside, Volvo offers a vibrant hue—probably the brightest color ever seen on a Volvo model—called Moss Yellow, inspired by the lichens that grow on the rocks of the west coast of Sweden. And Cloud Blue looks white in the sunlight but transforms into a soft blue when it’s overcast. 

Even the technology reflects Volvo’s all-in commitment to a low carbon footprint. By keeping parts to a minimum, Volvo creates fewer carbon emissions when manufacturing the EX30. So far, its strategy is working: the brand expects 80 percent of EX30 buyers to be new to Volvo, and overall sales are skyrocketing. 

Correction on Nov. 8, 2023: This post has been updated to clarify that the denim material is used on the dashboard and door panels, not the seats.

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One of the most ubiquitous sights on the road is an 18-wheel truck. These large, loud vehicles are a prolific presence on America’s interstates, and are made up of two big components: the tractor, which does the pulling and is where the driver is, and the trailer, where the stuff goes. 

In an effort to clean up the relatively large emissions that come from this part of the transportation sector, some companies are working on electric tractors that can pull trailers: Freightliner has a model called the eCascadia, Tesla has its Semi, Volvo its VNR, and others are working on it, too. But a relatively new company called Range Energy is focusing on the trailer itself, equipping it with batteries, a motor, and other intelligence. The trailer can be paired with a tractor burning diesel, or an electric one, like one of those eCascadias. 

Currently, there are about 3.5 million trailers in the United States, according to a company called ACT Research.

Range Energy is led by Ali Javidan, an early Tesla employee and veteran of Google and Zoox, the autonomous car company now owned by Amazon. Javidan also brings something else to the table: experience towing things. “I’ve always been around equipment, cars, trucks, stuff like that,” he says. “A few of my uncles had car dealerships, mechanic shops, lots of land in Sacramento. And so growing up, one of my first experiences driving was towing cars from the dealership to the service center, or moving boats around the farm, or things like that.” 

So while he points out that he has “very, very limited time in a class-8 tractor trailer,” which is a big 18-wheeler, he adds that he has “lots of towing empathy.” 

[Related: Futuristic aircraft and robotic loaders dazzled at a Dallas tech summit]

Range’s RA-01 product looks like a regular trailer—typically a big, boxy, and boring presence on the road—but has some key changes. There’s a motor that turns one of the axles at the back of the trailer. That motor gets the power it needs from an onboard battery pack, which isn’t inside the trailer (where it would interfere with cargo space) but is below it. There’s also what Javidan refers to as “smart kingpin.” A kingpin on a big 18-wheel truck is the point where the trailer connects to the tractor. What makes the Range Energy kingpin different from a regular kingpin is that it senses what the tractor is doing. “It’s a real-time measurement of how hard the tractor is pulling,” Javidan says.

Because it gathers this information, the trailer can be “kind of like an obedient dog on a leash,” he says, with the goal of making the trailer feel “essentially weightless” for the tractor. The trailer wouldn’t ever push the tractor, though. 

The result, according to Range, is that if this trailer is paired with a diesel-burning tractor, that tractor could get around 35 to 40 percent better fuel efficiency. And if it were paired with an electric tractor, it could add about 100 miles of range or more. 

Another benefit potentially arises from what happens when a truck towing a Range trailer goes downhill. That’s because of regenerative braking, which uses the motion from the wheels to charge the battery back up and simultaneously slow the whole rig down. That means that the truck’s brakes get less wear and tear, too. “The second-biggest maintenance item on a trailer is brakes,” he says. (Tires take the top slot.) Plus, Javidan says that the system has a stability boost going downhill, “because we’re dragging from the trailer.” 

The most obvious negative tradeoff that comes with electrifying the trailer is weight. “It adds about 4,000 pounds to the total system,” Javidan says. (A tractor-trailer rig has to stay below 80,000 pounds in total, although an electric tractor gets an additional 2,000 pound allowance.) For trucks hauling something heavy, like soda, this could affect the amount of goods they can transport in one load. But many trucks carrying stuff have “cubed out,” Javidan says—meaning that the truck’s interior space fills up before hitting the maximum weight limit. (Just think about an Amazon box filled packaging around something small, like toothpaste, and you get the idea.) 

Javidan says that they’ll start beta testing next year, with deliveries to customers planned for 2025. “You will start seeing these trailers on the roads in real volumes starting in 2026,” he predicts. 

There’s good reason for regulators and companies to work on cleaning up this transportation sector, both from a climate-change perspective and a public-health one. If you consider buses and medium- and heavy-duty trucks, those big rigs make up just 6 percent of vehicles on the roads in the US, but account for sizable portions of greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen oxides (NOx). In other words, they are “disproportionately emitting emissions,” says Stephanie Ly, the senior manager of eMobility Strategy and Manufacturing Engagement at the World Resources Institute. 

The NOx emissions have “major public health impacts,” she says. Exposure to this diesel-heavy industry has serious ramifications for people, with repercussions like “years of life lost” as well as “asthma, cancer, infertility, and so many other negative effects, particularly for those that live nearest to high-traffic truck centers,” she says. And these groups, Ly adds, “are primarily communities of color, and communities that are lower income, or have less access to different types of employment, so they’re especially vulnerable.”

With Range Energy’s plan to electrify the trailer, Ly notes that “it’s absolutely fascinating what they are proposing.” That said, just as there are multiple companies working on creating electric tractors that do the pulling, other firms also are working on electrifying the trailer, too. ConMet eMobility, ZF, and Einride all represent potential competitors for Range. 

“I will say in the trucking sector, there’s quite a bit of brand loyalty within the supply chain,” Ly adds. In other words, any new player might have something of a long haul ahead of them as they try to pull onto the highway, get into the right gear, and travel down that open road.

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The most popular car paint color in America is white. The hue has names like Blizzard White, Snow Quartz, and Wind Chill Pearl. Black, gray, and silver aren’t far behind on the popularity scale, rounding out the vast majority of cars on the road. 

These stats don’t mean that automakers are staying monochrome, though. On the contrary, Italian automaker Fiat thumbed its nose at bland colors and declared earlier this year it wouldn’t make cars in any shade of gray. Jeep likes to debut names for its vehicle finishes that are as colorful as the paint itself: Snazzberry, Hellayella, and Punk’N, for example. And Mazda has established itself as a colorful brand with its ubiquitous Soul Red Crystal Metallic and new Artisan Red, which morphs from a black cherry look in the sunlight to a dark, almost-black tint on a cloudy day or at dawn and dusk. 

Automakers use electrostatic spray guns to apply even layers of paint on the vehicles they produce, and car paint has evolved into a high-tech science that delivers more colors than designers imagined even 10 years ago. 

For example, Honda’s luxury arm, Acura, debuted its new Precision EV concept last year; it sports an arresting blue finish that seems to radiate from the inside out. Gypsy Modina, who leads the brand’s color and materials group, created the Double Apex Blue Pearl tint, which will grace the 2024 ZDX Type S. 

This is how Modina whips up pigments that set Acura apart and how she sees the future of paint and color technology. 

Color inspiration 

Modina got her degree in fine arts at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, the alma mater of notable automotive designers like Ralph Gilles, chief design officer for Stellantis, and John Krsteski, senior chief designer for Genesis. She started working for Acura 18 years ago, and now mixes colors like a mad scientist for the brand to come up with bespoke paint finishes. 

Her job seems more science than art. She has to understand how light bounces from the vehicle to the eye and how the color accentuates the form and fits the personality and demographic of that car. 

“I don’t think I knew I’d be doing so much science and math [in this field],” Modina says wryly. “It’s funny, because I find it hard to follow a recipe when cooking.” 

She doesn’t sit at her desk dreaming up color combinations. Instead, the process is more exciting: Modina travels the world seeking inspiration and finds it in fashion-forward places like Milan, Italy but also in nature, hiking in locations as far-flung as Kruger National Park in South Africa.

What Modina sees coming down the pipeline is colors and materials that are designed with the goal of minimizing waste and pollution by recycling, and using more natural versus chemical materials. Interestingly, that doesn’t align with what some manufacturers are showing off on the technology side, like the BMW SUV that features a specially developed body wrap stimulated by electrical signals to change color.

“Now you’re seeing concepts that change colors and car bodies that are more like screens,” Modina says. “There are things you can create that can be more solutions to a circular economy. The goal is for circularity, and I do think optimistically that there are material technologies and sciences that can [contribute to that].” 

The topic has a colorful history: Back when cars used to be spray-painted by hand with layers upon layers of pigment, the overspray would build up in the paint bays. Over time, chunks of buildup needed to be removed, and someone along the way discovered the beauty of baked-on layers of color that could be polished into gemlike stones. You’ll find “Fordite” stones (also called “motor agate” or “Detroit agate”) as pieces of jewelry on Etsy and other sites. But the process that created these multicolored polished stones no longer exists.

Car paint that glows even when it’s cloudy

On a cloudy and gray day during Monterey Car Week in August 2022, Acura unveiled its Precision EV in Double Apex Blue. That kind of weather could be an unfortunate backdrop for the high-profile presentation of a new car, but the blue finish looked like it was glowing even through the gloom. Modina and the design team breathed a sigh of relief. 

“We were giving each other high fives,” Modina says. “There aren’t that many colors that do that.”

The glow is a physical manifestation of what Acura’s first all-electric vehicle, scheduled for delivery next summer, represents. 

“We knew electrification was coming into play and we wanted the blue to go more liquid and more sheer,” Modina says. “There’s something about electrification that has a smoothness to it and we wanted [the paint to appear] more liquid. We also wanted it to be unique; we saw in the US market that people are more open to bold colors.”

The form language (the term refers to design styles unique to each manufacturer) and shape are closely related to the brand, Modina says. She and her team design many different types of hues, but the brand’s Double Apex Blue and Performance Red stand out because they must lay on the body in a way that matches the brand’s personality. Blue, in particular, is a heritage color for Acura, and has been refreshed over the years. This particular blue includes nano-pigments, which are finer particles that load the color with higher saturation, making the tint appear more intense. 

Light, color, and form work together with our emotions to stimulate a response; in Acura’s case, the brand wants us to see its cars as fast and performance-oriented. Even if they’re popular, cars in bland colors just can’t measure up.

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Hundreds of years before Google Maps and other apps like it made navigation as easy as looking at your smartphone, explorers found their way around the planet by the light of the moon and stars, or by shadows cast by the sun. Today, humans rely on electronic devices, not their instincts or the study of celestial bodies. And of course before the smartphone came along, people also used maps printed on dead trees. But kids born recently aren’t using paper maps at all; instead they just punch in an address to receive a route to get where they’re going.

Off-roading champion Emily Miller wanted to teach others what she learned from years of navigating with a ruler, pencil, compass, and topographical map. With that in mind, she created the Rebelle Rally, the longest off-road time-distance navigational rally in the United States. The idea of a navigational rally might not be novel, but this one is: All competitors are required to disable any digital navigational aids on their vehicle and seal up their electronic devices (mobile phones, AirTags, tablets, laptops, and more) for the duration. It’s a test of driving precision and navigation skills, not a speed race pell-mell across the desert. 

Over eight days, Rebelle Rally competitors are shut off from the world, sleeping in tents near ghost towns and rock faces instead of hotels and cities. This year, the rally’s course started in Mammoth Lakes, California, crossed into Nevada, and finished in the southeast corner of California at the majestic Glamis Dunes. The only news participants hear is their daily standings in the competition—there’s no endless scrolling of social media feeds. Plotting latitude and longitude points requires one’s full attention, and by the end of a 10-hour day spent hunting checkpoints, there’s no need for entertainment. The competitors are wiped out physically and mentally, heading for their tents to sleep.

I just completed my second year of the rally; I was sponsored by Hyundai and we operated a Santa Cruz with a 1.5-inch lift in the front and a 1-inch lift in the back. We had off-road accessories (traction boards, shovels, and a spare tire) mounted to a custom Rally Innovations rack to help us along. This is what it’s like to compete at this crossroads of analog and high-tech. 

Analog navigation

Now entering its ninth year, the Rebelle Rally just wrapped up its most recent competition with 65 teams of two women each; the all-female event concluded on October 20. Each morning, the teams were alerted that it’s time to get going by the gentle clanging sound of a cowbell at 5 a.m. Many teams are already up by that point, the sounds of tent zippers tearing the fabric of the silence even before that.

Each day, a race official distributes a list of 20 or more checkpoints to the teams long before dawn. Then teams plot latitude and longitude points along with distances and headings on their paper maps. On-the-ground checkpoints are marked with flags (mandatory green checkpoints, the easiest), or poles (blue checkpoints, which are more difficult to find) or invisible geofenced areas (black checkpoints, requiring precision within 200-300 meters to avoid a penalty). 

Once a team drives to the checkpoint and sees the flag, or sees what they believe to be the spot, one of the competitors clicks on a satellite tracker that displays the exact latitude and longitude point where the signal is traced. A company called YB Tracking and the Iridium satellite network track the competitors to keep them safe; the staff knows exactly where each car is, even if the teams themselves are lost. 

Teams also participate in enduro segments, which are a series of checkpoints that include time checks along the route and require intense focus and concentration to stay at the average dictated speed, which may change frequently. To prepare for these on-time sections, competitors use mathematical formulas to calculate the seconds and minutes of each segment in the precise roadbook based on the distance and speed. 

Using a solar-powered calculator and a basic stopwatch, we found our way. 

Green power takes the gold

After seven days of full-time driving plus the half-day prologue, it was a team called the Limestone Legends that took first place in a Rivian R1T all-electric pickup truck. Not only was it the first time an all-electric vehicle earned the gold medal in the Rebelle Rally, the second place vehicle was a hybrid: a Jeep Wrangler 4xe. Rivian has been a strong supporter of the Rebelle Rally starting in October 2020 with a pre-production model of an R1T, which became the first fully electric truck to ever compete in the event. 

Charging up an EV in the middle of the desert is a challenge. While gas-powered cars are fueled up by a tanker that travels from base camp to base camp with the rally, it’s not as easy to provide a boost for batteries that way. So, the Rebelle Rally partnered with Renewable Innovations to provide hydrogen-powered EV charging to the Rivian and Jeep 4xe models each day. 

Each base camp embraced green energy too, mobilizing a 53-foot mobile Renewable Innovations semi with high-density solar panels combined with “follow-the-sun” smart flowers on each side to collectively deliver 50 kilowatts of peak power for base camp. 

While our phones and navigation systems were unavailable by design, my team did have a Nextbase dash cam in the car so we could capture the beauty of the off-road trails in California and Nevada. It came in handy when we witnessed a crash—a Mitsubishi crossover tried to pass us and the full-size SUV in front of us on the left. We handed over our camera’s memory card to the police, providing an airtight record of what happened. And luckily, no one was seriously hurt. 

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First officially unveiled back in 2019, Tesla’s electric Cybertruck impressed and amused the public with its angular, “Blade Runner-inspired” design and purported features including reinforced glass, stainless steel body, and a lack of door handles. Although originally slated to arrive in reservation holders’ driveways in 2021, the EV release faced numerous delays exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic supply chain issues. This week, however, Elon Musk said Tesla’s long-delayed Cybertruck will finally roll off the company’s Giga Texas lot on November 30, when Tesla is now scheduled to begin delivery. However, the company’s CEO cautioned investors against early celebrations.

During the company’s Q3 earnings call on October 18, Musk stressed that both customers and shareholders should “temper expectations,” particularly for the Cybertruck’s initial profitability. Tesla faced various challenges with scaling and ramping up production. Musk went as far as to say, “we dug our own grave with Cybertruck” during the vehicle’s multi-year hype campaign.

[Related: Tesla’s Cybertruck is the latest lofty promise in the world of electric pickups.]

“Cybertruck is one of those special products that comes along only once in a long while. And special products that come along once in a long while are just incredibly difficult to bring to market to reach volume, to be prosperous,” Musk opined, as reported by The Verge on Wednesday.

The Cybertruck base model was initially estimated at $39,900 in 2019, but Tesla is expected to announce updated pricings during its November 30 release event. No price ranges are currently available on Tesla’s website, but customers can still put down a refundable $100 deposit for a Cybertruck with the promise to “complete your configuration as production nears.”

In the meantime, multiple companies have released their own electric truck options, including the Ford F-150 Lightning and Rivian’s R1T. During this week’s Tesla earnings call, the company stated that it had the capacity to produce more than 125,000 Cybertrucks annually. Musk said he saw a potential for Tesla to produce 250,000 Cybertrucks in 2025. Musk said that more than one million people have reserved the Cybertruck so far.

[Related: Here is what a Tesla Cybertruck cop car could look like.]

The product may not be ready, but the concept keeps iterating itself. In September, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison teased concept art for a Cybertruck cop car including EV’s recognizable design beneath red and blue emergency lights, a bull bar, and multiple Oracle logos. “Our next generation police car is coming out very soon,” Ellison, a “close friend” of Musk, said during his presentation at the data service giant’s CloudWork conference to audible murmurs in the crowd. “It’s my favorite police car. It’s my favorite car, actually. It’s Elon’s favorite car.”

Musk’s desire to release an electric pickup truck dates as far back as 2012, when he tweeted he “would love make a Tesla supertruck with crazy torque, dynamic air suspension and corners [sic] like its on rails.”

“That’d be sweet…,” he added at the time.

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It has been more than two years since former Audi CEO Markus Duesmann announced that after 2026, the automaker will develop only battery-powered models. Audi’s plan is to have more than 20 fully electric models in its portfolio by 2025. The carmaker has already started down this road by investing about 18 billion euros ($19 billion and change) in electrification and hybridization.

In the process, Audi is pursuing battery technology that optimizes energy efficiency. Its primary focus for innovation is solid state batteries, which use solid electrolytes instead of liquid. The brand designs, develops, and checks battery cells and battery components on its own at its battery testing center in Gaimersheim, Germany. It recently transitioned its battery packs from winding to a stacking configuration, where the cells are stacked neatly, like a layer cake, to increase the overall capacity. 

More capacity means greater range. And better range makes these vehicles more marketable in a competitive, burgeoning market. Any advantage between today and the sometime-in-the-future implementation of solid state batteries is a coveted position. 

Here’s how it works.

Stacking adds density, thus energy

The German brand is known for agile, sleek vehicles that consistently earn high marks for performance and handling. As part of the Volkswagen group along with Porsche and even Lamborghini, Audi is in good company. Audi (along with the other brands in the group) has ratcheted up its EV goals, seeking the best ways to leap ahead of its competitors, and battery stacking is the latest mark of progress.

[Related: Why solid state batteries are the next frontier for EV makers]

In new EVs like the Q8 e-tron, electrodes in lithium-ion cells are thin foils which are traditionally wound into a structure called a jelly roll, Audi explained to PopSci. These jelly rolls can be either round for cylindrical cells or flat for prismatic cells. In prismatic cells, the utilization of the inner volume is limited due to the rounded edges.

By stacking single electrode sheets into larger stacks, more of the cell’s inner volume can be used, increasing the cell’s capacity. This allows Audi’s EVs to make better use of the physical space per cell, as was previously the case with winding technology.

Imagine it this way: in winding, the cell material is wrapped around a roll and squeezed together into a rectangular shell. During stacking, the electrode layers are superimposed to completely fill the rectangular space so that the cell has about 20 percent more active material, which increases the capacity. Cramming more electrons into the space equals overall improved range. A total of 12 battery cells form a module and 36 modules make up a battery system, protected by cube-shaped aluminum housing.

For the Q8 e-tron SUV and Sportback, Audi engineers created a battery pack that delivers about 20 kilowatt hours more gross capacity over 2023 models. Now, the battery offers 114 kWh instead of the 95 kWh on the previous battery tech. And incredibly, it doesn’t take up any more space than the old battery pack. As a result, 2024 Q8 e-tron owners can get 30 percent more range. The Q8 Sportback S-Line e-tron with the ultra package gets 300-plus miles. Even the standard Q8 e-tron SUV is good for 285 miles (296 for the Sportback) so it’s pretty close. 

The 2023 model served up a 222-mile EPA-estimated range for the standard SUV and 218 miles in Sportback form. For the 2024 Q8 e-tron, the EPA estimates it’s good for 285 miles for the SUV and 296 miles for the Sportback model. An optional Ultra package, available only with the Sportback, features a smaller wheel and tire package with low-rolling-resistance rubber and retuned suspension that gives it a lower ride height for added efficiency, and this setup delivers the magical 300-mile EPA estimate.

Pros and cons to stacking 

Like most new technologies, there are advantages and disadvantages to consider, Audi says. The advantage of this new stacking method allows for more active material to be implemented into lithium-ion cells, resulting in greater capacity, energy, and power. The disadvantage is a slower production process, resulting in higher cost.

Ultimately, Audi opted to prioritize the advantages over the disadvantages, a brand representative shared with PopSci.

Audi cell technicians had a dual goal of packing as much energy as possible into the stack while still having the ability to recharge it as quickly as possible. However, more density requires more time to charge compared to previous, less-dense batteries. This latest achievement also comes with a side of improved battery chemistry that Audi says has a better charge curve, which allows it to hold higher charging rates for longer.

At its battery testing site in Gaimersheim, Audi also runs a construction facility for prototype batteries. Here, employees build the high-voltage batteries from the ground up all the way to pre-series production. The goal for the next iteration will involve greater integration of the cells into the battery pack, reducing overhead, optimizing the battery’s design, and increasing the overall vehicle’s efficiency with the newest cell technologies.

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This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

As gas-guzzling cars are replaced by their electric counterparts, tailpipe emissions are on the decline. But cars have other negative impacts on environmental health, beyond what comes out of their exhaust pipes.

One of the bigger, and lesser known, problems is tire pollution—or “tire and road wear particles,” in industry terminology.

Tires shed tiny particles with every rotation. Tire wear happens most dramatically during rapid acceleration, braking, and sharp turns, but even with the most conservative driving, particulate pollution is an unavoidable consequence of car use. And it’s a problem that’s poised to get worse as drivers transition to EVs.

“We’re pushing for decarbonization by going to battery electric vehicles, and in doing so we’re pushing up tire wear emissions … which is going to prove difficult to solve,” said Nick Molden, founder and CEO of Emissions Analytics, a London-based company that performs independent tests on cars’ real-world tailpipe and tire emissions. Molden pointed out that tailpipe exhaust is dramatically reduced by filters and catalytic converters, which use chemical reactions to reduce pollution. Meanwhile, tires are a fundamentally open system, so there is no viable way to capture the polluting particles that fly off of them.

Emissions Analytics found that a single car sheds almost nine pounds of tire weight per year, on average. Globally, that amounts to six million metric tons of tire pollution annually, with most of it coming from wealthier countries where personal car use is more prevalent.

The amount of tire pollution emitted per vehicle is increasing as more electric cars hit the road around the world—some 14 million of them this year, according to the International Energy Agency. EVs tend to be significantly heavier than gas-powered or hybrid cars due to their larger, heftier batteries. The average battery for an EV on the market today is roughly 1,000 pounds, with some outliers approaching 3,000 pounds—as much as an entire gasoline-powered compact car. Emissions Analytics has found that adding 1,000 pounds to a midsize vehicle increased tire wear by about 20 percent, and also that Tesla’s Model Y generated 26 percent more tire pollution than a similar Kia hybrid. EVs’ more aggressive torque, which translates into faster acceleration, is another factor that creates more tire particulate mile for mile, compared to similar internal combustion engine cars.

Tire particulate is a toxic slurry of microplastics, volatile organic compounds, and other chemical additives that enter the air, soil, and water around trafficked areas. The rubber, metals, and other compounds coming off tires settle along roads where rain washes them into waterways. Smaller bits of tire particulate linger in the air, where they can be inhaled, and the smallest of this particulate matter—known as PM 2.5, because each particle is 2.5 micrometers or less — can directly enter the bloodstream. A 2017 study estimated that tire wear is responsible for 5 to 10 percent of oceanic microplastic pollution, and 3 to 7 percent of airborne PM 2.5 pollution. 

One particularly concerning chemical in tires is 6PPD, which is added to virtually all tires to prevent rubber from cracking. But in the environment, 6PPD reacts with ozone to become 6PPD-quinone, a substance that has been linked to salmon die-offs in the Pacific Northwest. A 2022 study confirmed the compound is also lethal to rainbow trout and brook trout.

Further research has shown that the chemical is absorbed by edible plants like lettuce and has the potential to accumulate in them. A study in South China found both 6PPD and 6PPD-quinone in human urine samples. The human health effects of the chemical are not yet understood, but other chemicals found in tires have been linked to problems ranging from skin irritation to respiratory problems to brain damage.

Given the intensifying realities of climate change, phasing out gas-powered vehicles rapidly is a must. But experts say the U.S. and other wealthy countries can accomplish this while also mitigating the environmental and health problems caused by EVs’ increased tire wear—namely by curbing car use overall.

Foremost, local policymakers can take steps to make U.S. cities less cripplingly car-dependent. Although that might sound like a daunting task, there’s historical precedent: The Netherlands used to be dominated by cars and experienced a higher rate of traffic fatalities than the U.S., until activist groups like Stop de Kindermoord (“Stop Child Murder”) mobilized in the 1970s to let policymakers know that they wanted less traffic on their streets. According to Chris Bruntlett, the co-author of Building the Cycling City, policymakers created the low-traffic, bike-friendly Dutch cities we know today by instituting traffic-calming measures. “Officials started with speed-limit reductions, parking restrictions, through-traffic limitations, and lane narrowings and removals,” Bruntlett told Grist.

David Zipper, a mobility expert and a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, says that city leaders can also remove subsidies for car ownership, such as free residential parking on public streets. “Once car subsidies are removed, fewer people in cities will choose to buy and own them,” Zipper said.

Of course, measures to reduce car use only work in tandem with investments in alternative transportation. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 provided some federal funding for transit and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, but making the most of these funds will require political will from state and local lawmakers. Zipper said that policymakers in some U.S. cities have begun to take positive actions—like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who has committed to expanding her city’s bike lane network until 50 percent of the population lives within a three-minute walk of a bike lane.

Another way to reduce tire pollution is to trade big, heavy cars for smaller and lighter ones. Especially in the U.S., cars have grown significantly in size and weight in recent decades. Automakers began promoting SUVs in the 1980s, because a legal loophole allowed vehicles designated as “light trucks” to skirt fuel-efficiency regulations. Nine out of the 10 best-selling cars in the U.S. last year were trucks or SUVs, and the International Energy Agency has found that SUVs were the second largest cause of the global rise in CO2 emissions between 2010 and 2018.

One legislative solution to car bloat is introducing weight-based vehicle taxes, which encourage consumer interest in lighter cars and can be used to offset the cost of increased wear on roads caused by heavier vehicles. France implemented a weight-based car tax in 2021, charging consumers a penalty of 10 euros (about $10) for every kilogram above 1,800 (about 4,000 pounds) that their car weighs. This year, Norway also extended its weight-based vehicle tax to include EVs at a rate of a little more than a euro per kilogram above the first 500 kilograms (about 1,100 pounds) for EVs. Norway also taxes vehicles on their carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions. Taken together, these three taxes have the combined effect of dramatically incentivizing small electric vehicles. 

In the U.S., some states already prorate vehicle registration fees based on weight, and Washington, D.C. recently overhauled its registration system to more heavily penalize larger cars. In D.C., owners of cars heavier than 6,000 pounds now have to pay $500 in annual fees. New York state lawmakers also recently introduced legislation that would similarly incentivize smaller cars.  

Regulators can also take steps to minimize the harm caused by tire pollution — and in California, the process has already begun. In October, a new regulation implemented by the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, or DTSC, will require manufacturers of tires on the California market to research safer alternatives to 6PPD. Manufacturers that sell tires in the state are obligated to notify DTSC about products containing 6PPD by the end of November. 

Karl Palmer, deputy director of safer consumer products at DTSC, believes that making tire makers conduct an “alternatives analysis” will ultimately result in products that are safer for the environment.

“We’re using California’s market strength to say, ‘If you want to park here, you’ve got to comply with our rules,’” Palmer told Grist.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/evs-are-a-climate-solution-with-a-pollution-problem-tire-particles/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Tesla’s Cybertruck isn’t even available to the public yet, but concept art for a Cybertruck cop-car made its appearance in Las Vegas on Wednesday. During a presentation by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at the data service giant’s CloudWork conference, a massive screen showed off the EV’s recognizable, angular design beneath red and blue emergency lights, as well as a bull bar and multiple Oracle logos.

But as Inside EVs noted on September 21, the rendering features misplaced bumper lights and rear wheels, while also missing the vehicle’s single, massive windshield wiper. Although this could indicate the project is early on in its development, Ellison promised its imminent debut.

“Our next generation police car is coming out very soon,” Ellison said to audible audience murmurs. “It’s my favorite police car. It’s my favorite car, actually. It’s Elon’s favorite car.” 

[Related: What TikTok’s deal with Oracle could mean for user security.]

“Among other things, it’s very safe, very fast, it’s got a stainless steel body, and we don’t have to add a screen or cameras to it because we can actually use their existing cameras and existing screen to put our application on it,” Ellison continued.

Both Oracle and Tesla already work alongside law enforcement, providing cloud support software and electric vehicles, respectively, for forces in Wisconsin, California, and elsewhere. Ellison has also called Musk a “close friend” in the past, and previously sat on Tesla’s board of directors. According to Ellison’s presentation, the first Oracle-integrated police cars already include voice-activated, retrofitted third-party “Tesla-like” screens, but the company plans to leverage the Cybertruck’s existing camera systems and monitors. 

First unveiled in 2019 and promised to arrive in 2021, Tesla has since delayed the Cybertruck multiple times while also increasing its estimated price tag. At last check, production and delivery were slated to begin by the end of 2023, although that deadline now appears dubious. During the EV’s debut event, Tesla vehicle designer Franz von Holzhausen threw metal balls at a prototype Cybertruck to demonstrate its “Armor Glass” windows, causing the driver side windows to shatter.

“The ball didn’t make it through,” Musk joked at the time.

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From the start, Tesla has eschewed traditional manufacturing, design, and sales models, and the company’s latest move could involve revolutionizing the production of its snub-nosed EVs, as a recent Reuters story reports. Previously, the EV giant proved it could reduce costs and parts by casting the front end and back end of its Model Y as whole sections instead of assembled parts, which Tesla calls “gigacasting,” on brand with its 10-million-square-foot Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.  

Tesla’s next step could be die-casting nearly the entire underbody as a singular piece versus the 400 parts it generally takes to assemble the same section of a conventional car, according to Reuters. As that news organization puts it, if Tesla manages to die cast the whole piece successfully, it would “further disrupt the way cars are designed and manufactured.” 

How does a house-sized die-casting machine work, and can it make that much difference in the industry? Read on to learn more.

How the casting process works

Tesla already uses what it calls a gigapress, an aluminum die-casting machine at its factories in the US, Germany, and China. In very basic terms, molten metal is injected into a mold (the “die”), then cooled, ejected, and trimmed. The die-casting process was originally conceived in the mid-1800s, and automotive companies have used this manufacturing method for decades.

In June, Reuters stated that Tesla also developed an aluminum alloy that allows it to “skip the heat treating traditionally used to increase the strength of the cast part.” That detail might trigger alarm bells, considering the tendency for Tesla vehicles to show signs of lackluster quality control when it comes to fit and finish. However, Ed Kim, president and chief analyst for research firm AutoPacific, believes Tesla approaches its body assembly differently.  

“The areas where Tesla has had issues in terms of quality are typically related to squeaks and rattles and panel fit,” Kim says. “But it has done a great job on innovative manufacturing techniques.”

The entire industry has taken notice, with Toyota, Hyundai, Volvo, and others pledging to explore a similar manufacturing avenue (and calling it “hypercasting” and “megacasting” instead). Large-scale die casting is a tricky process, and some critics point to the fact that a single flaw can compromise the whole piece. On the other hand, using a gigapress (or “megapress” as other automakers may call it) can help preserve profit margins by streamlining the process. 

The cost conundrum

Price is certainly a large factor, and Tesla says it cut related costs by 40 percent, according to Reuters, by using a gigapress on its most popular vehicle, the Model Y. That appeals to other automakers, like Toyota. 

“It doesn’t surprise me that Toyota has taken an interest in [gigacasting], because I’ve always thought of Toyota as a manufacturing company above all else,” Kim says. “Historically, Toyota really set the bar on smart, efficient manufacturing and figuring out ways to take cost out of the process without sacrificing quality.” 

Toyota executives may be kicking themselves for not adopting more large-scale die-casting first, he continues. The process is still very new, however, with much to prove, although automakers will certainly be watching. American companies are especially vulnerable to cost and revenue challenges, and the United Auto Workers’ current strike is creating a new flux in future plans; they may look at what Tesla’s doing and decide to go that route, but the relationship with the factories and those who work there adds a layer of complexity.  

Tesla has promised that a new $25,000 entry-level model is on the horizon, and that will require creative cost-cutting measures across the board, including perhaps the gigapress. 

“It’s so different from the assembly line model,” Kim says. “Given the rumored failures on the Cybertruck, the brand is particularly sensitive to manufacturing costs for its upcoming entry-level car and it needs to keep costs down.” 

The EV company’s ability to pull off using the gigapress on its Model Y contributed to its ability to slash prices, putting the competition on the defensive. Die-casting in this manner is technically difficult to execute and changes are very costly, which is why not everyone is jumping in right away, Kim says. Reducing manufacturing costs in a repeatable manner is the holy grail, he says, and automakers are all keeping an eye on this development. 

“Based on the success of the Model Y, Tesla can potentially pull it off,” he admitted. 

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Honda’s newest electric scooter, called the Motocompacto, looks like a roving suitcase. Announced this week, the Motocampacto is designed to be foldable and lightweight, meaning that the handlebars and seat can be tucked into the suitcase-shaped main body of the vehicle. The idea is that this should make it easy to transport and easy to store. According to Honda, it should be able to reach “a maximum speed of 15 mph and [has a] zero-emissions range of up to 12 miles.” 

Additionally, Motocompacto “can be fully charged in just 3.5 hours in both the folded and ready-to-ride configuration using a common 110 v outlet.” At a price tag of $995, it will be available for purchase later this year. 

The Motocompacto is an updated, electric take on an early ’80s Honda design called the Motocompo. Similarly, the Motocompo was also a collapsible scooter, but it looked more like a handyman’s duffle bag in its condensed form. The intent was that it could fit into the cargo space of the Honda City kei car, presumably so it could serve as a final mile solution, where it carried people to their destination beyond where they were allowed to park a car. 

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source]

While Motocompacto should be able to carry out the same jobs as the original model, it comes with more modern conveniences. “Motocompacto is perfect for getting around cityscapes and college campuses. It was designed with rider comfort and convenience in mind with a cushy seat, secure grip foot pegs, on-board storage, a digital speedometer, a charge gauge and a comfortable carry handle,” Honda said in the press release. “A clever phone app enables riders to adjust their personal settings, including lighting and ride modes, via Bluetooth.”

Its wheels and frames are made with heat-treated aluminum, and it has bright LED headlight and taillight, side reflectors, and “a welded steel lock loop on the kickstand that is compatible with most bike locks.” It weighs around 41 lbs, comparable with how heavy a carry-on suitcase typically is. 

[Related: BMW’s electric scooter will hit 75 mph and has motorcycle vibes]

The vehicle is part of Honda’s larger goal to release more electric models of its fleet by 2030, and to sell only electric or fuel cell models by 2040. It joins other major carmakers around the world, like GM, Ford, Hyundai, Volvo, and more, which are all committing to lowering global carbon emissions by offering more new EVs as options for consumers. The Motocompacto is set to be sold in conjunction with the company’s newest lineup of all-electric SUVs, Jane Nakagawa, vice president of the R&D Business Unit at American Honda Motor Co., said in a statement. “Motocompacto supports our goal of carbon neutrality by helping customers with end-to-end zero-emissions transport.” 

Watch an intro video to the Motocompacto below:

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A tiny racing car completely designed and driven by university students has set a new Guinness World Record for fastest acceleration in an electric vehicle. Earlier this month, the miniscule speedster rocketed from 0 to 100 km/h (roughly 62 mph) in just 0.956 seconds, traveling a total distance of 12.3 meters (40.35 feet). The new benchmark time is over a third faster than the previous record set almost exactly a year ago in September 2022 by a team of student designers at Germany’s University of Stuttgart.

Months of design work and testing took place thanks to the members of Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ), a student organization that has built a new race car every year since its founding in 2006. After three vehicles running on internal-combustion engines, AMZ switched over to completely electric designs in 2010. They’ve adhered to the eco-friendly alternative ever since.

“Working on the project in addition to my studies was very intense. But even so, it was a lot of fun working with other students to continually produce new solutions and put into practice what we learned in class,” Yann Bernard, AMZ’s head of motor, said in the team’s announcement on September 12. “And, of course, it is an absolutely unique experience to be involved in a world record.”

[Related: How Formula E race cars are guiding Jaguar’s EV future.]

The AMZ team’s newest iteration, dubbed mythen [sic], were entirely designed and optimized by the university students. Among its many impressive attributes, mythen boasts a carbon and aluminum frame that keeps the vehicle’s entire weight at just under 309 pounds. Specialized four-wheel hub motors alongside a novel powertrain combined to boost the race car via around 326 hp.

From an aerodynamic standpoint, mythen is so fast and lightweight that it even needed some backup additions to keep it on the race track. Two wings—one in both the front and rear—helped push the car towards the ground. Students meanwhile also designed and installed a “kind of vacuum cleaner” to help hold the vehicle on the road via suction, according to the team’s announcement.

“[P]ower isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to setting an acceleration record,” said Dario Messerli, AMZ’s head of aerodynamics in a statement, “Effectively transferring that power to the ground is also key.”

Before this month, AMZ set the world acceleration record for electric cars twice already—once in 2014, and two years’ later in 2016. Given how quickly these cars seem to run, as well as how frequently they are redesigned and tested, it stands to reason that the team will probably be fending off competitors in the very near future.

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Today, Tesla is the industry leader—the automaker with the most EV sales. An updated Model 3 is finally on the horizon, and we’re hoping the company will address some of its quality and finish issues. What we’re hearing is that they will use more luxurious materials in the cabin, an updated dash, and more sound-deadening features like acoustic glass, to start.

But Tesla isn’t the only game in town. There’s also the Aston Martin Lagonda EV, Cadillac’s fully-customizable Celestiq, the Rolls-Royce Spectre, and the upcoming all-electric Chevrolet Corvette. And Automobili Pininfarina’s PURA Vision design concept is breathtakingly good, with a glass dome and French door-like openings that create a cavernous and comfortable way for passengers to enter. These cars are generally for the few and elite, however, and while they’ll move the industry in their own ways, it’s the mass-market EVs that are important for the rest of us.

Let’s take a look at what’s on the horizon for next year.

Volvo EX30

Expected to make its debut later this year, Volvo’s smallest-ever SUV, the EX30, is all-electric. The EX30 will start at $36,145, which is significantly less than its EV predecessors, the C40 Recharge and XC40 Recharge. It’s also smaller than the other two but can match their towing capacity—up to 2,000 pounds. 

Equipped with a 268-horsepower motor, the base model EX30 comes with rear-wheel-drive and will be good for an estimated range of 275 miles. For a higher (to be determined) price, the EX30 will also be available as an 422-horsepower all-wheel-drive model. In either case, Volvo says it will charge up from 10 percent to 80 percent in about 26 minutes on a DC fast charger.

Available in a decidedly non-Volvo color called “moss yellow” along with a handful of other hues, the EX30 will feature renewable and recyclable materials inside. Taking its place in the front of the cabin, a 12.3-inch tablet serves as the infotainment, climate, and vehicle control center, and Calm View reduces the amount of information on display. 

Jeep Recon

We’ve seen Jeep’s future and even took a spin in the 650-horsepower Magneto, Jeep’s Wrangler EV concept. It’s not quite ready for production, yet; after all, the Wrangler is a beloved nameplate and a switch this big requires extra attention to all of the details. Jeep has seen massive success with its hybrid Wrangler 4xe and will keep the momentum going on that model. 

Meanwhile, the brand will start production of the all-electric Recon next year. Jeep has revealed only scant information so far; what we can see is that there will be seating for five and it’ll sport fun Wrangler-like features like removable doors and a power-folding rooftop. This upcoming midsize SUV will be trail-rated, and we expect it to include some of the same goodies as in the Wrangler, like the new trail maps app that debuted this year. No final word on pricing yet, but it’s fair to guess that it will probably start at about $50,000. 

Hyundai Kona Electric

The outgoing Kona is adorable, like a pet Corgi. For 2024, Hyundai sharpened the small SUV’s edges, giving it a leaner, more modern look, and the vehicle is longer and wider than before. Estimated to have a range of between 197 and 260 miles (depending on the battery pack) and powered by a single motor making 133-horsepower, the base model is destined to thrive in city environments. Those wishing for more oomph will want to take a look at the 201-horsepower option. Starting at an estimated $35,000, the Kona EV is in the sweet spot of pricing. 

We’re truly excited about the entire Hyundai EV lineup, which also includes the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6. All three models share a pixel theme and a futuristic feel, and it will be interesting to see which of these (or all) advance to the next model year and beyond. 

Mercedes-Benz CLA EV concept

Typically, the words “Mercedes-Benz” and “affordable” pair together as well as fine red wine and Tostitos. The German powerhouse is (kind of) changing that with the upcoming CLA EV concept car. Launching an entry-level EV class will benefit Mercedes-Benz by proving its EV mettle and bringing more fans to the brand, giving them the opportunity to upgrade over time; that’s a smart strategy to attract younger buyers. 

Mercedes-Benz says its new four-door coupe will have a range of 466 miles. It’s worth noting that number is higher than the Tesla Model S, which offers 405 miles, and the only other car on the market right now with more than that is the Lucid Air, at over 500 miles. However, the Air sits solidly in the six-figure price zone, while the CLA EV is predicted to start at about $60,000. That may not sound cheap, but on the Mercedes-Benz scale, it’s extraordinary. It’s unclear how soon the CLA EV will be available, but it looks like it’s going to be next year. 

Honda Prologue, the Chevrolet Blazer EV, and more

Strange stablemates as they may seem, there is a symbiotic relationship between Honda and Chevrolet that will bring us a pair of EVs next year. Honda teamed up with Chevy to use Ultium battery packs (used on vehicles like the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq) on the Prologue, which is a midsize SUV expected to launch in 2024 with a price tag starting in the mid-$40,000s. The Prologue will be offered with a single or dual-motor configuration. We expect Honda to match the range of the ZDX built by its luxury branch, Acura; the ZDX is also powered by the Ultum platform and can go for at least 315 miles. 

On the other side, the Chevrolet Blazer EV will look different from the Prologue and seems to come with a higher price tag, starting in the mid-$50,000s. We can’t wait to get our hands on the SS trim, with an impressive setup that generates 557 horsepower. 

And wait, there’s more to come. We’re looking forward to hearing more about Fisker’s sub-$40,000 Ocean model and Kia’s new upcoming EV9; the EV6 is one of our favorite EVs on the market currently for smooth driving and a terrific cabin configuration. 

Last, but certainly not least, Ford recently announced the 2024 Mustang Mach-E Rally model designed for off-roading, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it. Expected to start at $65,000, the Mach-E Rally boasts two electric motors making 480 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque. 

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Historically, the process of designing vehicles could take years. Starting with initial sketches and ending with the final product, the timeline has included making life-size clay exterior models, doing interior modeling, conducting tests, and more.

During the lockdowns of the global pandemic beginning in 2020, General Motors teams found themselves in a new quandary: moving forward on projects while working remotely, and without physical representation of the vehicles in progress to touch and see. GM had dipped a big toe into using virtual reality to accelerate the development process for the GMC Hummer EV pickup, which launched in October 2020. That gave the team a head start on the Zevo 600, an all-electric delivery van.

Developed by BrightDrop, GM’s breakout business dedicated to electrifying and improving the delivery process, the Zevo 600 went from sketch to launch in January 2021 in a lightning-quick 20 months. A large part of that impressive timeline is due to the immersive technology tools that the team used. The modular Ultium battery platform and virtual development process used for the Hummer EV greased the wheels. 

Here are the details on the virtual tools that helped build the electric delivery van. 

What does it mean to design a vehicle this way?

BrightDrop says it considers itself a software company first and a vehicle company second, and there’s no question it’s pushing the envelope for GM. Bryan Styles, the head of GM’s immersive technology unit, sees the impetus behind this focus as coming from the industry’s increasing speed to market.

“The market continues to move very quickly, and we’re trying to increase the speed while still maintaining a high level of quality and safety at this pace,” Styles tells PopSci. “Immersive technology applies to design space up front, but also to engineering, manufacturing, and even the marketing space to advertise and interface with our customers.”

Working remotely through technology and virtual reality beats holding multiple in-person meetings and waiting for decisions, which can be very challenging as it relates to time constraints. 

“GM’s Advanced Design team brought an enormous amount of insight and technical knowledge to the project, including our insights-driven approach and how we leveraged GM’s immersive tech capabilities,” says Stuart Norris, GM Design Vice President, GM China and GM International, via email. “This enabled us to continue to collaboratively design the vehicle during the COVID-19 pandemic from our offices, dining rooms and bedrooms.”

The project that led to BrightDrop started with a study of urban mobility; the GM team found “a lot of pain points and pinch points,” says GM’s Wade Bryant. While the typical definition of mobility is related to moving people, Bryant and his team found that moving goods and products was an even bigger concern.

“Last-mile delivery,” as it’s often called, is the final stage of the delivery process, when the product moves from a transportation hub to the customer’s door. The potential for improving last-mile delivery is huge; Americans have become accustomed to ordering whatever strikes their fancy and expecting delivery the next day, and that trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. In jam-packed cities, delivery is especially important.

“We traveled to cities like Shanghai, London, and Mumbai for research, and it became very apparent that deliveries were a big concern,” Bryant tells PopSci. “We thought there was probably a better design for delivery.”

Leave room for the sports drinks

Leveraging known elements helped GM build and launch the Zevo 600 quickly. As Motortrend reported, the steering wheel is shared with GM trucks like the Chevrolet Silverado, the shifter is from the GMC Hummer EV Pickup, the instrument cluster was lifted from Chevrolet Bolt, and the infotainment system is the same in the GMC Yukon. 

Designing a delivery van isn’t like building a passenger car, though. Bryant says they talked to delivery drivers, completed deliveries with the drivers, and learned how they work. One thing they discovered is that the Zevo 600 needed larger cup holders to accommodate the sports drink bottles that drivers seemed to favor. Understanding the habits and needs of the drivers as they get in and out of the truck 100 or 200 times a day helped GM through the virtual process. 

The team even built a simple wooden model to represent real-life scale. While immersed in virtual technology, the creators could step in and out of the wooden creation to get a real feel for vehicle entry and exit comfort, steering wheel placement, and other physical aspects. Since most of the team was working remotely for a few months early in the pandemic, they began using the VR tech early on and from home. As staff started trickling into the office in small groups, they used the technology both at home and in the office to collaborate during the design development process even though not everyone could be in the office together at once.

The Zevo 400 and 600 (each referring to the van’s cargo capacity in cubic feet) is the first delivery vehicle that BrightDrop developed and started delivering. So far, 500 Zevo 600s are in operation with FedEx across California and Canada. The first half of this year, the company has built more than 1,000 Zevo 600s and are delivering those to more customers, and production of the Zevo 400 is expected to begin later this year.

Maserati did something similar  

GM isn’t alone in its pursuit of fast, streamlined design; Maserati designed its all-new track-focused MCXtrema sports car on a computer in a mere eight weeks as part of the go-to-market process. As automakers get more comfortable building with these more modern tools, we’re likely to see models rolled out just as quickly in the near future. 

It may seem that recent college graduates with degrees in immersive technology would be the best hope for the future of virtual design and engineering. Styles sees a generational bridge, not a divide. 

“As folks are graduating from school, they’re more and more fluent in technology,” Styles says. “They’re already well versed in software. It’s interesting to see how that energy infuses the workforce, and amazing how the generations change the construct.” 

Where is vehicle design going next? Styles says it’s a matter not necessarily of if automakers are going to use artificial intelligence, but how they’re going to use it.

“Technology is something that we have to use in an intelligent way, and we’re having a lot of those discussions of how technology becomes a tool in the hand of the creator versus replacing the creator themselves.” 

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The divide between the motorcycle and scooter communities has long been deep, as illustrated in the classic 1979 rock flick Quadrophenia, which depicted the strife between the scooter-riding mods and the motorcycling rockers.

Today, there probably aren’t any actual brawls, but you don’t see a lot of crossover between people who ride scooters and those who ride motorcycles. I’m evidence of that because after decades of motorcycling, BMW’s innovative CE 04 electric scooter is my first scooter ride. It was worth the wait to ride the 2023 model, after the bike debuted for the 2022 model year.

The transition is eased by the fact that the CE 04 looks more like a spaceship than a scooter. Think of it as your dainty beach rental scooter augmented by Star Trek tech. Its size and bodywork fooled a good many motorcyclists into giving me the wave as they passed, an acknowledgement not generally extended to pilots of mere scooters.

There are other aspects of the CE 04 that make it much more than a Bermudan rental ride. There is the price tag, which starts at $11,795, as much as two or three times the cost of conventional scooters. And there is the curb weight, which at 509 lbs. is hefty as two or three beach scooter playthings.

To aid with that bulk the CE 04 has a reverse setting, making it easy to back out of the garage or parking space. The CE 04’s low-speed power metering means that twisting the grip only a little in such circumstances makes it easy to move the scooter microscopically. Seriously, it is possible to move the CE 04 a millimeter at a time.

The CE 04’s top speed and range

Fortunately, on the road, it covers ground a bit faster. BMW says the CE 04 is not intended for highway travel, but curiosity got me onto the interstate with it to see what it would do, and when riding in sport mode the CE 04 easily zooms up to 70 mph and holds that speed effortlessly. BMW says the top speed is 75 mph, but I have reason to believe it can actually go a bit faster than that.

Of course, the faster and further you go, the more you’re going to burn through the battery’s storage. Much distance at that speed will have the rider testing the CE 04’s Level 2 240-volt charging speed to refill the depleted 8.5 kWh battery pack. The battery is mounted at the very bottom of the frame for a lower center of gravity. It uses air cooling through the attached finned heat sink on the pack’s underside, benefiting from airflow beneath the scooter.

BMW says it will take about an hour to reach an 80-percent state of charge from a completely dead battery pack using 240-volt charging, and more like 3.5 hours for regular 120-volt household current. The bike’s charging display said that charging from 40 percent state of charge to 100 percent using my ChargePoint Level 2 charger took two hours. The SAE charging port is just below the handlebars, on the right side.

Normal riding range is 80 miles, but low-speed cruising around town will do better than that and of course, those 70 mph highway blasts will leave you looking for a charging station much sooner. This distance is not so different from that of an internal combustion engine Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle with the tiny “peanut” gas tank. Riders have tolerated that for many years, though a Sportster did leave me walking to a gas station one time.

[Related: At $1,807, the Honda Navi is the perfect starter motorcycle for a beginner]

Another difference between the CE 04 and typical scooters is the absence of the noisy, smoking, two-stroke motor providing the accompanying soundtrack of a leaf blower everywhere you ride. While those scooters deliver more sound than fury, the CE 04’s 42-horsepower permanent magnet EMP 156 electric motor blasts the BMW to 60 mph in 9 seconds.

Riding in ECO mode extends the riding range while making the CE 04 feel sluggish. It also increases the regenerative braking when the rider releases the twist throttle. Rain mode has the opposite effect, providing less braking so the bike coasts more freely to avoid inadvertently breaking traction. I rode mainly in Road mode on dry pavement.

It does not cruise as silently as expected—there’s a pretty constant electric whine at all speeds. More surprisingly, there’s a pretty loud gear whine during steady-state neighborhood-speed riding.

BMW’s motorcycles have historically employed a driveshaft rather than the usual chain, but the CE 04 follows Harley’s example with the kind of belt drive as seen on those American cruising machines. The belt’s benefit is that, unlike a chain, it never needs to be lubricated or adjusted.

That belt spins a rear wheel that, as a solid black-painted 15-inch disc, looks like nothing so much as a stamped steel temporary spare wheel for a car even though it is actually lightweight cast aluminum.

Starting the CE04—it’s wireless

Riders start the CE 04 with a press of a button thanks to the wireless key fob that can remain safely zipped inside the rider’s protective jacket. Twist the grip and the machine scoots effortlessly away, leading me to squirt up to speed and slow down a few times to get a feel for the electric power delivery. Pretty cool.

Regeneration slows the CE 04, making it easy to start and stop using the throttle, but there are regular brakes there too, in case a squirrel darts out directly ahead. BMW has developed a two-wheeled equivalent to its iDrive infotainment input device, with a scrolling wheel on the left handlebar that riders can also press inward to click a menu selection. BMW has named this the Multicontroller.

[Related: Behind the wheel of Volkswagen’s reinvented classic: the electric ID.BUZZ]

The Multicontroller for the CE 04’s 10.25-inch color display screen is a clever solution to the challenge of operating a computer with gloved hands while riding. However, it takes practice to master the menu system, and I didn’t have enough saddle time to get comfortable trying to use it while in motion.

The compact electric motor and underslung battery pack leave space beneath the seat to securely stow your helmet on arrival, relieving riders of the hassle of carrying their helmet with them or worrying it will get stolen while away from the bike.

For urban riders who are the CE 04’s target market, this setup seems ideal. They probably won’t even consider whether the CE 04 is technically a scooter or a motorcycle as long as it provides another piece to their urban mobility puzzle—along with ride-hailing services, taxis, and mass transit that all allow them to eschew car ownership.

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Europe’s seven largest commercial truck manufacturers agreed in 2020 to cease producing diesel vehicles within two decades’ time, and have been aggressively working towards meeting that goal ever since. On August 31, one of those companies announced its latest potential tool in the emissions-heavy industry’s transition towards a more sustainable future. Instead of revolutionizing what’s underneath a semi-truck’s hood, however, Sweden’s Scania aims to take advantage of all the free real estate surrounding the tons of cargo in transit on roadways.

Per a release from Scania, the company recently partnered with Uppsala University and the energy company Midsummer to develop a 560-horsepower plug-in hybrid semi-truck prototype whose 60-foot-long trailer is wrapped in 100 square meters of solar panels. According to CleanTechnica, the additional solar powered boost could supply the truck with an additional annual driving range of up to 5,000 kilometers in Sweden—a promising figure, given the prototype’s location.

The Scandinavian nation isn’t exactly known for its endless days of sunshine. July in Stockholm, for example, only experiences clear skies a little over half the month on average—and that’s the highest rate for the entire year. November, by contrast, is cloudy nearly 75 percent of the month. But in this case, the overcast skies’ regularity works to the project’s advantage.

[Related: Does Hyundai’s rooftop solar panel change the fuel-economy equation?]

“We specifically wanted to see if it made sense in Sweden, because if you go to places such as Southern Europe, Australia or North Africa, there’s obviously a lot more sunshine,” explained Eric Falkgrim, a Technology Leader at Scania’s Research and Innovation department and the solar-powered truck’s project manager, in the August 31 announcement. “If it can work here in the less sunny and somewhat darker conditions then that would confirm the widespread validity of the project.”

Falkgrim noted that although the concept of slapping solar panels atop a semi-truck trailer may initially seem relatively simple, the logistics were anything but easy. “It’s a little bit of a wild and crazy idea because it comes with a lot of new hardware and software systemization and development, to make it safe to handle the transfer of power, and to handle [design] faults,” he continued.

Generally speaking, solar panels aren’t optimized for near-constant traveling. As such, it’s “fairly involved from a technical point of view,” said Falkgrim. Despite only recently starting prototype testing on Sweden’s public roads, he explained the project is “about seeing if the solution makes sense, and so far we believe it does.” Although such a design isn’t expected to become widespread on roadways for a few years, Scania’s initial testing shows the tech is not only feasible, but promising.

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At first glance, the McDermitt Caldera might feel like the edge of the Earth. This oblong maze of rocky vales straddles the arid Nevada-Oregon borderlands, in one of the least densely populated parts of North America. 

But the future of the modern world depends on the future of places like the McDermitt Caldera, which has the potential to be the largest known source of lithium on the planet. Where today’s world runs on hydrocarbons, tomorrow’s may very well rely on the element for an expanding offering of lithium-ion batteries. The flaky silver metal is a necessity for these batteries that we already use, and which we’ll likely use in far greater numbers to support mobile phones, electric cars, and large electric grids.

Which is why it matters a ton where we get our lithium from. A new study, published in the journal Science Advances today, suggests that McDermitt Caldera contains even more lithium than previously thought and outlines how the yet-to-be-discovered stores could be extracted. But these results are unlikely to ease the criticisms about the environmental costs of mining the substance.

[Related: Why solid state batteries are the next frontier for EV makers]

By 2030, the world may require more than a megaton of lithium every year. If previous geological surveys are correct, then the McDermitt Caldera—the remnants of a 16-million-old volcanic supereruption—could contain as many as 100 megatons of the metal. 

“It’s a huge, massive feature that has a lot of lithium in it,” Tom Benson, one of the authors of the new paper and a volcanologist at Columbia University and the Lithium Americas Corporation.

One high-profile project, partly run by Lithium Americas Corporation, proposes a 17,933-acre mine in the Thacker Pass, on the Nevada side of the border at the caldera’s southern edge. The project is contentious: Thacker Pass (or Peehee Mu’huh in Northern Paiute) sits on land that many local Indigenous groups consider sacred. Native American activists are continuing to fight a plan to expand the mine-exploration area in court. 

But not all of the lithium under McDermitt’s rocky sands ranks the same. Most of the desired metal there comes in the form of a mineral called smectite; under certain conditions, smectite can transform into a different mineral called illite that can sometimes also be processed for lithium. Benson and his colleagues studied samples of both smectite and illite drilled from the ground throughout the caldera. “There’s lithium everywhere you drill,” he says. 

Previously, geologists assumed that you could find both smectite and illite in a wide distribution across the caldera, but the authors only found the latter in high concentrations in the caldera’s south, around Thacker Pass. “It’s constrained to this area,” explains Benson.

That’s important. Benson and colleagues think that the caldera’s illite formed when lithium-rich fluid, heated by the underlying volcano, washed over smectite. In the process, the mineral absorbed much of the lithium. Consequently, they project the illite in Thacker Pass holds more than twice as much lithium than the neighboring smectite.

“That’s really helpful to change exploration strategy,” Benson says. “Now we know we have to stick in the Thacker Pass area if we want to find and mine that illite.”

Some of Thacker Pass’s proponents believe that would result in fewer costs and less damage from mining. Anyone who deals with lithium is, on some level, aware of the environmental costs. The recovery process produces pollutants like heavy metals, sucks up water, and emits tons of greenhouse gases. By one estimate, fitting a new electric vehicle with its lithium battery can result in upwards of 70 percent more carbon emissions than building an equivalent petrol-powered car (although the average electric car will more than make up the difference with day-to-day use).

That said, not all extraction is the same. There are two main types of lithium sources: brine recovery and hard-rock mining. Some of the lithium we use comes from super salty pools. Over millions of years, rainwater percolates through lithium-containing rocks, dissolves the metal, and carries it to underground aquifers. Today, humans pump brine to the surface, evaporate the water, add a slurry of hydrated lime to keep out unwanted metals, and extract the lithium that’s left behind. Much of the world’s brine lithium today comes from the “lithium triangle” of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile—one of the world’s driest regions.

Alternatively, we can directly mine lithium ores from the earth and process them as we would with most other metals. Separating lithium from ore typically involves crushing the rock and heating it up to temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Getting to those high temperatures often requires fossil fuels in the first place. This method is less laborious and costly than brine extraction, but also far more carbon-intensive.

[Related: Inside the high-powered process that could recycle rare earth metals]

McDermitt Caldera’s smectite and illite belong to what some lithium watchers see as a new third category of extraction: volcanic sedimentary lithium. When volcanic minerals containing lithium flow into nearby valleys  and react with the loose dirt, they leave behind lithium-rich sediments that require little energy and processing to separate.

With the new alternative, mining proponents claim they can drastically reduce the environmental impact of their current and future activities at Thacker Pass. And the research by Benson’s team seems to suggest that, if lithium companies probe in the right places, they might get rewarded more for their efforts.

But this is likely little comfort to lithium-mining opponents in Oregon and Nevada, whose criticisms will be considered as the Bureau of Land Management maps out drilling in the deposit. Their case parallels those of Indigenous Chileans who oppose lithium extraction near their homes in the Atacama and locals fighting a lithium mining project near Portugal’s northern border. Together, they’re fighting a world that’s growing hungrier for lithium, along with new ways and places to exploit it.

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The electric version of Ford’s F-150 pickup, the Lightning, came out in 2022. Now, the automaker is revealing a limited-edition matte-black version of the electric truck. Cloaked in as much black as possible, it’s gorgeous. 

To get the vehicle to be this matte black color, Ford has had it outfitted in a 3M vinyl wrap. Parts of the truck, like the side-view mirrors or details on the charge-port door, retain a normal glossy black paint color, which Ford calls “agate” black. 

Ford has continued the black theme with other parts of the truck. For example, the 22-inch wheel rims are black, and the lugnuts are—you guessed it—black. The Ford logo in the front, a famously blue oval, is now black. You may also be able to imagine what’s going on in the interior—black leather seats and a black center console.

The vehicle has a Platinum-level trim, the fanciest Lightning version available. The matte-black edition will cost buyers $97,995, and Ford will only make 2,000 of them when it starts delivering them next year. A regular Platinum-level Lightning costs $91,495.

Black is a hot color choice

The arrival of such a chic vehicle certainly makes a bold appearance, but it also can invite a conversation around how a design like this would fare in our increasingly warm summers. After sitting in the sun, an all-black car will probably get toastier than a light-colored car.

In fact, a study published in 2011 in the journal Applied Energy studied just this topic, focusing on a black Honda Civic and a silver Honda Civic parked in the sun on a day in July 2010, in Sacramento, California. The cars soaked in the sun for about an hour, and then had their air conditioning run for about half an hour, and they went through that cycle five times. 

The researchers measured the temperature of different parts of the cars as time went on. The roof of the black car reached temperatures of around 176 degrees Fahrenheit or more. The roof of the silver car stayed relatively cooler, never getting hotter than 140 degrees. As for the back seat, it hit over 165 F in the black car and around 156 F in the silver car. The cabin air temp reached higher maximum temps in the black car than the silver car, as did ceiling temperatures. In other words, parts of the black car got hotter than the same parts of the silver car. (The difference between the windshield and dashboard temperatures of each vehicle wasn’t too dramatic, though.) 

Ronnen Levinson, the first author on the study and as a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, explains that there are several reasons that cars get hot when they’re in the sun. The first is actually the windows. “If you’re trying to manage the temperature inside the car, the most important thing to do is worry about the glass,” he says. “During the day, you have a lot of sunlight coming in through those windows, and that, more than anything else, is going to heat the car cabin.” This same phenomenon is why homes and buildings sometimes make use of solar-control windows, to keep a house cooler. 

The next factor to think about is the obvious one: the paint color. A black car will get hotter than a white or silver one. “When the painted metal is in the sun, if it is an ordinary black, it is going to get much hotter than an ordinary white,” he says. That’s because white can reflect more light than black. 

The third variable is the cabin interior: he says that ideally the seats as well as parts like the inside of the doors should be lighter in color, too. The way the interior comes into play is that it can keep radiating heat after the air conditioner has been cranked up. “It actually takes quite a while to lower the cabin temperature,” he says. “And the reason is that all of the solid objects in the cabin, they’ve been cooking in the sun—they keep releasing heat.” 

Bottom line: A car with a white or silver paint job and a light-colored cabin is going to stay cooler in the sun than a very dark car, and don’t forget that the windows are actually a big culprit in terms of the vehicle getting toasty, regardless of its color. To deal with the dashboard temperature issue, consider a sunshade for the windshield.

Preconditioning

But don’t let this factor deter you from pursuing the Darth Vader look for your pickup, as there are steps to make the issue better. To mitigate the heat, Vince Mahe, the Lightning’s chief engineer, advises opening the windows and making use of the seat-cooling function, which he says draws less energy than the air conditioner. In an electric car, running air conditioning or heating (as well as other factors) can influence its range. Mahe says that the heater “hurts the range most.” 

There’s a step that customers can take at home before they unplug their EV, too, whether they want it to be cooled down in the summer or warmed up in the winter before they depart. “We tell customers in wintertime to do pre-conditioning, so that they can get the battery warmed up, to run at optimal temperature,” he says. That involves having the truck warm up while it’s still plugged into its charger. Here’s more from Ford on preconditioning a Lightning.

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Acura’s first EV, the ZDX, debuted as a concept car almost exactly a year ago. As of last week, the ZDX is a reality, with deliveries expected for early next year. Acura plans to boost adoption as quickly as possible to support the ZDX and the rest of its EV dreams, and it has some ambitious plans to make it happen, with billions of dollars invested in the future. 

Starting at $60,000, the 2024 Acura ZDX includes an estimated 325 miles of range for the single-motor rear-wheel-drive version. ZDXs with all-wheel drive are expected to have a range of 315 miles, and the Type S should have 288 miles of all-electric range and 500 horsepower to boot. Acura says the new SUV can tow up to 3,500 pounds with rear-wheel or all-wheel drive. 

As Honda’s luxury arm, Acura will likely produce a vehicle with high-quality materials and an elegant layout inside the cabin, including a space below the console for storage since the ZDX doesn’t require a transmission tunnel. Beyond just the ZDX, take a look at the automaker’s multi-faceted plan for the battery development, charging infrastructure, and more. 

Betting on batteries—and more

Acura’s new ZDX is built on GM’s Ultium battery platform, a flexible and modular system used for GMC’s Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq SUV (in fact, the exterior dimensions of the ZDX mirror the Lyriq’s). As such, Acura’s near future is tied closely to GM’s for charging protocols. 

When GM switches to Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), the ZDX will as well, between 2025 and 2026, executive vice president of Honda Motor Company Shinji Aoyama said during an interview along with Jay Joseph, American Honda’s vice president of sustainability and business development, and American Honda Motor Company president and CEO, Noriya Kaihara.

Honda is investing heavily in battery infrastructure, development, and manufacturing with its new EV battery facility, a joint venture with LG Energy Solutions. This $3.5 million collaboration in Jeffersonville, Ohio is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

In the meantime, Aoyama says Acura will start a pilot production of solid-state batteries. Touted as safer, denser, and less susceptible to temperature changes, these types of batteries can pack more power into a smaller footprint. In turn, that will affect the size and shape of future vehicles as well as overall range. However, battery size alone doesn’t help the overall adoption rate, Joseph asserted during the sit-down with PopSci.

“The antidote to range anxiety isn’t bigger batteries. It’s improving the charging infrastructure,” Joseph says.

Acura recognizes that the typically-heavy nature of EVs is a crucial area to research. Currently, EVs weigh a minimum of 4,000 pounds, Aoyama says, but he sees change going forward. That could be addressed through the use of different materials, disparate structures, denser batteries, or all of the above. 

Improving the charging infrastructure

In July, Acura announced it would join Honda, BMW Group, General Motors, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis (the automaker behind Dodge, Ram, Alfa Romeo, Jeep, and others) to create a new charging network joint venture. Together, the consortium plans to build 30,000 EV fast-charging stations across the United States and Canada, using both Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) and Combined Charging System (CCS).

“A whole bunch of [battery-electric vehicles] have come to the market in a very short time,” says Joseph. “The trend is quite clear: people are moving to BEVs in the same way that people have moved to SUVs over passenger cars.”

This is on the heels of Ford’s surprise proclamation in May that it had entered an agreement with Tesla to allow current Ford EV owners to use Tesla Superchargers across the US and Canada starting in 2024. Also, Ford CEO Jim Farley promised the automaker’s next generation of EVs will include Tesla’s charging plug. GM, Rivian, and Volvo quickly followed suit.

Acura says it’s going much further. It’s not enough to just build charging stations; they must be the high-speed type to allay range anxiety, brand representatives say. Plus, EV drivers need to know that if their map (or app) points them toward a charge point, it will be secure, reliable, and accessible. One of the current challenges for EV drivers is that CCS charging stations are often located behind buildings in poorly-lit areas, and broken chargers stay down for extended periods of time. As a result, drivers don’t feel comfortable, which contributes to poor adoption rates. Joseph says he recognizes that Tesla does a good job monitoring its equipment and the company fixes issues fast. It makes a big difference. 

The US needs to have about 200,000 DC fast charging charge points to meet EV customer demands, and Acura plans to be part of the solution to pain points in today’s market.

“We think we can make an impact,” Joseph says. “If you drive around Europe, charging is ample. Certain corridors are very well supported; it’s effortless. People need for charging to be easy, and that paves the path to adoption.”

No more hybrids

Meanwhile, Acura is finished with hybrids. The NSX, the last of Acura’s hybrid supercars, rolled off the line in November. Acura’s NSX is equipped with a potent combination of three electric motors with a 3.5-liter V6 engine, good for 600 horsepower and 492 pound-feet of torque. It’s an absolute thrill ride.

For all the Acura NSX fans lamenting the end of this vehicle, there’s hope on the horizon. The brand offered a surprise sneak peek of what it’s calling the Performance Electric Vision Design Study last week at Monterey Car Week, and the sketches point to the emergence of a new supercar. You could bet good money there’s an all-electric version of the NSX just around the corner.

Hydrogen

If hybrids are out of the equation, hydrogen isn’t. There’s a delicate balance between supply and demand, and right now affordability of hydrogen is a challenge, Aoyama says. 

“Retail [hydrogen] in California costs $30 per kilogram, and it needs to be about half that,” he says. 

Overall, Acura recognizes much room for innovation, and Joseph sees this as a “once-in-100-years” transformation.

“We are so used to putting liquid molecules [in our cars] and electrons work totally differently,” he says. “The nature of our relationship with energy is changing. There is an adoption curve, but [driving EVs] is truly better and easier over time.”

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This story was co-published with Grist, a nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice, and solutions.

Electric vehicles are becoming more and more commonplace on the nation’s roadways.

The federal government wants nearly two-thirds of all cars in the United States to be EVs within the next decade. All the while, EVs are breaking sales records and manufacturers are building more and more charging stations and production plants to incentivize a shift away from fossil fuels in the transportation sector.

With EVs taking the streets by storm, an unlikely industry now wants a piece of the pie.

Trade associations, fuel producers, and bipartisan lawmakers are pushing for biogas, fuel made from animal and food waste, to start receiving federal credits meant for powering electric vehicles.

The push for biogas-powered EVs would be a boon for the energy sector, according to biogas industry leaders. Environmental groups and researchers, however, say biogas has yet to prove itself as a truly clean energy source. 

Biogas created from agriculture has been linked to an increase in waterway pollution and public health concerns that have disproportionately exposed low-income communities and communities of color to toxic byproducts of animal waste.

With the nation needing more ways to power fleets of Teslas and Chevy Bolts, the use of livestock manure to power EVs is still in limbo. 

How does it work? 

For biogas, there are, broadly speaking, three sources of waste from which to produce fuel: human waste, animal waste, and food waste. The source of this fuel input can be found at wastewater treatment plants, farms, and landfills. 

At these locations, organic waste is deprived of oxygen, and a natural process known as anaerobic digestion occurs. Bacteria consume the waste products and eventually release methane, the main ingredient of natural gas. The gas is then captured, piped to a utility, turned into electricity, and distributed to customers. 

Fuel created from animal waste isn’t a new concept. Farms around the country have been cashing in on biogas for decades, with a boom in production facilities known as anaerobic digesters expected after funding was included for their construction as part of climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. 

At the end of June, the EPA finalized its Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, which outlines how much renewable fuels—products like corn-based ethanol, manure-based biogas, and wood pellets—are used to cut greenhouse gas emissions as well as reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil, or jet fuel.

Under this program, petroleum-based fuels must blend renewable fuels into their supply. For example, each time the RFS is updated, a new target goal for how much corn-based ethanol is mixed into the nation’s fuel supply is set. This prediction is based on gas and renewable fuel industry market projections.

These gas companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply.

A currency system tracks which renewable fuels are being produced and where they end up at their final lifecycle under the RFS. This system uses credits known as RINs, or Renewable Identification Numbers. According to the EPA, a single RIN is the energy equivalent of one gallon of ethanol, and the prices of the credits will fluctuate over time, just as gas prices do.

Oil companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply. The unique RIN credit proves that an oil seller has purchased, blended, and sold renewable fuel.

Currently, the biogas industry can only use its RIN credits when the fuel source is blended with ethanol or a particular type of diesel fuel. Outside of the federal program, biogas producers have been cashing in on low-carbon fuel programs in both California and Oregon. 

With the boom in demand for renewable electricity, biogas producers want more opportunities to sell their waste-based fuels. And a boom in EVs might get them there.

During recent RFS negotiations, the biogas industry urged the EPA to create a pathway for a new type of credit known as eRINs, or electric RINs. This pathway would allow the biogas and biomass industry to power the nation’s EVs directly. While the industry applauded the recent expansion of mandatory volumes of renewable fuels, the EPA did not decide on finalizing eRIN credits.

Patrick Serfass is the executive director of the American Biogas Council. He said the EPA could approve projects that would support eRINs for years but has yet to approve the pathway for biogas fuel producers. 

“It doesn’t matter which administration,” Serfass said. “The Obama administration didn’t do it. The Trump administration didn’t do it. The Biden administration so far hasn’t done it. EPA, do your job.”

Late last year, the EPA initially included approval of eRINs in the RFS proposal. Republican members of Congress who sit on the Energy & Commerce Committee sent a letter to the EPA, saying that the RFS is not meant to be a tool to electrify transportation.

“Our goal is to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, available, reliable, and secure energy,” the committee members wrote. “The final design of the eRINs program under the RFS inserts uncertainty into the transportation fuels market.”

The RFS has traditionally supported liquid fuels that the EPA considers renewable, the main of which is ethanol. Stakeholders in ethanol production see the inclusion of eRINs as an overstep. 

In May, Chuck Grassley, a Republican Senator from Iowa, introduced legislation that would outlaw EVs from getting credits from the renewable fuels program. Grassley has been a longtime supporter of the ethanol industry as Iowa alone makes up nearly a third of the nation’s ethanol production, according to the economic growth organization Iowa Area Development Group.

Serfass said biogas is a way to offset the nation’s waste and make small and medium-sized farms economically sustainable, as well as local governments operating waste treatment plants and landfills. When it comes to animal waste, he said the eRIN program would allow farmers to make money off their waste by selling captured biogas to the grid to power EVs. 

“There’s a lot of folks that don’t like large farms, and the reason that large farms exist is that as a society, we’re not always willing to pay six to nine dollars for a gallon of milk,” Serfass said. “You have farm consolidation so that farmers can just make a living.”

Initially, digesters were thought of as a climate solution and an economic boom for farmers, but in recent years, farms have stopped digester operations because of the hefty price tag to run them and their modest revenue. Biogas digesters are still operated by large operations, often with the help of fossil fuel companies, such as BP. 

In addition to farms, Serfass said biogas production from food waste and municipal wastewater treatment plants would also be able to cash in on the eRIN program. 

Dodge City, Kansas, a 30,000-person city in the Western part of the state, is an example of a local government using biogas as a source of revenue. In 2018, the city began capturing methane from its sewage treatment and has since been able to generate an estimated $3 million a year by selling the fuel to the transportation sector.

Serfass said the city would be able to sell the fuel to power the nation’s EV charging grid if the eRIN program was approved.

The EPA’s decision-making will direct the next three years of renewable fuel production in the country. The nation’s renewable fuel program is often a battleground for different industry groups, from biogas producers to ethanol refineries, as they fight over their fuel’s market share.

Of note, the biomass industry, which creates fuel from wood pellets, forestry waste, and other detritus of the nation’s lumber supply and forests, wants to be approved for future eRIN opportunities. 

This fuel source has a questionable track record of being a climate solution as the industry is directly linked to deforestation in the American South and has falsely claimed they don’t use whole trees to produce electricity, according to a industry whistleblower.

The EPA did not answer questions from Grist as to why eRINs were not approved in its recent announcement. 

“The EPA will continue to work on potential paths forward for the eRIN program, while further reviewing the comments received on the proposal and seeking additional input from stakeholders to inform potential next steps on the eRIN program,” the agency wrote in a statement. 

Ben Lilliston is the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He said he supported the EPA’s decision to not approve biogas-created electricity for EVs.

“I think the jury is still out around biogas from large-scale animal operations about how effective they are,” Lilliston said.

 He wants more independent studies to determine what a growing biogas sector under the eRIN program would mean for the rural areas and communities of color that surround these facilities.

Predominantly Black and low-income communities in southeastern North Carolina, have been exposed to decades of polluted waters and increased respiratory and heart disease rates related to the state’s hog industry, which has recently cashed in on the biogas sector. 

In Delaware, residents of the largely rural Delmarva peninsula have become accustomed to the stench of the region’s massive poultry farms. These operations now want to cash in on their waste with the implementation of more biogas systems in a community where many residents are Black, or immigrants from Haiti and Latin America WHO speak limited English, according to The Guardian. 

“I think that our concern, and many others, is that this is actually going to increase both emissions and waste and pollution,” Lilliston said. 

Aaron Smith, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of California Davis, said electricity produced from biogas could be a red herring when it comes to cheap, clean energy. 

“There’s often a tendency to say, ‘We have this pollutant like methane gas that escapes from a landfill or a dairy manure lagoon and if we can capture that and stop it from escaping into the atmosphere, that’s a win for the climate,” Smith said. “But once we’ve captured it, should we do something useful with it? And the answer is maybe, but sometimes it’s more expensive to do something useful with it than it would be to go and generate that energy from a different source.”

Smith’s past research has found that the revenue procured by digesters has not been equal to the amount of methane captured by these systems. In a blog post earlier this year, Smith wrote that taxpayers and consumers are overpaying for the price of methane reduction. He found that the gasoline producers have essentially subsidized digester operations by way of the state’s low-carbon transportation standards. To pay for this, the gasoline industry offloads its increased costs by raising the price of gas for consumers. 

“I think we do need to be wary about over-incentivizing these very expensive sources of electricity generation under the guise of climate games,” Smith told Grist. 

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An electric vehicle contains a multitude of battery cells, giving the car’s motors the power they need to turn the wheels. But if the right equipment is involved, that battery system can theoretically do more than just provide juice for the car itself: It can also send energy back to someone’s home during a blackout. 

General Motors announced yesterday that it is expanding the number of EVs in its lineup that can do just that. Previously, the only vehicle in its stable that GM said will have that ability is the Silverado EV RST pickup. Now, GM says that other EVs it’s making, like the Chevy Equinox, Chevy Blazer, and the Cadillac Lyriq, will be able to do the same. The automaker notes that this ability is coming to “its retail portfolio of Ultium-based electric vehicles by model year 2026.” Ultium is what the company calls its modern battery platform. 

As for the vehicles that GM announced yesterday would be getting the ability to support vehicle-to-home power, Derek Sequeira, director of EV Ecosystem at GM, tells PopSci, “that’s just the first tranche,” adding: “There are things that are behind the curtain that haven’t been talked about yet.” 

Not mentioned in yesterday’s announcement are two other GM electric vehicles, the GMC Hummer EV and the Chevy Bolt, the latter of which GM killed but then said would be coming back to life. “We haven’t released timing for either one of those vehicles moving to the vehicle-to-home technology, or the Bolt moving to Ultium technology, but stay tuned, that will come within due time,” Sequeira says.

There is some specific equipment that needs to be in place for all this work. For context, an electric vehicle’s batteries keep their power in DC form. When someone plugs an EV into a level-one or level-two charger, the vehicle is receiving power from the grid in AC form, and internally converting it to DC power for its batteries. Plugging an electric car into a DC fast charger means that step isn’t needed. 

So for an electric vehicle to energize your home, the DC power from the car’s batteries needs to become AC again. Some specialized equipment is involved. One is a bidirectional charger that can both send juice to the vehicle as well as receive it; GM calls that piece of gear a PowerShift Charger. The other components involve a bidirectional inverter—to handle the conversion process between DC and AC—as well as what Sequeira describes as a “microgrid interconnection device.” 

“It allows the Ultium home ecosystem to isolate from the grid in the event of a power outage, and basically turn your home into a mini-microgrid where your vehicle is supplying the power to your home,” he adds. The kit also involves a “dark start battery, which provides the power to get things going” in a blackout, says Sequiera. He says that the Silverado EV RST could provide as many as 10 to 20 days of power, although that’s with “minimal loads.”

General Motors is not the only automaker getting into the business of powering homes with electric vehicles, which is abbreviated at V2H. Ford’s electric pickup, the F-150 Lightning, can do it too. In fact Robby DeGraff, the product and consumer insights analyst at AutoPacific, notes via email that “Ford has really been the leader I think so far when it comes to V2H capability with the F-150 Lightning.” He also points out that Nissan’s Leaf vehicle has vehicle-to-grid capabilities when paired with Fermata Energy’s technology. And Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 or Ioniq 6 can utilize a special connector to power an appliance-level load. 

The enormous electric Cadillac Escalade IQ announced today will support home powering as well, but at around $130,000, it’s a pricey way for anyone to ensure their lights can stay on during a blackout. DeGraff stresses that it’s critically important for GM to make sure the more affordable vehicles in the company’s pipeline get the capability too. “The eventual confirmed replacement for the entry-level Bolt EV and Bolt EUV has to offer this as well,” he says. 

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Genesis has been making a name for itself with thoughtful design and standout features in recent years, catapulting the automaker to a 14 percent year-over-year sales increase in 2022. Hyundai’s luxury arm has steadily amassed fans and wowed the public with firsts like facial recognition technology and a rotating crystal orb gear shifter, both of which are found in the company’s GV60 EV. With vehicles like the GV60 and the G80, it’s ramping up EV production.

While the Korean brand’s G60 is futuristic and bold, the Genesis Electrified G80 sedan looks almost exactly like the gas-powered version inside and out. This is no shortcut; it’s a deliberate tactic to quench the thirst of EV curiosity without requiring massive adjustments of its buyers.

Read on to learn more about the Electrified G80 and how Genesis is converting fans of its luxury sedans into the EV segment.  

Two kinds of EV buyers

The GV60, which was unveiled in 2021, is the brand’s first all-electric vehicle built on the Hyundai Motor Group’s Electric-Global Modular Platform, but it’s not Genesis’ first EV. That honor belongs to the Electrified G80 sedan, which debuted at the 2021 Auto Shanghai event in China. Before that new architecture was ready, the Electrified G80 was built on a dual-purpose platform that serves both internal combustion engines and motor-driven EVs. 

As the electric-global platform was in development, Genesis engineers had the foresight to create a building block that would ease the transition, especially for its luxury sedan enthusiasts.

Genesis has been producing a gas-powered sedan called the G80 since 2017. It introduced a pure EV version of that car, which they call the “Electrified G80,” for 2023 on the same platform. Typically, when an automaker refers to a car as “electrified,” that means it contains a hybrid system. That’s not the case here, as Genesis opted to use the modifier to keep the G80 family names intact.

“What we’re seeing at Genesis is that there are two camps of EV customers: the ones who represent the early adopters, want to lead the charge, and care about tech and sustainability,” says Genesis representative Jarred Pellat. “They want the vehicles that scream ‘I’m an EV!’”

The others, Pellat says, want something familiar. They covet the benefits of EV ownership: a quiet ride, fun driving dynamics with low-end torque, and power; they want to enter this new era of electrification, but still want to keep their “normal” luxury car. In essence, this segment wants a car that happens to be an EV but doesn’t look like an EV. When the Nissan Leaf EV debuted, for instance, it was a funky little capsule that made a clear statement. Volkswagen’s ID.4 is also in that category of cars that don’t look like any of its gas-powered siblings. 

That’s especially important in Genesis’ home market in Korea, where the G80 is one of the brand’s top-selling vehicles. In Korea, many G80 owners are repeat customers, and as the oldest model in the lineup, it has the longest-standing customer base. If a customer is tremendously satisfied with their G80, they can transition to an EV easily because it looks and feels very similar. Until they press the accelerator and experience the instant torque of an EV, that is.

The Electrified G80 vs. the gas-powered G80

Starting at a smidge over $80,000, the Electrified G80 rings in at nearly $30,000 more than the base model gas-powered G80. 

The regular G80 is offered in two trims: 2.5T models are equipped with a 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine good for 300 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque, and it’s available with either rear-wheel or all-wheel drive. Upgrading to the 3.5T Sport means all-wheel drive only with a turbo 3.5-liter V6 and a boost to 375 hp and 391 pound-feet of torque. 

Even though the electrified version of the sedan takes a small horsepower hit for a total of 365, the torque is considerably more at 516 pound-feet. When you step on the pedal, it moves. That’s somewhat surprising, considering the electrified G80 weighs a half-ton more than the 2.5T and a quarter-ton more than the 3.5T Sport models. 

Hooked up to a DC fast charger, the Electrified G80 charges up from 10 percent to 80 percent in 22 minutes, Genesis says, which is slightly longer than the 18 minutes it takes for a GV60. The charging port is camouflaged in the grille with a push-button release, making it easy to pull straight up to a charger and get going. 

Total cargo space suffers a bit between the two models, as the gas-powered G80 boasts 13.1 cubic feet of trunk space and that number drops to 10.8 cubic feet in the G80 EV. Other than that, though, the G80 and Electrified G80 are similar enough to be comfortable. 

Genesis isn’t killing off its sedan line any time soon, either. It’s common in Korea for customers to use luxury sedans with chauffeurs, and Genesis models (Hyundai models as well) are equipped for that setup. The Genesis G80 comes with unique buttons embedded into the bolster of the passenger seats nearest the center console. In order to move the seat or change the incline, it’s within reach for the driver to push a button instead of leaning way over to the far side of the passenger front seat or getting out of the car to adjust them for rear seat passengers. 

With gas-powered and EV models of the same sedan, Genesis isn’t just optimizing its production line. It’s making it easy to switch. Not everyone wants to look different and stand out as they transition to the EV world, they just want to blend in. That’s where the Electrified G80 makes its stand. 

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For some drivers, electric vehicles sound pretty awesome—until it comes down to charging. Range anxiety is a real thing, and while there are around 32,000 fast chargers across the US that can refill your EV’s battery in half an hour or so, that’s still quite small compared to the more than 100,000 gas stations across the US as of 2017. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates that there needs to be around 182,000 fast chargers across the country by 2030 to support the 30-42 million predicted EVs on the road.

When it comes to EVs and charging them, Tesla normally makes the biggest headlines, but this time other automakers are stepping up in an Avengers-style move. This week, a coalition of seven automotive companies—BMW Group, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz Group, and Stellantis NV—made a commitment to bring 30,000 fast chargers to North America. The first of these should come online by summer 2024, according to their announcement. 

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source.]

“To accelerate the shift to electric vehicles, we’re in favor of anything that makes life easier for our customers,” Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Källenius said in the statement. “Charging is an inseparable part of the EV-experience, and this network will be another step to make it as convenient as possible.”

According to Reuters, each fast-charging machine costs somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000, making this endeavor one that could cost billions of dollars. Currently, Tesla has the largest network of fast chargers with 45,000 supercharging locations globally. 

Some of the companies involved with this new undertaking include companies such as GM and Mercedes that have already signed on to start using Tesla’s charging technology, called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), starting in 2025. The others still have product plans using the Combined Charging System (CCS). The new stations, according to the announcement, will offer charging connectors for both systems. 

The announcement stated that the network “intends” to solely run on renewable energy, but a plan for this has not yet been disclosed. The chargers will be concentrated in urban areas and on highways.

“We think this is an important step forward,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told Reuters. President Joe Biden has previously stated goals to bring 500,000 EV chargers online by 2030.

[Related: EV adoption doesn’t lighten energy costs for all American families.]

Currently, the vast majority of EV chargers in the US are “level 2” chargers, which can take anywhere from four to 10 hours to completely charge a vehicle, according to the Washington Post. Owners of EVs frequently have those level-2 chargers installed at their homes. System malfunctions also currently run amok—a recent survey found that one in five EV owners have rolled up to a charger and were then unable to charge due to issues like system malfunctions. 

“We believe that a charging network at scale is vital to protecting freedom of mobility for all, especially as we work to achieve our ambitious carbon neutrality plan,” Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said in the statement. “A strong charging network should be available for all.”

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Only 40 minutes from the heart of Las Vegas, Nevada, Ford’s Bronco Off-Roadeo awaits eager new owners learning how to push their SUVs to the limit. The brand-new Bronco Raptor Experience can be found in Raptor Valley— about an hour’s journey across the rocky desert terrain. Here is where Bronco Raptor drivers can skid across a desert running course and jump their SUVs off a tabletop obstacle. It’s pure rally adrenaline on 37-inch wheels. 

This in-the-dirt experience isn’t only limited to gas-powered cars. Drivers of Ford’s Mach-E all-electric SUVs will now be able to get in on the fun. The Blue Oval decided to create a new variant called the Mach-E Rally, designed to tackle rougher roads off the asphalt. This car is unusual in several ways, as this is the first Mustang built for dirt and speed together; it’s also the company’s first foray into all-electric rally racing.

Read on to learn more about how the Mach-E Rally fits into the world of off-roading, desert racing and beyond.

EV market ready for more off-road adventures

The Mach-E Rally made its public debut this month at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK, driven by former World Rally champion and driver of the M-Sport Ford Puma Hybrid Rally1 entry Ott Tänak. 

Specs aren’t available yet, and for the Mach-E to successfully transition to an off-road career, it would need more ground clearance and different tires than the low-rolling-resistance types on the street-ready Mach-E.  Ford offers a signup for curious tire-kickers who want to know more about the Mach-E Rally, with more information coming in the future. 

Ford has seen success with its F-150 Raptor pickup and Bronco Raptor SUV, both of which appeal to the increasing number of drivers seeking off-road adventures. It makes sense for the automaker to expand its footprint in the dirt on the EV side. 

While that concept is still rare, it’s not unheard of: EV company Rivian has proven its vehicles are adept at off-roading, bringing its R1T pickup and R1S SUV into the desert for the punishing Rebelle Rally. Three years ago, Rivian sent two of its nascent EVs on a cross-continent trip from the southernmost part of South America to Los Angeles, California through 13,000 miles of tough topography. Porsche and Volkswagen have also sent vehicles on off-roading ventures to show their versatility.

Mach-E Rally on trend 

According to Emme Hall with Edmunds, the idea to create the Mach-E Rally started about a year ago with an internet rendering of a Mach-E accessorized for off-pavement activities. Ford chief advanced product development and technology officer Doug Field saw opportunity there and presented the concept to CEO Jim Farley, who gave it the green light soon after.

The Mach-E Rally development is on trend. Aftermarket parts organization SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) predicts that the light-truck segment (pickups, vans, SUVs and CUVs) will account for close to 80 percent of all new vehicle sales by 2027. In that segment, pickups alone will make up nearly 50 percent of all new vehicles sold. These figures translate directly to Americans’ growing zeal for the outdoors, especially during the pandemic. Mordor Intelligence says the off-road vehicle market was valued at $14 billion in 2020 and will reach $18 billion by 2026. 

As EV adoption increases (assisted by new agreements between Tesla and Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Nissan, and more to adopt Tesla’s charging standard), the Mach-E and all of its variations have an excellent chance of succeeding with consumers. Currently, Ford’s Mustang Mach-E is doing quite well: sales increased 45 percent to 39,458 vehicles from 2021 to 2022. Ford is trying to keep up with this demand by building three battery plants: two in Kentucky and another in Tennessee in partnership with South Korean firm SK On. 

To give drivers a chance to learn about all the things their electric vehicle can do, Ford offers new Bronco owners an entire day of professional instruction at one of its Off-Roadeo locations in Nevada, Utah, Texas, and New Hampshire. Could a dirt-racing school for the Mach-E Rally be far behind? It wouldn’t surprise us.

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Yesterday, electric vehicle maker Canoo announced in a press release that it had delivered three new Crew Transportation Vehicles (CTVs) to NASA. The cute-looking and totally electric vehicles will transport astronauts to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the Artemis lunar missions.

Designed as a big update to shuttle-era Astrovan, the CTVs were made specifically for the requirements of the Artemis missions, NASA says. Each vehicle can accommodate up to four astronauts in their brand-new Orion spacesuits, plus a spacesuit technician, on the drive to Launch Pad 39B. There’s also “room for specialized equipment,” NASA says. 

“The collaboration between Canoo and our NASA representatives focused on the crews’ safety and comfort on the way to the pad ahead of their journey to the Moon,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the Artemis launch director, said in a press release. 

Although safety and comfort were obviously important, NASA also put a lot of thought into the visual design of the CTVs, which is meant to pay “homage to the legacy of the agency’s human spaceflight and space exploration efforts.” Apparently, everything “from the interior and exterior markings to the color of the vehicles to the wheel wells” was carefully chosen. 

[Related: With Artemis 1 launched, NASA is officially on its way back to the moon]

“I have no doubt everyone who sees these new vehicles will feel the same sense of pride I have for this next endeavor of crewed Artemis missions,” Blackwell-Thompson, who was involved in the design process, added. Canoo intends to reveal the interior and exterior in more detail later this year.

Canoo is one of the more interesting electric vehicle manufacturers in the US. It has developed a “skateboard” modular EV platform (other EV makers use the skateboard approach too). Basically, it consists of four wheels, a battery, a motor or two, and a drive-by-wire steering wheel on a 9.35-foot wheelbase, allowing the company to develop different vehicles from the same chassis. So far, it has a van-style Lifestyle Vehicle (which the NASA CTVs are based on), a delivery-van, and a pickup truck, which the US Army is currently testing. 

Of course, developing a brand-new platform like this is never a smooth process. Canoo’s press release boasts of an “on time” delivery, hinting at some of its past troubles. As recently as May last year, the company only had enough cash on hand to last another three months. It seems a spate of binding orders for more than 15,000 vehicles from companies like Walmart and two fleet leasing companies, Zeeba and Kingbee, were enough to keep it in the clear. It’s a big reminder that the EV space is still very new, and some of the companies making headlines right now might not be the ones that we are talking about in 10 year’s time.

Although they were delivered this week, the CTVs won’t have their big day until at least November of 2024. That’s the current planned launch date for NASA’s first crewed mission to the moon in 53 years, Artemis II. The little CTVs will drive the four astronauts the first nine miles of their trip into space, though the hulking Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft will take them for the rest of their 10-day mission. Until then, the three EVs will be used for astronaut training exercises. 

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Last week, General Motors (the company that owns the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac car brands) announced that they had bought a software startup called ALGOLiON that specializes in predicting EV battery fires. 

Specifically, “the software uses sophisticated algorithms to identify miniscule changes that could impact battery health weeks earlier than other methods in use today without additional hardware or sensors all while the battery is still operating properly,” according to a press release GM put out about the acquisition.  

ALGOLiON was founded in 2014 by a pair of battery industry experts. The key product it developed was software called AlgoShield, which can detect early warning signs that lead to battery hazards. The company explained on its website that its software uses “patented quantitative algorithm systems” that analyze changes in electrical signals from the battery in charge and discharge modes. It also monitors DC currents and voltage signals coming from the device for abnormalities that could indicate the presence of defects. 

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source]

This technique allows the company to see hazard events that could lead up to a thermal runaway reaction, because it aims to catch early warning signs that come before a temperature rise can be gauged by external sensors. The company has tested its tech in various labs across Europe, the US, and the UK. 

Lithium-ion battery fires have become a growing concern for manufacturers of consumer electronic devices from cell phones to e-bikes to cars. GM had to recall thousands of Chevy Bolt EVs in 2021 because of underlying issues with the battery. It was a very expensive ordeal. (The company has since discontinued the Bolt, which used an older form of battery tech, to focus on making vehicles just with its newest battery system, called Ultium.)

Failures with battery cells can be due to design flaws, or wear and tear combined with the wrong mix of temperature and motion. And of course, EV battery fires aren’t just a GM issue. Tesla has also experienced bouts of bad publicity around this problem. And Ford had to recall a dozen F-150 Lightnings after an incident earlier this year. While gas and diesel cars can certainly also catch on fire, EV fires are sometimes stubborn to put out. 

The car industry is aware of the potential risks, and has been researching ways to make components less flammable, more compartmentalized, or created with new materials.

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While plug-in electric vehicles are the center of much hype, they aren’t the only type of newfangled, potentially sustainable vehicle that the world’s brightest minds have set their sights on. Fuel cell electric vehicles also use electricity, but instead of using a battery, they produce electricity internally using a hydrogen fuel cell. While these kinds of vehicles have been around for a while, the technology has faced plenty of challenges and hurdles—namely inefficiency and range anxiety.

However, a team of students at the Netherland’s Delft University of Technology recently took a big step for hydrogen cars—and, simultaneously, broke the Guinness World Record for the greatest distance driven on full tanks of hydrogen fuel. On Sunday, June 25, the student team drove their hydrogen-fueled Eco-Runner XIII for 2,488.4 kilometers (1,546.2 miles) over the course of three days on just one kilogram of hydrogen fuel—that’s about the distance between Boston and Miami. The student crew drove the 71.5 hours in rotating shifts of two hours, only stopping to switch out drivers.

[Related: A beginner’s guide to the ‘hydrogen rainbow’.]

The previous record of 2,056 kilometers (1,277 miles) was set only last May by ARM Engineering’s electric Renault Zoe, which operates using a methanol fuel cell. 

The impressive feat took place at Germany’s Immendigen track. The record-breaking vehicle is the thirteenth iteration of the Eco-Runner, the first of which was revealed in 2005. The scientists first exhibited the final design of the Eco-Runner XIII in May, touting the development as possibly the most efficient hydrogen car yet. The three-wheeled, cloud-shaped vehicle utilizes carbon fiber instead of steel for parts such as push rods in the steering system, the hull of the vehicle, and suspension beams. Additionally, the team took extra care to factor in energy efficiency in terms of energy losses—especially during the conversion of hydrogen to electricity, and then electricity to kinetic energy. To do so, the team used a “brand-new” fuel cell. 

All in all, the 72 kilogram (158 pound) car can drive around 45 kilometers per hour (27 miles per hour). While this one-person, funky-shaped, car might not be road-trip ready, the team hopes their developments can keep pushing the clean technology closer to the mainstream. Around 56,000 hydrogen cars were sold worldwide in 2022 according to one report, and the market for such vehicles is slated to hit $17.88 billion by 2029.  

[Related: This plane powered by hydrogen has made an electrifying first flight.]

For those who are intrigued by hydrogen vehicles and live in the Netherlands, you’re in luck—the first hydrogen energy refueling hub was just unveiled outside of Amsterdam.

“Electric cars are also part of the solution for sustainable mobility, but the electricity grid is already filling up,” Eline Schwietert, the Delft team’s press contact, said in a recent statement. “Electrifying the whole world is not an option. Hydrogen and electric cars go hand in hand. There is not one big winner.”

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This article has been updated.

To date, there are about 17,000 Tesla charging stations and more than 130,000 public charging stations across the US. Tesla owners are often effusive about its app and the effectiveness and speed of NACS (North American Charging Standard), while those using CCS (Combined Charging System) complain of broken stations and apps that are confusing and unintuitive. With behemoth automakers like Ford and GM switching over to Tesla’s NACS, CCS station owners will need to improve reliability and consider adding Tesla adapters too or face a fade into oblivion. 

Tesla owners may not be happy about the shift, as they’ve enjoyed access to their own fiefdom of chargers for years. Now they’ll have to make room for non-Tesla EVs and could face more wait time. Overall, it looks like a competitive fight that will benefit the consumer. 

“My guess is that what we will see is by 2027, there will probably be no more new EVs built for North America with CCS ports,” Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at Guidehouse Insights, told Business Insider.

One company that’s bucking the wave is Volkswagen, which says it’s committed to the CCS standard. That’s no wonder: CCS provider Electrify America was partially founded with $2 billion from the VW emissions “Dieselgate” settlement. The charging network has 840 stations and plans to double its number of chargers by 2026. Others, like Toyota, have not yet commented on the possibility. 

Here’s the rundown of companies making the switch and those strongly considering it. 

Automakers already committed to NACS going forward

Ford

In May, Ford CEO Jim Farley surprised the market by unveiling an agreement with Tesla to allow current Ford EV owners to use Tesla Superchargers across the US and Canada starting early next year. And Ford’s next-generation of EVs will include Tesla’s charging plug, eliminating the need for an adapter. 

General Motors (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac)

Within a couple of weeks of Ford’s announcement, General Motors followed suit. Access to the Tesla network will begin in early 2024 for GM customers using an adapter, and GM will start building EVs with a NACS inlet port starting in 2025. After that, GM says it will make CCS adapters available for drivers of NACS-enabled vehicles. The company is also planning to integrate the Tesla Supercharger Network into its vehicle and mobile apps for payment and service, as well. 

Rivian

In June, Rivian announced it had signed an agreement with Tesla for access to Tesla’s Supercharger network across the US and Canada. Sometime next year (as early as spring 2024, Rivian says), the electric automaker will make NACS adapters available for its R1T pickup and R1S SUV. And next-generation Rivian vehicles (2025 and later) will include a NACS charge port as standard. 

Volvo

Volvo intends to manufacture only electric cars by 2030. With that goal in mind, Volvo says its US-market vehicles will be equipped with NACS charging ports starting from 2025. The Swedish automaker made a splash with its recent debut of the affordable EX30 EV, and it also offers the all-electric models XC40, EX90, and C40 Recharge. 

Nissan

On July 19, Nissan announced that it was joining the NACS standard too, and like other automakers, it will manufacture EVs with a NACS port in 2025. In 2024, it will offer an adapter for its Ariya EV; that vehicle currently uses CCS.

Companies actively considering moving to NACS

Hyundai

Hyundai president Jaehoon Chang told investors in June that the company would consider shifting to Tesla’s standard, but it’s still weighing its options. Kia and Hyundai both use the 800-volt battery architecture for fast charging; a Kia EV6 or Hyundai Ioniq 6, for example, can replenish up to 80 percent of its range in less than 20 minutes on a CCS DC fast charger. Tesla’s Superchargers, however, employ a 400-volt architecture and can’t charge Hyundai and Kia vehicles as effectively. 

Stellantis (Jeep, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo, Ram, Maserati, Dodge, Renault, Fiat, and more)

According to The Washington Post, Stellantis is pulling together a network of public electric vehicle chargers (including the Tesla standard) in the US, Canada and Europe. At this juncture, it remains to be seen if Stellantis will move ahead with a plan for its own network or will join together with the others on NACS. 

While the conglomerate Stellantis doesn’t currently sell any all-electric vehicles, it does sell three plug-in gas-electric hybrids: the Dodge Hornet, Alfa Romeo Tonale, and Chrysler Pacifica. An electric commercial van is in the works this year, as well as an all-electric Ram Rev pickup. 

This article has been updated with the news that Nissan will join the NACS standard, too.

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Yet another major carmaker is opening up their fleet to Tesla’s formerly exclusive, proprietary charging stations. On Tuesday, Volvo announced plans to include the North American Charging Standard (NACS) charging port for its future vehicles available in the US, Mexico, and Canada beginning in 2025. Starting next year, owners of existing fully electric Volvos such as the EX30, XC40n, and C40 Recharge that currently feature the Combined Charging System (CCS) ports will be able to utilize Tesla’s Supercharger network via a separate, purchasable port adapter. In a somewhat ironic reversal, Volvo EV owners who wish to still utilize CCS charging stations after 2025 will then be able to purchase a separate port adapter.

[Related: GM’s new partnership with Tesla could supercharge the EV landscape.]

“As part of our journey to becoming fully electric by 2030, we want to make life with an electric car as easy as possible,” Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan said in Tuesday’s announcement. Rowan added that one of the biggest hurdles for EV car adoption has been ensuring an accessible, convenient charging infrastructure.

Although the ongoing division between CCS and NACS vehicles has been an issue, a number of industry leading vehicle manufacturers have recently announced partnerships with Tesla to ensure NACS compatibility—a tacit admission of the system’s increasing popularity, performance, and reliability. Earlier this month, both Rivian and GM revealed their own agreements with Tesla to begin offering similar port adapters next year alongside plans to include NACS ports in all new electric models starting in 2025. In May, Ford made a similar announcement for its own EV fleet.

[Related: Volvo’s new electric EX30 is cheaper than a Tesla Model 3.]

This isn’t Volvo’s first attempt at expanding charging capabilities and access for its vehicle owners. Last year, the company announced a pilot program to install EV chargers at certain Starbucks locations across 5 states in the Western US, including Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. According to the company, Volvo aims to only manufacture EVs by 2030, as well as become climate-neutral by 2040.

Such economical and creative partnerships are key to ensuring a smooth and timely transition to a majority EV transportation landscape. By the end of the decade, an estimated 25 percent of all vehicle sales are expected to be EVs, with 70 percent of all new purchases expected to be electric by 2040.

According to Grist on Wednesday, the Biden Administration’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation recently announced a forthcoming “expedited review” alongside the Society for Automotive Engineers to consider making NACS a “public standard” akin to the USB-C cord.

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We are at the beginning of a green technological revolution, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The transition to a low-carbon economy to mitigate climate change would not be possible without green technologies like electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage systems. However, these technologies rely on over 10 different minerals and metals—including copper, nickel, cobalt, and aluminum—whose production must increase significantly to meet demand.

By 2050, the annual supply of copper and nickel, in particular, will have to increase by about 150 to 200 percent relative to 2020 production levels to meet the needs of green technology deployments. If production grows rapidly, the associated environmental impacts and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are expected to rise as well. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the GHG emissions of copper and nickel may increase by 125 and 90 percent, respectively, by 2050. Therefore, decarbonizing the mining industry is an essential part of meeting global climate targets.

How mining affects the environment

Mining is an environmentally invasive process. Its impacts manifest in land use change, disturbance to local ecosystems, and GHG emissions, says Paolo Natali, a principal with RMI’s climate intelligence program who leads the Supply Chain Emissions Initiative. The nature of mining is to disturb large areas of land to retrieve resources deep below the surface, that’s why it can drive deforestation and increase the erosion rate greatly. Waste rock and tailings from mining may also contaminate the soil and water, which, combined with the clearing of forests, contributes to habitat loss and ecosystem damage.

[Related on PopSci+: The summer issue of PopSci is extremely metal.]

Mining is also a significant source of GHG emissions due to the use of diesel-powered equipment, which releases carbon dioxide, as well as through the release of trapped gasses like methane, says Natali. The supply chain is also energy-intensive because activities like drilling and blasting, material handling or the process of moving the mined material out of the mine via conveyor belts or trucks, grinding, metal smelting, and transporting all require a lot of energy.

Natali says copper and nickel extraction, in particular, are experiencing declining ore grades. Ore grades refer to the concentration of the mineral or metal content in an ore-bearing rock. Declining grades means that it’s taking more effort to gather the same amount of mineral, and therefore using up more energy and resulting emissions, he adds. As the ore grade decreases, the energy, diesel, and electricity used all increase. The finite nature of these resources—which makes it necessary to go deeper and into more remote areas to keep finding them—and the economies of scale that the mining industry has developed have enabled lower grades to be processed profitably, says Natali.

Increasing the production of copper and nickel to address the growing need for green technologies would increase the impacts of mining and harm the environment even further. Perrine Toledano, the director of research and policy at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, says meeting the rising mineral demand will put pressure on freshwater resources in copper mining regions and present a significant biodiversity risk in locations with nickel reserves. Chile, the world’s top copper producer, is already water-scarce and will face increasing water risks due to the impacts of climate change.

Overall, decarbonizing mining is necessary to successfully transition to a low-carbon economy.

Decarbonizing copper and nickel mining

To cut emissions associated with carbon-intensive energy production, the industry should replace fossil fuels and its generated electricity with renewable energy, sustainable biofuels, and green hydrogen, says Toledano. For instance, eliminating diesel use in mining equipment may remove up to 40 percent of a mine site’s emissions.

Aside from using clean electricity, Natali says adopting higher precision mining techniques to improve ore grades and electrifying the energy input, like by using conveyors or electric trucks during material handling, are crucial. Latest developments in battery electric large-haul trucks, such as fast charging or hydrogen fuel-cell range extenders, will have to be coupled with the increasing use of renewable energy and new technologies downstream to eliminate emissions from high temperature and chemical processes like smelting and refining, he adds.

[Related: For years, Chile exploited its environment to grow. Now it’s trying to save it.]

Circular economy interventions like increasing metal recovery and reusing mineral and non-mineral waste may also support emission reductions across the mining value chains. Both copper and nickel can be recycled repeatedly without losing their properties or quality. Moreover, recycled copper uses about 85 percent less energy than primary production.

Policymakers can support a just transition to net zero mining by establishing stricter and clearer regulation of mining activities and subsidizing green energy, says Natali. He also recommends requiring that imported minerals face similar environmental and social standards with domestically produced minerals.

Fossil fuel subsidies in place create an artificial cost disadvantage for renewables, says Toledano. Such subsidies reduce the cost of fossil-fuel-powered electricity generation, which makes renewable energy less competitive. They can also reinforce the reliance on fossil fuels and make it more favorable. Therefore, policymakers must ensure the penetration of renewable energies, which could support the transition of the mining industry to clean energy.

Decarbonizing copper and nickel mining won’t happen in an instant. However, by switching to renewable energy, improving production efficiency, and establishing policies that include climate-related mitigation and adaptation obligations on mining operations, meeting increasing mineral demand with fewer emissions may become achievable.

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For decades, drivers in the United States have been able to think about the efficiency of their gas-powered vehicles with a simple criteria: miles per gallon. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency started publishing the mpg metric for vehicles in the 1970s, and it makes intuitive sense. Theoretically, how far could your car travel on a single gallon of gasoline? The mpg figure is the answer.

But with electric vehicles—as well as plug-in hybrids—the situation gets a tad more complex. A pure EV does not burn gasoline. It gets the energy for its batteries from the grid, and is better for the environment. 

Enter the MPGe metric, which stands for mile per gallon of gasoline-equivalent and “allows [for] a reasonable comparison between vehicles using different fuels,” the EPA says.

What is MPGe?

New EPA vehicle labels debuted in 2012. For electric vehicles, it includes the EV’s “fuel economy” listed in MPGe, as well as other metrics, like its range. You can check out the EPA’s EV label on the agency’s site. For plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles, that PHEV label shows both the car’s efficiency when running on just battery power (in MPGe), as well as its efficiency if it were just burning gasoline, in mpg. And of course, a traditional vehicle that burns only gasoline has a label with the regular mpg metric. 

One commonality between the mpg metric and MPGe is that a larger number means better efficiency. “Miles per gallon is designed such that bigger numbers are better,” says David Gohlke, an energy and environmental analyst at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. “Higher miles per gallon means you go farther—you get more goodness out of the gallon of gasoline that you’re burning.” 

[Related: Volvo’s new electric EX30 is cheaper than a Tesla Model 3]

The bigger-is-better metric might sound obvious, but that’s not always the case with other measurement metrics for vehicle efficiency. For example, the gasoline vehicle sticker also features a gallons-per-100-miles figure, and in that case, a lower number represents better fuel efficiency—ideally, you want to burn as few gallons as possible when driving 100 miles. Ditto, on an EV’s sticker you’ll find the kilowatt-hours-per-100-miles metric, with lower being more efficient. And a PHEV vehicle’s sticker contains both of those lower-is-better metrics. 

But with the proliferation of EVs, the main metric to keep in mind is MPGe. “The EPA said, ‘Okay, well we’re going to need some way of describing these electric vehicles to the average person,” Gohlke says. “The EPA has come up with a conversion factor that translates from a kilowatt-hour of energy into the equivalent amount of energy in terms of a gallon of gasoline.” 

How is MPGe calculated?

The kilowatt hours (kWh) equivalent from gas comes from “the total heat content that exists in a gallon of gasoline,” Gohlke says. “They say, ‘Okay, if we took this gallon of gasoline, and set it on fire, effectively, how much heat energy can we get out of that?’” 

The answer to that question is 33.7 kWh. An EPA spokesperson notes via email that this figure is “a standard number for the energy content in gasoline.”

[Related: How to use less gas when driving with Google Maps]

So now the question becomes: How far can an EV travel on 33.7 kWh, which is equal to the energy in 1 gallon of gas? And that’s where the MPGe figure comes from. 

For context when it comes to understanding kWh, the average American home used about 886 kWh of electricity each month in 2021, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Considering a 30-day month, that means daily electric use is about 30 kWh. If you have a 1,000-watt (1 kilowatt) microwave and use it for an hour, you’ve used 1 kWh of electricity. So MPGe is saying: Here’s how many miles this EV can travel on an amount of electricity that is just a bit more than the average US household consumes each day. 

How can you find an EV’s MPGe? 

To see how the EPA rates an EV with this MPGe metric, you can look up the vehicle at fueleconomy.gov. For example, one variant of the 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 6 gets 140 MPGe, when combining its city (153) and highway (127) ratings. That’s superb. A 2023 Tesla Model 3 gets 132 MPGe. What about the gargantuan GMC Hummer EV? It’s rated for 47 MPGe. The Hyundai and the Tesla are way more efficient than the Hummer. 

Even if the MPGe measurement takes some getting used to, Paul Waatti, manager of industry analysis at AutoPacific, argues that it plays an important role. That’s because an EV’s range, which is also listed on the sticker, isn’t the full story. “That doesn’t necessarily tell you how efficient the vehicle actually is,” he says. “You might have a really high range number, like [with the electric] Hummer for example, but if you look at the MPGe figure for that, it shows that it’s very inefficient.” 

Ultimately, the MPGe metric isn’t perfect, but it’s good to have. “From a consumer perspective, I think there’s still quite a bit of confusion on what it actually means,” Waatti says. Still, he argues that it’s an important metric for giving people a sense of the car’s efficiency. 

Bottom line: A higher MPGe means the EV is more efficient, and right now, a number at or close to 140 is ideal.

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California’s massive, ongoing push to completely electrify its public and private transportation sectors by 2035 is getting a major boost.. According to recent reports,  the electric truck and charging station manufacturer Forum Mobility is planning to soon begin construction on a 96-vehicle capacity recharging depot for drayage carriers. These are the massive transports used to move goods between ports, distribution centers, and rail yards.

The news comes barely a month after the California Air Resources Board announced that, beginning next year, any new trucks purchased by a shipping company in the state must be an electric model powered by either hydrogen fuel cells or batteries. According to clean energy news site Electrek on Wednesday, funding for the 4.4-acre site will derive in part from a $4.5 million East Bay Community Energy (EBCE). Earlier this year, Forum Mobility also received a major additional investment from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, a program aimed at helping the massive retailer achieve net zero carbon by 2040.

“Today we can provide a Class 8 electric truck, and all its charging needs, at a monthly price that’s competitive with diesel—without the emissions,” Matt LeDucq, CEO and co-founder of Forum Mobility, said at the time.

[Related: Electric vehicles are only one part of sustainable transit.]

Despite their comparatively small numbers compared to consumer vehicles, the EPA estimates that medium- and heavy-duty trucks account for around 23 percent of the nation’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. Tackling that segment of industry is key to transitioning towards a green, sustainable infrastructure for not just California, but the US overall.

According to Electrek, California’s in-state drayage fleet includes an estimated 33,000 trucks, which the California Energy Commission has stated will require approximately 157,000 medium- and heavy-duty chargers by the decade’s end to comply with all new vehicle regulations. When faced with those numbers, the addition of a 96-vehicle charging facility may only seem like a drop in the bucket. But it is  all-but-certain Forum Mobility’s Greenville Community Charging Depot is just the first of many similar announcements to come for the state. According to Forum Mobility’s CEO, the company is in the process of building enough recharging depots to simultaneously handle a total of 600 trucks over the next 18 months.

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The world’s first self-driving commercial passenger ferry started operating this week in Stockholm, Sweden. The MF Estelle was built by Zeabuz, a Norwegian start up, and will be operated by Torghatten, a Swedish ferry company under the brand name Zeam (Zero Emission Autonomous Mobility). It’s one of the first truly practical, real world examples of autonomous transportation that we’ve seen. 

The MF Estelle is both autonomous and electric. Its electric propulsion system is powered by solar panels on the top of the vessel. In the press release announcing the partnership, Stein Andre Herigstad-Olsen, CEO of Torghatten, said that “Estelle is a sustainable and green pioneer, offering a solution to traffic congestion and inspiring alternative modes of transportation.” It is the first step in the company’s plan to “create a network of virtual bridges, utilizing waterways to alleviate road congestion and promote affordable, environmentally friendly, and safe urban mobility.” 

While the MF Estelle will initially have an operator on board to make sure everything goes smoothly, Torghatten and Zeabuz intend for it to operate fully autonomously with an onshore supervisor by 2024. According to Zeabuz, multiple vessels using its ZeaMaster technology can be supervised by a single onshore supervisor, in much the same way that one of Wing’s pilots can manage multiple delivery drones. During normal operations, each vessel is able to safely navigate itself. When something unexpected happens, the “risk-aware supervisory control algorithm” makes sure the vessel adapts by slowing down, allowing more space in the waterway, stopping in place, and alerting the operator that a decision on how to proceed is needed. Seemingly, Torghatten is confident that the system is sufficient for busy city waterways shared with other vessels, canoes, kayaks, stand up paddle boarders, and even swimmers. 

Starting this week, the ferry will depart twice an hour from each side of the Riddarfjärden bay, crossing between Kungsholmen and Södermalm, two of the major island-districts in central Stockholm. Torghatten intends to extend that to four departures from each side each hour, and operate it for 15 hours a day. That’s a total of 120 daily sailings, each capable of transporting up to 24 passengers. Tickets cost 35 Swedish Krona (~$3.25).

While the MF Estelle is the first commercially operated passenger ferry, it isn’t the only electric autonomous vessel in development. Hurtigruten Norway hopes to have a zero-emission cruise ship in the water by 2030. It would be propelled by 50m-high sail wings (164 feet) as well as an electric engine system. It will also have multiple large batteries that are recharged by solar panels, wind technology, and the electric grid when it’s in port. 

Last summer, in a first for autonomous vehicles, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean without human crew. The trip wasn’t without issue—it was bound for Virginia but actually had to end its40-day 3,500 mile journey in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 

And, of course, militaries are interested in these kinds of vessels too. Both the Colombian Navy and the US Navy have openly discussed how electric unmanned vessels could play a major role in future military operations—and are actively developing them. 

For now though, the MF Estelle still stands in a class of her own. If you’re in Stockholm, you can take a passage on the first autonomous electric ferry with no apps, NDAs, or other hassle. 

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When folks think about Volvo, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the brand’s reputation for safety features. After all, it developed and patented the modern three-point seat belt in 1959 and then shared the design with the world. Inexpensive cars, not so much. 

However, Volvo is making a statement with its newest EV, the EX30. This super-modern compact electric SUV is packaged competitively at $36,145 to start; that’s more than the outgoing Chevrolet Bolt but less than Tesla’s least expensive EV, the Model 3. Sure, the base Nissan Leaf is still priced under $30,000, but that’s with the smaller battery pack and only 149 miles of all-electric range. The EX30 promises a more luxurious feel than Nissan’s EV and offers a huge difference in range, at 275 miles.

Can Volvo’s streamlined five-seat EV compete? If we shake the Magic 8-Ball, all signs point to yes. Here’s why. 

Outlook good

As Inside EVs reported in March, Volvo set a record for sales in February, moving 51,286 cars worldwide that month. That’s 22 percent more than February 2022 and the best February ever for the brand. Even more telling is its numbers in the plug-in electric car segment: Volvo sold 20,678 plug-ins, an impressive 40 percent of total volume.

The timing seems to be spot on. In April of this year, Chevrolet sounded the death knell of its diminutive Bolt EV with no room for resurrection. Like the college kid who comes home for Christmas to find out his parents turned his bedroom into a supersized home gym, GM will soon retool the production line for the Bolt models to make space for the much-larger electric Silverado pickup and its sibling, the GMC Sierra EV. The introduction of electric trucks is important to the US market, and Chevy is pouring its resources in that direction, pushing the smaller Bolt out even as the tiny EV’s sales started to peak.

Now, the Bolt is kaput. Enter, stage right: the Volvo EX30, which is the fourth EV model for the Swedish brand. Volvo debuted its XC40 Recharge EV for model year 2021, the C40 Recharge EV for 2022, and a three-row SUV (the EX90) is on the way. Volvo, it seems, is ramping up for EVs quickly and steadily. 

Can the EX30 outsell Tesla? Reply hazy, try again

The EX30 is about three inches longer and three inches wider than the Bolt EV, giving the Volvo a more commanding presence on the road than its Chevy competitor. Volvo’s new EV is 18 inches shorter than Tesla’s Model 3, but it wins in the cargo category with 31.9 cubic feet of available space, significantly more than the Model 3’s 22.9 cubic feet (truck and front trunk). 

From a power perspective, the EX30 comes with a 268-hp rear-drive setup; a 428-hp all-wheel-drive upgrade is available. Compared to the Bolt, which was good for 200 horsepower and 266 pound-feet of torque, the EX30 is considerably peppier, and Volvo says its Twin Motor Performance model will sprint to 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour in a zippy 3.6 seconds. That’s only a tiny bit slower—0.1 seconds—than the Model 3 Performance. 

Here’s where the EX30 shines over both Tesla and Chevy’s EVs: the inside. Volvo prides itself on simple but luxurious interiors and the EX30 makes the most of its space and price point with a 12.3-inch touchscreen, a full-width sound bar on the dashboard that replaces embedded speakers, and recycled materials throughout. 

Getting more Americans to snap up electric vehicles and reap their environmental benefits means automakers need to produce affordable ones that are accessible to more people. Right now, the EX30’s price tag will make it one of the least expensive on the US market. One forthcoming bit of competition, besides from Nissan and Tesla, may come in the form of the Chevy Equinox EV, which will likely cost around $30,000, and Chevrolet says its range will reach the desired 300-mile mark. 

Every time a new EV hits the market, headlines proclaim “it’s a Tesla killer” and no doubt some will believe that’s true of the EX30 as well. The reality is that Tesla’s legions of fans aren’t going anywhere, and are unlikely to be swayed to the Swedish side. Volvo will likely catch the attention of new EV buyers looking for a solidly built car stocked with technology and safety features in a small luxury package.

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Two weeks ago, Ford took a major step forward within the EV market via a new partnership with Tesla. The new plan will soon open up the latter’s charging stations to Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit owners. Following in their tire tracks, General Motors announced a similar alliance on Thursday—beginning early next year, GM owners will also be able to access over 12,000 Tesla Supercharger stations through a special adapter. And starting in 2025, all new electric GM models will come equipped to charge without the need for any external attachments.

“This collaboration is a key part of our strategy and an important next step in quickly expanding access to fast chargers for our customers,” GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. “Not only will it help make the transition to electric vehicles more seamless for our customers, but it could help move the industry toward a single North American charging standard.”

[Related: Ford EVs can soon be charged at Tesla stations.]

The move towards a single standard is a tacit concession to Tesla’s overall industry footprint, says CNBC. Although most EVs in America have long utilized what’s known as Combined Charging System (CCS) ports for fast recharging, Tesla vehicles rely on a proprietary setup known as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), alongside adapters owners could use at third-party stations. Beginning in late 2021, Tesla opened up some of its superchargers to other EVs thanks to a “Magic Dock” adapter, although anyone wishing to use it still needed to download Tesla’s app for access.

Like Ford, GM’s partnership will both simplify charging options for consumers as well as pave the way for more standardized infrastructure that supports the growing EV industry. Beginning in early 2024, owners of vehicles such as the Cadillac Lyriq and Chevy Bolt will be able to recharge at Tesla outlets using a specialized adapter, with new GM EVs featuring a NACS inlet sans adapter aiming to debut in 2025. Additionally, GM aims to integrate the Tesla Supercharger Network into its brands’ mobile apps to streamline location, payment, and charging sessions. GM also eventually intends to make CCS adapters for owners of NACS-enabled vehicles, although has not specified a timeframe for the rollout.

GM isn’t only looking to Tesla to help expand charging access for EVs—last year, the company partnered with Pilot Company and EVgo to add over 5,000 new DC chargers to the almost 13,000 stations already available across North America. An estimated one-fourth of all vehicle sales are estimated to be EVs by the end of 2030, with that number skyrocketing to over 70 percent by 2040. 

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Today’s cruise ships are environmental nightmares. Just one vessel packed with a veritable petri dish of passengers can burn as much as 250 tons of fuel per day, or about the same emissions as 12,000 cars. If the industry is to survive, it will need to adapt quickly in order to adequately address the myriad ecological emergencies facing the planet—and one Norwegian cruise liner company is attempting to meet those challenges head-on.

Earlier today, Hurtigruten Norway unveiled the first designs for a zero-emission cruise ship scheduled to debut by the end of the decade. First announced in March 2022 as “Sea Zero,” Hurtigruten (Norwegian for “the Fast Route”) showed off its initial concept art for the craft on Wednesday. The vessel features three autonomous, retractable, 50m-high sail wing rigs housing roughly 1,500-square-meters of solar panels. Alongside the sails, the ship will be powered by multiple 60-megawatt batteries that recharge while in port, as well as wind technology. Other futuristic additions to the vessel will include AI maneuvering capabilities, retractable thrusters, contra-rotating propellers, advanced hull coatings, and proactive hull cleaning tech.

[Related: Care about the planet? Skip the cruise, for now.]

“Following a rigorous feasibility study, we have pinpointed the most promising technologies for our groundbreaking future cruise ships,” said Hurtigruten Norway CEO Hedda Felin. Henrik Burvang, Research and Innovation Manager at VARD, the company behind the ship concept designs, added the forthcoming boat’s streamlined shape, alongside its hull and propulsion advances, will reduce energy demand. Meanwhile, VARD is “developing new design tools and exploring new technologies for energy efficiency,” said Burvang.

With enhanced AI capabilities, the cruise ships’ crew bridge is expected to significantly shrink in size to resemble airplane cockpits, but Hurtigruten’s futuristic, eco-conscious designs don’t rest solely on its next-gen ship and crew. The 135-meter-long concept ship’s estimated 500 guests will have access to a mobile app capable of operating their cabins’ ventilation systems, as well as track their own water and energy consumption while aboard the vessel.

Next up for Hurtigruten’s Sea Zero project is a two-year testing and development phase for the proposed tech behind the upcoming cruise ship, particularly focusing on battery production, propulsion, hull design, and sustainable practices. Meanwhile, the company will also look into onboard hotel operational improvements, which Hurtigruten states can consume as much as half a ship’s overall energy reserves.

Hurtigruten also understands if 2030 feels like a long time to wait until a zero-emission ship. In the meantime, the company has already upgraded two of its seven vessels to run on a battery-hybrid-power system, with a third on track to be retrofitted this fall.  Its additional vessels are being outfitted with an array of tech to CO2 emissions by 20-percent, and nitrogen oxides by as much as 80 percent.

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One of the world’s busiest airports will soon showcase an innovative, undeniably cute way to speed up travelers’ entrances and exits. First announced earlier this month, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is partnering with EV Safe Charge to demonstrate how the company’s mobile electric vehicle charging station, ZiGGY, could be deployed in public spaces to economically and conveniently power up consumers’ parked cars.

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source.]

Electric vehicles are an integral component of the societal shift towards clean, renewable energy. Unfortunately, battery shortages stemming from supply chain issues alongside a need for evermore charging stations is hampering a wider adoption of green transportation. ZiGGY obviously isn’t a catch-all fix, but it’s still a novel tool that both its makers and DFW hope to highlight over the summer as part of the airport’s series of EV charging solution demos.

“We know that electric vehicles will be a big part of the future of transportation,” Paul Puopolo, DFW’s Executive VP of Innovation, said in a statement, adding their air hub is “leaning into emerging technology now so that we are prepared to meet the needs of the airport community well into the future.”

ZiGGY itself resembles a large vending machine on wheels, which makes a certain amount of sense given it dispenses electric fuel on demand. Using geofencing technology, app-based controls, and on-board cameras, ZiGGY can be deployed directly to the location of your parked EV, where a user can then connect the charging bot to their ride. To court additional revenue streams, each ZiGGY also features large video screens capable of displaying advertisements. Don’t worry about getting stuck behind it if someone is using a ZiGGY, either—its dimensions and mobility ensures each station can park itself behind an EV without the need for additional space.

Speaking with Ars Technica on Tuesday, EV Safe Charge’s founder and CEO Caradoc Ehrenhalt explained that the idea is to deploy ZiGGY fleets to commercial hubs around the world, such as additional airports, hotels, and shopping centers. “What we’re hearing from people… is the common thread of the infrastructure being very challenging or not possible to put in or not cost effective or takes too much time. And so there really is the need for a mobile charging solution,” said Ehrenhalt.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

Of course, such an autonomous vehicle could find itself prone to defacement and vandalism, but Ehrenhalt apparently opts to look on the sunnier side of things. “Ziggy is fairly heavy because of the battery,” they cautioned to Ars Technica. “It has cameras all around and sensors, including GPS, and so there potentially could be [vandalism], but I’m always hoping for the best of humanity.”

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At first glance, race cars and electric go-karts have nothing in common except for a vaguely similar shape. Both are open-cockpit vehicles with wide wheels, and they both thrive on sharp turns—and that appears to be it. 

What many don’t realize is that go-karts are often the entry point for future Indy 500 drivers, and competitors also practice in the tiny vehicles to develop muscle memory. Several companies manufacture karts, and the most recent iteration of Honda’s version is the eGX go-kart concept, which is equipped with two 10-kilo (about 23 pounds) swappable battery packs good for about 45 minutes at a time. This battery technology allows the brand to test the dynamics of electric vehicles on a smaller scale before rolling it out to the much pricier race cars (and eventually apply this insight to passenger vehicles as well). 

Honda Accord, Civic, CR-V, and Odyssey owners might not realize it, but Honda’s passion starts with racing, and passenger cars reap the research benefits. Only two manufacturers make IndyCar engines, and Honda is one of them. In the last 30 years, Honda has claimed 18 IndyCar championships and 15 Indianapolis 500 wins. 

PopSci had a chance to pilot one of these eGX karts in the Indianapolis area over Indy 500 weekend. It was heart-pounding, arm-muscle-straining excitement, like a taste of the race itself (minus the yellow and red flags). We also got to speak with engineers to better understand Honda’s strategy for its entire product lineup, from power tools to cars. Here’s what we learned.  

Battery packs offer modularity and continuity

Kids interested in racing start with small go-karts and work their way up. If they have enough skill and a little luck, they’ll find themselves behind the wheel of a high-performance IndyCar or F1 machine. As they develop, drivers keep practicing with karts—albeit increasingly high-powered versions—that twist and squeal and mimic the experience of a road course race. 

“Karts are closer to the open-wheel experience than anything else,” says John Whiteman, commercial motorsports manager at Honda Performance Development. (In case you were wondering, an open-wheel car is one that has its wheels outside of the car versus underneath, like a passenger car.)

Honda Performance Development, or HPD for short, was founded in 1993 for the purpose of designing and developing racing engines along with chassis and performance parts for motorsports. HPD has a history of repurposing small engines to make gas-powered karts and quarter midgets (small racers that are about one-quarter scale of a full-size midget race car).

If you’ve ever been to an outdoor recreational karting track with friends and family, you’re familiar with the whine and buzz of the gas-powered version. Gas-powered kart engines are often shared with lawn mowers, made by other companies like Briggs and Stratton as well as HPD, and indoor tracks use electric karts so they’re not filling the air with toxic fumes. 

The eGX takes a typical electric go kart to the next level, employing two saddle packs on either side of the seat to house the lithium-ion batteries that power the kart. That way, the kart is balanced and maintains its grip with the road without adding rear bias or tip-over potential by loading the battery on one side. 

Whiteman says the swappable battery packs offer many upsides, including reduced maintenance costs and environmental benefits. Through this technology, HPD has learned more about energy storage, heat management, and vehicle weights and balances. These battery packs are already in use for small construction equipment like cordless rammers and compact excavators.

Along with reduced emissions and noise pollution, battery-pack-powered vehicles keep the equipment in commission continuously if you have a bank of these batteries that can be charging up while the others are in use. 

How race car research benefits Honda’s passenger cars

Ultimately, Honda and its HPD division are testing new ideas to find out how that translates to performance and customer satisfaction. Rebecca Johnson, HPD director of production and senior manager, says exploring electrification and sharing each division’s findings throughout the company creates opportunities to improve across the board. 

“We’re trying to train ourselves to be better at hybrids and battery packs for electrified racing,” Johnson says. “Let’s build something. Let’s make a car and let’s call it our laboratory, if you will, and let people ‘play’ and iterate on the design or technology. As we strive forward, we can put that together with what customers want.”

In 2024, the IndyCar series will run with hybrid units with 2.2-liter engines; currently, the power is all supplied by renewable race fuel. Honda is getting ready for this change by testing battery packs and a custom concept hybrid built with a tubular cage and sheet metal copied from a production CR-V crossover. It’s mind-boggling to ride in the Beast, as Honda calls it internally, as it looks like an SUV with a giant wing and sounds like a screaming hurricane inside. This is the future, and it’s pretty exciting. 

Johnson is steeped in racing culture, and she has her eyes trained forward as HPD works to maintain the visceral appeal of IndyCar and Formula One races while moving toward drastically reducing emissions.   

“We’re a racing company that happens to sell cars,” Johnson says. “Racing is in our DNA. If we can prove out tough things on a race track, we can surely make a good Civic. If you can do it at [IndyCar] level, then you should be very good at performance for a Civic owner. They want all the things that we want [for race cars] but on a different level.”

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Ford and Tesla have been rivals for years in the electric vehicle market, but a new agreement may change their relationship status. On Thursday, Ford said in a press release that its EV customers would be able to get access to 12,000 Tesla superchargers across the US and Canada by spring of next year. This will broaden the availability of charging stations by adding to the network of ​​10,000 DC fast-chargers and over 80,000 level-two chargers that Ford has been building out for the last decade. 

Most EVs on the market use the Combined Charging System (CCS) ports for fast charging. Teslas have a unique charging port called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), but its vehicle owners can use special adapters to charge at non-Tesla power stations. 

Pre-2021, it meant that Teslas could charge at public power stations, but no other EVs could charge at a Tesla station. However, starting in November 2021, Tesla started making some (but not all) of its superchargers open to non-Tesla EVs through a “Magic Dock” adapter. Drivers who wanted to use this still had to download the Tesla app on their phones in order to make it work. The Ford partnership will change that process, making things easier for people driving vehicles like the Mach-E or F-150 Lightning.  

“Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit customers will be able to access the Superchargers via an adapter and software integration along with activation and payment via FordPass or Ford Pro Intelligence,” the company said. “In 2025, Ford will offer next-generation electric vehicles with the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector built-in, eliminating the need for an adapter to access Tesla Superchargers.”

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source]

As EVs become more commonplace, charging availability and range anxiety become understandable concerns for many owners. The only way to relieve that is to build a charging infrastructure that parallels the distribution of gas stations across the country. The Biden Administration has made building public chargers a priority, and last fall, the Department of Transportation said that it had signed off on the EV charging plans for all US states, as well as DC and Puerto Rico. States like Michigan and Indiana have even come up with ambitious plans to make wireless charging possible through special roadway systems. 

When it comes to smoothing over the potholes in the way of EV adoption in the US, more accessible chargers are never a bad thing. Tesla, having led the EV game for so long, seems like it’s finally ready to share its resources for the greater good. “Essentially, the idea is that we don’t want the Tesla Supercharger network to be like a walled garden. We want it to be something that is supportive of electrification and sustainable transport in general,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday in Twitter Spaces, as reported by TechCrunch.  

“It seems totally ridiculous that we have an infrastructure problem, and we can’t even agree on what plug to use,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said at a Morgan Stanley conference, CNBC reported. “I think the first step is to work together in a way we haven’t, probably with the new EV brands and the traditional auto companies.”

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These days, it seems like every carmaker—from those focused on luxury options to those with an eye more toward the economical—is getting into electric vehicles. And with new US policies around purchasing incentives and infrastructure improvements, consumers might be more on board as well. But many people are still concerned about whether electric vehicles are truly better for the environment overall, considering certain questions surrounding their production process. 

Despite concerns about the pollution generated from mining materials for batteries and the manufacturing process for the EVs themselves, the environmental and energy experts PopSci spoke to say that across the board, electric vehicles are still better for the environment than similar gasoline or diesel-powered models. 

When comparing a typical commercial electric vehicle to a gasoline vehicle of the same size, there are benefits across many different dimensions. 

“We do know, for instance, if we’re looking at carbon dioxide emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, that electric vehicles operating on the typical electric grid can end up with fewer greenhouse gas emissions over the life of their vehicle,” says Dave Gohlke, an energy and environmental analyst at Argonne National Lab. “The fuel consumption (using electricity to generate the fuel as opposed to burning petroleum) ends up releasing fewer emissions per mile and over the course of the vehicle’s expected lifetime.”

[Related: An electrified car isn’t the same thing as an electric one. Here’s the difference.]

EVs also produce no tailpipe emissions, which means reductions in particulate matter or in smog precursors that contribute to local air pollution.

“The latest best evidence right now indicates that in almost everywhere in the US, electric vehicles are better for the environment than conventional vehicles,” says Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale School of the Environment. “How much better for the environment depends on where you charge and what time you charge.”

Electric motors tend to be more efficient compared to the spark ignition engine used in gasoline cars or the compression ignition engine used in diesel cars, where there’s usually a lot of waste heat and wasted energy.

Creating an EV produces pollution during the manufacturing process. “Greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing an electric vehicle are almost twice that of an internal combustion vehicle…that is due primarily to the battery. You’re actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions to produce the vehicle, but there’s a net overall lifecycle benefit or reduction because of the significant savings in the use of the vehicle,” says Gregory Keoleian, the director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan. “We found in terms of the overall lifecycle, on average, across the United States, taking into account temperature effects, grid effects, there was 57 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for a new electric vehicle compared to a new combustion engine vehicle.” 

In terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with operating the vehicles, fully battery-powered electric vehicles were the best, followed by plug-in hybrids, and then hybrids, with internal combustion engine vehicles faring the worst, Keoleian notes. Range anxiety might still be top of mind for some drivers, but he adds that households with more than one vehicle can consider diversifying their fleet to add an EV for everyday use, when appropriate, and save the gas vehicle (or the gas feature on their hybrids) for longer trips.

The breakeven point at which the cost of producing and operating an electric vehicle starts to gain an edge over a gasoline vehicle of similar make and model occurs at around two years in, or around 20,000 to 50,000 miles. But when that happens can vary slightly on a case-by-case basis. “If you have almost no carbon electricity, and you’re charging off solar panels on your own roof almost exclusively, that breakeven point will be sooner,” says Gohlke. “If you’re somewhere with a very carbon intensive grid, that breakeven point will be a little bit later. It depends on the style of your vehicle as well because of the materials that go into it.” 

[Related: Why solid-state batteries are the next frontier for EV makers]

For context, Gohlke notes that the average EV age right now is around 12 years old based on registration data. And these vehicles are expected to drive approximately 200,000 miles over their lifetime. 

“Obviously if you drive off your dealer’s lot and you drive right into a light pole and that car never takes more than a single mile, that single vehicle will have had more embedded emissions than if you had wrecked a gasoline car on your first drive,” says Gohlke. “But if you look at the entire fleet of vehicles, all 200-plus-million vehicles that are out there and how long we expect them to survive, over the life of the vehicle, each of those electric vehicles is expected to consume less energy and emit lower emissions than the corresponding gas vehicle would’ve been.”

To put things in perspective, Gillingham says that extracting and transporting fossil fuels like oil is energy intensive as well. When you weigh those factors, electric vehicle production doesn’t appear that much worse than the production of gasoline vehicles, he says. “Increasingly, they’re actually looking better depending on the battery chemistry and where the batteries are made.” 

And while it’s true that there are issues with mines, the petrol economy has damaged a lot of the environment and continues to do so. That’s why improving individual vehicle efficiency needs to be paired with reducing overall consumption.

EV batteries are getting better

Mined materials like rare metals can have harmful social and environmental effects, but that’s an economy-wide problem. There are many metals that are being used in batteries, but the use of metals is nothing new, says Trancik. Metals can be found in a range of household products and appliances that many people use in their daily lives. 

Plus, there have been dramatic improvements in battery technology and the engineering of the vehicle itself in the past decade. The batteries have become cheaper, safer, more durable, faster charging, and longer lasting. 

“There’s still a lot of room to improve further. There’s room for improved chemistry of the batteries and improved packaging and improved coolant systems and software that manages the batteries,” says Gillingham.

The two primary batteries used in electric vehicles today are NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) and LFP (lithium-ferrous-phosphate). NMC batteries tend to use more precious metals like cobalt from the Congo, but they are also more energy dense. LFP uses more abundant metals. And although the technology is improving fast, it’s still in an early stage, sensitive to cold weather, and not quite as energy dense. LFP tends to be good for utility scale cases, like for storing electricity on the grid. 

[Related: Could swappable EV batteries replace charging stations?]

Electric vehicles also offer an advantage when it comes to fewer trips to the mechanic; conventional vehicles have more moving parts that can break down. “You’re more likely to be doing maintenance on a conventional vehicle,” says Gillingham. He says that there have been Teslas in his studies that are around eight years old, with 300,000 miles on them, which means that even though the battery does tend to degrade a little every year, that degradation is fairly modest.

Eventually, if the electric vehicle markets grow substantially, and there’s many of these vehicles in circulation, reusing the metals in the cars can increase their benefits. “This is something that you can’t really do with the fossil fuels that have already been combusted in an internal combustion engine,” says Trancik. “There is a potential to set up that circularity in the supply chain of those metals that’s not readily done with fossil fuels.”

Since batteries are fairly environmentally costly, the best case is for consumers who are interested in EVs to get a car with a small battery, or a plug-in hybrid electric car that runs on battery power most of the time. “A Toyota Corolla-sized car, maybe with some hybridization, could in many cases, be better for the environment than a gigantic Hummer-sized electric vehicle,” says Gillingham. (The charts in this New York Times article help visualize that distinction.) 

Where policies could help

Electric vehicles are already better for the environment and becoming increasingly better for the environment. 

The biggest factor that could make EVs even better is if the electrical grid goes fully carbon free. Policies that provide subsidies for carbon-free power, or carbon taxes to incentivize cleaner power, could help in this respect. 

The other aspect that would make a difference is to encourage more efficient electric vehicles and to discourage the production of enormous electric vehicles. “Some people may need a pickup truck for work. But if you don’t need a large car for an actual activity, it’s certainly better to have a more reasonably sized car,” Gillingham says.  

Plus, electrifying public transportation, buses, and vehicles like the fleet of trucks run by the USPS can have a big impact because of how often they’re used. Making these vehicles electric can reduce air pollution from idling, and routes can be designed so that they don’t need as large of a battery.  

“The rollout of EVs in general has been slower than demand would support…There’s potentially a larger market for EVs,” Gillingham says. The holdup is due mainly to supply chain problems. 

Switching over completely to EVs is, of course, not the end-all solution for the world’s environmental woes. Currently, car culture is very deeply embedded in American culture and consumerism in general, Gillingham says, and that’s not easy to change. When it comes to climate policy around transportation, it needs to address all the different modes of transportation that people use and the industrial energy services to bring down greenhouse gas emissions across the board. 

The greenest form of transportation is walking, followed by biking, followed by using public transit. Electrifying the vehicles that can be electrified is great, but policies should also consider the ways cities are designed—are they walkable, livable, and have a reliable public transit system connecting communities to where they need to go? 

“There’s definitely a number of different modes of transport that need to be addressed and green modes of transport that need to be supported,” says Trancik. “We really need to be thinking holistically about all these ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

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A road capable of charging electric vehicles en route to their destinations could power up as soon as 2025 in one of the world’s most eco-friendly nations. As the Amsterdam-based tech site The Next Web explains, Sweden is well on track to electrifying a roughly 13-mile portion of its E20 highway spanning between Hallsberg to Örebro, both of which are located between Sweden’s two largest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg.

The electric road system (ERS) project is overseen by the nation’s transport administration, Trafikverket, who are still determining which of three specific technologies could be best suited for the task: overhead conductive, ground-based conductive, and ground-based inductive charging. The first format utilizes an overhead pantograph design similar to those seen atop traditional trolleys and streetcars, but would be limited to large vehicles capable of reaching the tall power lines, i.e. public commuter vehicles.

[Related: Car owners: here’s when experts say you should switch to an EV.]

The other two options, however, could hypothetically also support smaller vehicles and private EVs. In a ground-based conductive format, power would transfer from specialized tracks installed either on top or below the pavement via a mechanical arm. Inductive charging would require conductive coils installed in both the roads and vehicles.

As futuristic as these ideas may sound, Sweden has already successfully tested all three ERS methods in various areas around the nation, including the towns of Gotland, Lund, and Sandviken. While much of that work has pertained to mass transit options, designers also tinkered with systems capable of supporting smaller and private vehicles as far back as 2018.

There are immense benefits to expanding ERS capabilities, beyond just the immediate convenience. According to one recent study from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, increased reliance on ERS installations alongside at-home EV charging could lower electrical grid demands during peak usage times, as well as potentially reduce vehicle battery size by as much as 70 percent. Those smaller batteries would mean less rare earth materials are harvested, leading to potentially cheaper, more accessible EV options for consumers.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

“After all, many people charge their cars after work and during the night, which puts a lot of strain on the power grid,” author Sten Karlsson, an energy efficiency researcher and professor at Chalmers, said in a release in March. “By instead charging more evenly throughout the day, peak load would be significantly reduced.”

Sweden isn’t alone in its aim to electrify portions of its roadways. As the electric transportation industry site Electrive notes, similar projects are also underway in the UK, Germain, Italy, and Israel. Here in the US, the Norwegian company ENRX recently announced plans to install a one-mile ERS prototype section within a stretch of four-lane highway near Orlando, Florida.

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In the news, it seems like electric vehicles are everywhere—from new tech developments to changing policies to increasingly interesting designs. And while the road to electric vehicles may be bumpy, reports show that it’s absolutely crucial to electrify our transportation sector in order to reach critical climate change goals. But unfortunately, the feeling of EV omnipresence doesn’t currently extend to the dealership.

According to a new study released this week by the Sierra Club, 66 percent of car dealerships nationwide did not have a single electric vehicle for sale. And out of those dealerships, only 44 percent reported that they would offer an EV for sale if they could get their hands on one. While this is a step up from previous reporting done by the Sierra Club in 2019, it’s still low considering the massive EV goals set in place by businesses and certain state legislation.

[Related: EV companies call out their own weaknesses in new clean energy report.]

“To help avoid the worst impacts of climate disruption and protect our communities, it’s important that we accelerate the transition to all-electric vehicles,” Sierra Club Clean Transportation for All Director Katherine Garcia said in a release. “Enough empty promises: The auto industry must step on the accelerator and get electric vehicles on dealership lots now.”

One of the major problems getting EVs to the dealership lots is supply chain problems involving semiconductors and batteries, but some major manufacturers are also part of the problem themselves. Major manufacturers often don’t have many EV options in the US—for example, Honda’s first EV to sell in the US won’t be available until 2024, with Toyota only starting to sell the BZ4X stateside last year. 

For dealers, selling EVs just isn’t the same money making machine as selling combustion cars. A decent chunk of a dealership’s income is from parts and service, something that just isn’t as necessary for electric vehicles, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

“All else equal, an electric car has fewer mechanical parts than a gasoline or diesel car, which directly means that the revenue a car dealer makes from an electric car is much lower than what the dealer will make from a gas or diesel counterpart,” Vivek Astvansh, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University, told Vox.

Plus, investing in infrastructure can represent a huge cost, from purchasing chargers and infrastructure to retraining staff on the ins and outs of EVs. Some manufacturers, such as Chevrolet, are enacting EV standards for their dealerships, according to reporting by Vox. 

[Related: Here’s when experts say you should switch to an EV.]

It’s not all bad news, however—the ability to buy directly from EV makers such as Rivian and Lucid can put the pressure on dealerships to get the electrification started. States where policy allows for direct sales account for 615,724 EVs sold in 2022, representing 65 percent of all EVs sold nationwide, according to the report. 

And if you’re looking to find a dealership that has an EV in stock, your best bet is to try locations in the Southeast (which have a 41 percent rate of dealers with EVs) or look around for Mercedes-Benz dealerships which above 75 percent of offer EVs. 

But for dealerships, the time to act is now. There are already 1.9 million reservations or pre-orders for recently released EVs, and the percentage of EVs in new vehicle sales has tripled since 2020.

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If you have Face ID set up on your iPhone, you can unlock your device by showing it your visage instead of using a pin code or a thumb print. It’s a familiar aspect of smartphone tech for many of us, but what about using it to get in your vehicle?

The Genesis GV60 is the first car to feature this technology to unlock and enter the car, pairing it with your fingerprint to start it up.

How does it work? Here’s what we discovered.

The Genesis GV60 is a tech-laden EV

Officially announced in the fall of 2022, the GV60 is Genesis’ first dedicated all-electric vehicle. Genesis, for the uninitiated, is the luxury arm of Korea-based automaker Hyundai. 

Built on the new Electric-Global Modular Platform, the GV60 is equipped with two electric motors, and the result is an impressive ride. At the entry level, the GV60 Advanced gets 314 horsepower, and the higher-level Performance trim cranks out 429 horsepower. As a bonus, the Performance also includes a Boost button that can kick it up to 483 horsepower for 10 seconds; with that in play, the GV60 boasts a 0-to-60 mph time of less than four seconds.

The profile of this EV is handsome, especially in the look-at-me shade of São Paulo Lime. Inside, the EV is just as fetching as the exterior, with cool touches like the rotating gear shifter. As soon as the car starts up, a crystal orb rotates to reveal a notched shifter that looks and feels futuristic. Some might say it’s gimmicky, but it does have a wonderful ergonomic feel on the pads of the fingers.

Embedded in the glossy black trim of the B-pillar, which is the part of the frame between the front and rear doors, the facial recognition camera stands ready to let you into the car without a key. But first, you’ll need to set it up to recognize you and up to one other user, so the car can be accessed by a partner, family member, or friend. Genesis uses deep learning to power this feature, and if you’d like to learn more about artificial intelligence, read our explainer on AI.

The facial recognition setup process

You’ll need both sets of the vehicle’s smart keys (Genesis’ key fobs) in hand to set up Face Connect, Genesis’ moniker for its facial recognition setup. Place the keys in the car, start it up, and open the “setup” menu and choose “user profile.” From there, establish a password and choose “set facial recognition.” The car will prompt you to leave the car running and step out of it, leaving the door open. Gaze into the white circle until the animation stops and turns green, and the GV60 will play an audio prompt: “facial recognition set.” The system is intuitive, and I found that I could set it up the first time on my own just through the prompts. If you don’t get it right, the GV60 will let you know and the camera light will turn from white to red.

After the image, the GV60 needs your fingerprint. Basically, you’ll go through the same setup process, instead choosing “fingerprint identification” and the car will issue instructions. It will ask for several placements of your index finger inside the vehicle (the fingerprint area is a small circle between the volume and tuning roller buttons) to create a full profile.

In tandem, these two biometrics (facial recognition and fingerprint) work together to first unlock and then start the car. Upon approach, touch the door handle and place your face near the camera and it will unlock; you can even leave the key in the car and lock it with this setup. I found it to be very easy to set up, and it registered my face on the first try. The only thing I forgot the first couple of times was that I first had to touch the door handle and then scan my face. I could see this being a terrific way to park and take a jog around the park or hit the beach without having to worry about how to secure a physical key. 

Interestingly, to delete a profile the car requires just one smart key instead of two.

Not everyone is a fan of this type of technology in general because of privacy concerns related to biometrics; Genesis says no biometric data is uploaded to the cloud, but is stored securely and heavily encrypted in the vehicle itself. If it is your cup of tea and you like the option to leave the physical keys behind, this is a unique way of getting into your car. 

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Earlier this week, a California judge tentatively ordered Elon Musk to testify under oath regarding the Tesla CEO’s past claims related to the EV company’s Autopilot software. The request, as reported by multiple outlets, pertains to an ongoing lawsuit alleging the AI drive-assist program is partially responsible for the 2018 death of Apple engineer Walter Huang. The request would also compel Musk to address previous, frequently lofty descriptions of the system. In 2016, for example, Musk alleged “a Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person.”

But before Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Evette D. Pennypacker issued their decision, Tesla’s legal defense offered a creative argument as to why the CEO shouldn’t have to testify: any documentation of Musk’s prior Autopilot claims could simply be deepfakes. 

Reports of the defense strategy came earlier this week from both Reuters and Bloomberg, and also include Judge Pennypacker’s critical response to Tesla’s concerns. “Their position is that because Mr. Musk is famous and might be more of a target for deep fakes, his public statements are immune,” wrote the judge. “In other words, Mr. Musk, and others in his position, can simply say whatever they like in the public domain, then hide behind the potential for their recorded statements being a deep fake to avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do.”

[Related: Why an AI image of Pope Francis in a fly jacket stirred up the internet.]

While there are some entertaining examples out there, AI-generated videos and images—often referred to as deepfakes—are an increasing cause of concern among misinformation experts. Despite the legitimate concerns, contending that archival recorded statements are now rendered wholesale untrustworthy now would be “deeply troubling,” Judge Pennybacker said in the reports. Although Musk’s deposition order is “tentative,” as Reuters notes, “California judges often issue tentative rulings, which are almost always finalized with few major changes after such a hearing.” 

Tesla faces numerous investigations involving the company’s controversial Autopilot system, including one from the Department of Justice first revealed late last year. Last week, a California state court jury ruled the company was not at fault in a separate wrongful death lawsuit involving an EV’s Autopilot system. Huang’s wrongful death lawsuit is scheduled to go into trial on July 31.

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Although Tesla’s latest Impact Report promises that “a sustainable future is within reach,” the company’s 2022 figures show just how crucial accurate measurements are in achieving the lofty goal. Released earlier this week, an expanded dataset dramatically upped the electric vehicle maker’s total carbon footprint when compared with the prior year’s available information. The larger picture? An estimated 30.7 million tons of CO2 in supply chain emissions atop previously reported categories of pollution. That’s roughly equivalent to Serbia’s total emissions in 2021. 

[Related: Tesla employees allegedly viewed drivers’ car camera footage.]

Tesla only publicly offered how much greenhouse gas the company generated in 2021 via direct operations and EV owners charging their cars—around 2.5 million metric tons of CO2. That might seem small compared to its competitors (Ford recorded 337 million metric tons of CO2 in 2022, for example), but these segments of overall emissions are just a fraction of a company’s supply chain pollution stemming from production, transportation, and indirect operations. And while those numbers weren’t disclosed for 2021, they were for last year within Tesla’s new report.

As The Verge notes, the vast difference in numbers comes down to what companies generally choose to include in these kinds of industry reports. Carbon footprints are often broken down into three “scopes,” with Scope 1 encompassing direct company emissions (i.e. factory emissions, brick-and-mortar offices, and its own vehicles for travel and commuting). Meanwhile, Scope 2 includes emissions stemming from heating, A/C, and electricity usage in company buildings like offices. Scope 3 focuses on all the extra, indirect emissions from supply chain manufacturing alongside products’ lifecycle emissions.

Most often, businesses choose to detail only Scopes 1 and 2, as they are usually smaller than Scope 3’s numbers, even when combined. This often makes a company’s carbon footprint appear much smaller than it actually is when seen as a fuller picture; a strategy often referred to as “greenwashing.” In Tesla’s 2022 Impact Report, for instance, the first two “scopes” totaled just 610,000 metric tons of CO2—a much more palatable figure for investors and consumers than the true total of over 31 million tons.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

Still, Tesla actually making its Scope 3 data available to the public offers some much needed additional transparency within the industry. Even then, however, the company’s  combined Scope 1 and 2 numbers rose a little under four percent, year-over-year. This, as The Verge also added, came even as Tesla still worked to make its EVs less carbon-intensive. Earlier this month, Tesla revealed “Part 3” of its ongoing “Master Plan” to provide sustainable energy for the entire world, estimating it will take $10 trillion in investments to fully realize.

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Jeep established its roots back in the 1940s, and the brand quickly established itself as a 4×4 expert. Rugged and utilitarian, Jeep has been an icon of off-roading ever since. For its next act, the automaker is getting electrified. Jim Morrison, senior vice president and head of the Jeep brand in North America, says it has established its line in the sand. 

“We’ve said we will be the greenest SUV brand and by 2025 all of our vehicles will be electrified,” Morrison says. “We expect half our sales to be electrified by 2030.”

Jeep’s plan includes four all-electric SUVs in North America and in Europe by 2025. The automaker debuted sneak peeks of two of those vehicles—the Jeep Recon EV and Wagoneer EV (code name Wagoneer S)—via its YouTube channel back in September of last year.

Remember, electrified in an automotive context is different from fully electric: Electrified refers to using motors to enhance and support gas-powered models for better efficiency and fewer emissions, while fully electric is a pure EV, with no internal combustion engine whatsoever. Jeep will offer both types, at least for now. Stellantis, Jeep’s parent company, has ranked at the bottom of the EPA’s 2022 rankings [PDF] for fuel efficiency and carbon emissions between 2016 and 2021; Stellantis includes brands like Chrysler, Alfa Romeo, and Dodge. Each of these brands is finally getting a hybrid version—Dodge unveiled the hybrid Hornet in March and Alfa Romeo is about to launch its first electrified model, the Tonale—so improvement is on the table. 

The electrified plans are well on its way: the Wrangler 4xe, Jeep’s first plug-in hybrid vehicle, made its debut for model year 2021 and the Grand Cherokee was offered as a PHEV for 2022. Since then, both have registered impressive sales, with the Wrangler 4xe taking the crown as America’s best-selling PHEV for 2022. How will the electrification of Jeep affect its off-roading credibility? 

Here’s how it’s working in the real world. 

The Jeep Magneto concept

At its 57th Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, Utah this March, the brand showed off its newest batch of concepts intended to inspire Jeep owners to enhance and accessorize, and to entice non-Jeep owners to dream. (The Easter Jeep Safari is typically a nine-day event with day-long 4×4 trail rides throughout—basically, it’s like summer camp for off-roaders.) One of those was the Magneto 3.0 concept, a fully-electric variant of the popular Wrangler SUV. The Magneto name sounds like a superhero badge, and it’s definitely a way for the automaker to see how far it can go. 

“Magneto has been our test bed and pushed the extremes for 4×4 capability and electrification,” Morrison tells PopSci. “Over these years, we have been learning more and more about how electrification is accepted by our customers. Magneto 3.0 is exponentially better than 1.0; we learned that instant torque is cool with 1.0, then we learned you can modify it with 2.0, adding 40-inch tires and Dana 60 axles. This year, we took it up to 900 hp with Magneto 3.0, and it’s an absolute beast off road.” 

The automaker says the third time’s the charm with this version, as it expands upon the improbable combination of a six-speed manual transmission with a battery-electric powertrain. I got behind the wheel of Magneto 2.0 in Moab last year with Morrison in the passenger seat, and was impressed by the concept’s rock crawling ability; it held up to the capability everyone expects of a Jeep. 

The sounds of (off-roading) silence

Driving a Magneto and a 4xe, what I noticed most of all was the quiet. In the Magneto, of course, the vehicle is nearly silent, but it’s just a concept at this point and not available to the masses. Details on the upcoming Jeep Recon EV are slim so far, and we’ll be waiting to see what features and range it will include.

Unlike an all-electric Jeep, the Wrangler 4xe or Grand Cherokee 4xe are available now. The vehicles default to the hybrid system, and operating it in E-Save mode on the asphalt conserves the electric capacity for the trails. In the Wrangler 4xe or Grand Cherokee 4xe (those two models boast 21 all-electric miles for the Wrangler 4xe and 26 all-electric miles in the Grand Cherokee), drivers can run nearly the entire Rubicon Trail in California if they want to. 

Off-roading competitor and owner of Barlow Adventures in Arizona, Nena Barlow, has led Jeep tours at the Easter Jeep Safari and tested all three versions of the Magneto on the trails. She’s also a six-time Rebelle Rally competitor, and won the last two years in a Wrangler 4xe. Barlow also cited silence as a key benefit to driving an electrified off-roader, not just for the reduction in noise pollution but for the driving advantages, being more in tune with her vehicle. 

“The power with electric motors is just amazing in terms of the torque, the control, and the quiet,” says Barlow. “Even in the 4xe, being able to run obstacles in electric mode has spoiled me. I kind of get irritated by engine noise now; I want to hear what my tires are doing.”

When tackling challenging terrain, it’s a huge advantage to be able to hear your tires. Drivers can hear if they’re slipping off a rock and evaluate how well the rubber is connecting to the road. There’s a crunching sound on loose terrain, and a different noise when you’re at that threshold of losing adhesion, Barlow says. 

Morrison’s daily driver is a 4xe, and he says the wildlife near his home pay him no mind. “You’re just driving around and suddenly you’re face to face with a deer,” he says. “It’s fun to go off road and connect with nature.” 

Does an electrified Jeep provide enough power?

Some have asked Barlow why she would choose the Wrangler 4xe and not the beastly 6.4-liter V8-carrying Wrangler Rubicon 392 for the Rebelle Rally. The 4xe has the same amount of torque (470 pound-feet) but less horsepower (270 hp versus 470 hp) than the 392, but the 4xe gets twice the range out of one tank of gas. 

Those worried about scraping up the battery pack needn’t fret, because the bellies are well protected. In fact, Barlow has been renting out Wrangler 4xe models to tourists for the past couple of years, and she says if renters can’t find a weak spot, no one can. 

What you’ll notice while off-roading in an electrified Jeep is the pure power to take on big hills with no hesitation. In electric mode, the vehicle pushes forward smoothly and without lag, holding on an ascent without much effort. The bigger challenge may be the charging infrastructure, which Jeep is addressing with solar-powered charging stations at its Badge of Honor trailheads.

“I believe the 4xe is the future,” Barlow says. “It has all the power and great range, and that’s the way we need to be going.” 

Correction on April 25, 2023: This article has been updated to clarify Jeep’s plans for all-electric vehicles, including the Recon EV and Wagoneer EV.

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Boasting 576 horsepower and 545 pound-feet of torque, the new Kia EV6 GT is thrilling. Press your finger on the GT button on the steering wheel and, like electrified magic, the crossover seems to catapult into hyperspace. The company boldly proclaims that the EV6 GT can go toe to toe with the Ferrari Roma or the Lamborghini Huracán Evo Spyder RWD, accelerating from 0-60 miles per hour in 3.4 seconds. Take a moment and let that comparison sink in.

In fact, this vehicle was recently recognized with the 2023 World Performance Car title at this year’s World Car Awards. After having the EV6 GT in my possession for a test drive, I can report that it has certainly earned its accolades. 

Planning to build a crossover with supercar-like chops is no accident or stroke of luck—this is how Kia’s EV strategy has developed behind the scenes. 

Planning for a winner

Stunners like the EV6 GT have been on the books for years now, a glimmer in Kia’s eye long before it was a reality. 

The EV-dedicated chassis on which the EV6 was engineered was announced back in 2017, which means the design was in the works well before that. The Korean company’s long-term strategy is paying off: Late last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that Kia achieved the largest reduction in CO₂ emissions in the U.S. market for its 2016 to 2021 vehicles. After the Biden Administration’s newest edict to drastically reduce emissions from vehicles was revealed last week, Kia and its parent company Hyundai Motor Group appear to be way ahead of the curve.

Twenty-five years ago, Kia was better known for making inexpensive cars that were more like uninteresting appliances than the attractive vehicles earning accolades now. Its rise to popularity is no accident, as the company has steadily poured money into research and development in its domestic market in Korea, which spills over into the rest of the world. For example, Hyundai Motor, Kia, and Hyundai MOBIS (Hyundai’s global parts company) are banding together to invest $18 billion into EVs. The goal: to catapult Hyundai Motor Group into the global top three global automakers by 2030 with a planned total lineup of 31 EV models. 

Every year, the EPA issues a trend report on the industry’s fuel economy and emissions, and in its most recent report it called out Kia’s performance as exceptional. The automaker recognized that its fuel economy and emissions had been improving year over year, but it wasn’t anticipating doing as well as it did in the report.

“To be frank, it was a little bit of a surprise,” says Steve Kosowski, the company’s manager of long-range strategy and planning. “We knew we were doing well, but seeing it in the EPA report was a nice pat on the back for the company.”

At the intersection of EV product and portfolio planning, regulatory compliance, and charging infrastructure, Kosowski has a job that involves peering ten years into Kia’s future. Soothsayers like Kosowski tackle the tricky prospect of figuring out where the company should spend its time and money, straddling the line between practical planning (production vehicles) and wishful thinking (concept cars and futuristic prognostication). 

With future-predicting analysts like Kosowski on board, the automaker doesn’t have just an inkling about which cars are going to be a success; they have enough data to support their predictions. 

None of this means that Kia is happy to sit back and bask in its achievements. At its 2023 CEO Investor Day on April 5, 2022, Kia ramped up its electrification target even more, announcing it was aiming for 1.6 million EV sales by 2030.

Getting (way) beyond boring crossovers

Any and all success the company is seeing now is due to its meticulous planning and analysis at a micro and macro level, and the product planners read the tea leaves to see what trends are unfurling. Generally, Kosowski says, product planners start at a high level, looking at industry volumes and analyzing trends to get a forecast that is as targeted as possible.

“The first big step is to understand the regulatory requirements,” Kosowski says. “That gives you a really good calculus on how many EVs you need to sell, how many trucks you can sell, and so on. I like to look at it like a wheel: you have the consumer research spoke, the supplier spoke, the dealer spoke, and you start to get a flavor for what people like and want and what they’re willing to pay for.”

Kia seems to be cranking out hit after hit, riding on the wave of success from its Telluride SUV, which also raked in awards across the industry for its affordable, well-designed package. With SUVs taking the lion’s share of attention in the market—two in three Kia vehicles sold in 2022 were SUVs, and the company’s SUV lineup continues to expand with hybrid and plug-in hybrid options—the company is well positioned for the EV surge.

“Electrified utility was an important signal 10 years ago,” Kosowski says. “Buyers love the torque and efficiency, and they feel like they’re part of the solution [to the challenges of climate change].”

On top of that, Kia and Hyundai vehicles on the global EV platform are capable of charging up in less than 20 minutes. That’s faster than many EVs on the market and goes a long way toward adoption. Soon, Kia’s three-row EV9 SUV will become available, opening up competition in the highly desirable family segment. 

Now, if Kosowski and his prognosticating colleagues can map out a way to shore up the infrastructure so that range isn’t a concern, the EV future will roll out as smoothly as Kia hopes it will. 

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This article was originally featured on The Drive.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed Wednesday perhaps its most sweeping changes to vehicle emissions controls in its history, a far-reaching measure that could effectively mandate a tenfold increase in EV sales by the middle of the next decade. Under the proposed plan, electric-car sales would comprise more than two-thirds of overall light-duty new car sales and nearly half of all medium-duty car sales by 2032. The plan would also ratchet up emissions targets for internal combustion-powered vehicles by roughly 13 percent every year from 2027 to 2032, compared to 5-10 percent increases proposed for 2023-2026 model-year cars. The EPA’s proposal will likely face a mountain of legal challenges before it’s adopted. Still, regulators said they would build in language that would make the standards tougher to repeal for subsequent administrations.

“By proposing the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks, we are delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s promise to protect people and the planet, securing critical reductions in dangerous air and climate pollution and ensuring significant economic benefits like lower fuel and maintenance costs for families,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

The EPA said its proposal could save the average new-car buyer $12,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle, compared to an ICE engine. The proposal for light- and medium-duty vehicles was accompanied by a proposal for heavy-duty fleets to electrify 25 percent of their trucks and half of all new buses to be electric by 2032. This week the EPA also proposed recalculating how efficiency is measured among electrified vehicles to represent the impact of those cars more accurately in Corporate Average Fuel Economy figures. Combined, the total impact of the EPA’s suggested regulations could vastly reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced on America’s roadways. However, the ambitious targets exceed President Joe Biden’s initial target of 50 percent EV sales by the decade’s end. 

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers in America, CEO John Bozzella called the proposal “aggressive by any measure. By that I mean it sets automotive electrification goals in the next few years that are … very high,” he wrote, according to Automotive News. 

Automakers and unions are likely to push back against the regulations, which they’ve said could cost jobs and further hike the prices of new cars. Last year, EV sales accounted for less than 6 percent of overall vehicle sales and 2 percent of heavy-truck sales. In addition to building battery facilities in the U.S. that won’t come online for several years, automakers have warned that existing and planned charging infrastructure may not handle such a dramatic increase in EVs, and critical mineral supplies wouldn’t be enough. The Biden administration has offered trillions in spending to accelerate both while pushing forward with ambitious targets. The EPA doesn’t have the mandate to quantify overall vehicle sales but instead can set targets to force automakers to otherwise comply with those stringent rules. 

Going forward, the plan will be open to public comment and face scrutiny from legislators and others, likely including legal challenges. 

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The automotive industry may be going through an electric car revolution, but at the same time, actual cars seem left behind. The shift to EVs has been heavy on electric crossovers like the Tesla Model Y, and pickups like Ford’s F-150 Lightning, while the traditional sedan and hatchback shape has been left by the wayside. Pickup trucks, crossovers, and SUVs are quickly becoming the de facto choice among most consumers, regardless of whether those vehicles are electric or gas-powered. But thankfully, Hyundai has embraced the sedan and delivered an interesting aero steampunk electric four-door that doesn’t resemble anything else on the road.

Hyundai’s latest and greatest EV, the Ioniq 6, is ultra-aerodynamic and chic, eschewing the practicality associated with a hatchback or crossover shape (and the easy cargo storage that comes with that configuration), but for good reason. The vehicle’s targeted clientele includes the young professionals and millennials who aren’t necessarily focused on outright practicality. Instead, those customers want design, style, driving engagement, and range; they’d rather trade off practicality to get those things.

And thus, the Ioniq 6 is a very different-looking vehicle from its sister model, the Ioniq 5, despite sharing a platform. While the Ioniq 5 is a practical crossover-shaped retro homage to Hyundai’s first car, the Pony, the Ioniq 6 takes a different route. The Ioniq 6 feels like a pastiche of 1930s-era aerodynamic streamlined cars like the Chrysler Airflow or the Stout Scarab, but mixed in with an obscure callback to 1990s-era efforts from Hyundai itself. Add in a dash of square video-game-like pixel details in the taillights, and that’s the Ioniq 6.

Regardless of how you might feel about the execution, the Ioniq 6 is a visually striking car. From the side view, the very short nose quickly sweeps into the main arch that comprises most of the Ioniq 6’s cabin. Then, that arch gently flows into the rear trunk area, terminating in a rear overhang and decklid that visually appears to make the rear of the car look longer than the front. 

The Ioniq 6 is organic in its form—an odd, funky-looking design that somehow works. The result is a car that appears delicate, petite, and low-slung, with just a touch of retro; if you squint, the front fascia and overall shape feel like a strangely modernized, ultra-sleek version of the 1996 Hyundai Elantra. 

The Ioniq 6 is different from its siblings

It is easy to think that with the shift to electrified transit, every EV will look, feel, and drive the same. After all, the Ioniq 6, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60, and Ioniq 5 all share a technology platform: Hyundai’s Electric Global Modular Platform, or E-GMP for short, forms the basis of most new Hyundai, Genesis, and Kia EVs, including the forthcoming EV9 seven-passenger crossover. That’s a very diverse range of products, and they all share common motor, battery, and platform designs. So, does that mean they’ll be the same car?

In a word, no. Hyundai’s engineering team went to work differentiating the Ioniq 6 from its platform kin. The Ioniq 6 aims for a more engaging driver-centric experience, without compromising a composed and smooth ride. The engineers learned from the Ioniq 5, and they’ve tweaked and changed things about the Ioniq 6, just to make it that much different from the Ioniq 5, and in turn, other E-GMP platform vehicles. Hyundai likens this to chess pieces, where each model has a different role, but they’re all part of the same cohesive lineup. 

[Related: Hyundai’s new Ioniq 6 is a long-range EV with Art Deco vibes]

Inside, much of the Ioniq 6’s interior instrument panel and dashboard elements are shared with the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5. This means a twin-screen setup controls most of the interactions, for the radio and other general controls. A line of physical buttons for HVAC controls and volume sit underneath it. Most of the user interface screens and infotainment setups are the same as other EV Hyundai and Kia products, which means that they’re good. Those systems are easy to use and well organized. If using their systems is too hard, the Ioniq 6 comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

But, that’s where the similarities between the Ioniq 6 and other Hyundai and Kia products ends. The center console sits close to the driver and passenger, coming up to meet the dashboard. The door panels are simple and switchless. The switches for the windows and locks have been moved to the center console. It’s more claustrophobic than the Ioniq 5, but here, it feels distinctly sporty. 

How the Hyundai Ioniq 6 drives

The Ioniq 6 doesn’t drive like its E-GMP siblings, either. Piloting the Ioniq 6 around the curvy roads of Scottsdale, Arizona was a delight. The car silently and accurately slinks around curves, with the precision of sci-fi cyberpunk killer snake assassin. Whereas the Ioniq 5 feels soft almost to the point of wallowy, the Ioniq 6 is dialed in. The less-upright seats and lower center of gravity make the Ioniq 6 feel more engaging on curvy roads, unlike the Ioniq 5.

The Ioniq 6 doesn’t weigh that much less than the Ioniq 5, and yet, the Ioniq 6’s character is lighter and more jovial, compared to the serious and utilitarian Ioniq 5. The steering is more engaging than the Ioniq 5, although it’s not quite as sharp as the Tesla Model 3. Driving the Ioniq 6 against its platform-mates gives the impression that Hyundai’s engineers took the command to make the Ioniq 6 a sharp-handling sedan very seriously.

The motivating power for the Ioniq 6 comes in one of two forms. In rear-wheel-drive models, a single rear-mounted motor fed by either a 53 kWh battery (for standard range) or 77.4 kWh battery (for long range) turns the rear wheels. It’s good for a healthy 225 horsepower (149 horsepower in the standard range), and 258 ft/lbs of torque. The higher-equipped, dual-motor, AWD trims can produce 340 horsepower and 448 ft/lbs of torque. That will shunt the car from 0-60 in under 4 seconds. Both trims are more than adequate on the street, allowing for brisk performance no matter which motor and battery combination.

The Ioniq 6’s standard-range 53 kWh battery pack is smaller than the Ioniq 5 standard range’s 58 kWh battery. Yet, the Ioniq 6 can go further on a smaller battery pack. Even in the smallest model, Hyundai claims a range of 240 miles. The Nissan Leaf can’t go as far as the Ioniq 6, and the Bolt can crest 258 miles (or 247 miles in EUV form). The range-leading SE trim in single motor, rear-wheel form can achieve 361 miles on a single charge, which is very impressive for a relatively small 77.4 kWh battery. This is part of how optimized the Ioniq 6 is compared to its EV kin on the same platform. Its wind-cheating shape allows Hyundai to do more with less. 

The Ioniq 6 is normal, but also not normal

The Ioniq 6 is strange to look at, but nice to drive. True, it is not without its shortcomings; there is no wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. The front trunk could likely only comfortably fit one roll of discount paper towels, and the aerodynamic shape means that headroom for rear passengers is compromised, especially when equipped with the optional sunroof. 

But, for many, those gripes will be fairly minor inconveniences and not outright deal breakers. The Ioniq 6’s direct competition, the Tesla Model 3 and the Polestar 2, feel and look as if they’ve driven out of the future. However, those cars can have frustrating user interfaces and Teslas have related quality-of-build concerns. And both those cars are online-oriented buying experiences. 

By comparison, the Ioniq 6 should be able to be purchased at any Hyundai dealer. Plus, the infotainment dials feel just like any other Hyundai or Kia product. It has physical buttons that don’t require pawing through complicated computerized screens to operate. It’s a very simple, uncomplicated car at its core. That’s a huge asset for those interested in going electric, but turned off by the convoluted techno-wizardry that is inherent to new EV models.

Even the pricing of the Ioniq 6 is attractively normal. The base Ioniq 6 standard range will start at $42,715, including the destination fee. That’s about $2,000 cheaper than the Tesla Model 3, although it can’t go quite as far—it’ll travel a mere 240 miles compared to the 272 of the Model 3. But for $46,615, (about $2,000 more than the base Model 3 long-range RWD), the Ioniq 6 can go nearly 100 miles further. That’s a really attractive deal.

That’s kind of the ethos of the Ioniq 6; it’s unconventional to look at, but everything else is satisfyingly conventional and has a strong value. For drivers who want an eye-catching EV that can go the distance, the Ioniq 6 is worth a look. 

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A new investigation from Reuters alleges Tesla employees routinely viewed and shared “highly invasive” video and images taken from the onboard cameras of owners’ vehicles—even from a Tesla owned by CEO Elon Musk.

While Tesla claims consumers’ data remains anonymous, former company workers speaking to Reuters described a far different approach to drivers’ privacy—one filled with rampant policy violations, customer ridicule, and memes, they claim.

Tesla’s cars feature a number of external cameras that inform vehicles’ “Full Self-Driving” Autopilot system—a program that has received its own fair share of regulatory scrutiny regarding safety issues. The AI underlying this technology, however, requires copious amounts of visual training, often through the direction of human reviewers such as Tesla’s employees, according to the new report. Workers collaborate with company engineers to often manually identify and label objects such as pedestrians, emergency vehicles, and roads’ lane lines, alongside a host of other subjects encountered in everyday driving scenarios, as detailed in the Reuters findings. This, however, requires access to vehicle cameras.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

Tesla owners are led to believe camera feeds were handled by employees sensitively: The company’s Customer Privacy Notice states owners’ “recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle,” while Tesla’s website states in no uncertain terms, “Your Data Belongs to You.”

While multiple former employees confirmed to Reuters the files were by-and-large used for AI training, that allegedly didn’t stop frequent internal sharing of images and video on the company’s internal messaging system, Mattermost. According to the report, staffers regularly exchanged images they encountered while labeling footage, often Photoshopping them for jokes and turning them into self-referential emojis and memes.

While one former worker claimed they never came across particularly salacious footage, such as nudity, they still saw “some scandalous stuff sometimes… just definitely a lot of stuff that, like, I wouldn’t want anybody to see about my life.” The same former employee went on to describe encountering “just private scenes of life,” including intimate moments, laundry contents, and even car owners’ children. Sometimes this also included “disturbing content,” the employee continued, such as someone allegedly being dragged to a car against their will.

Although two ex-employees said they weren’t troubled by the image sharing, others were so perturbed that they were wary of driving Tesla’s own company cars, knowing how much data could be collected within them, regardless of who owned the vehicles. According to Reuters, around 2020, multiple employees came across and subsequently shared a video depicting a submersible vehicle featured in the 1977 James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me. Its owner? Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

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The sleek new all-electric Ioniq 6 looks very different from the original Ioniq EV. It doesn’t even look like the Ioniq 5, for that matter. It’s based on Hyundai’s Prophecy concept, which was unveiled in 2020. But the Ioniq 6 is measurably more aerodynamic than that concept or the Ioniq 5, with design inspiration from the fantastical, Art Deco 1930s-era Stout Scarab.

Looks are only sheet-metal deep, however, and the technological underpinnings are what makes Hyundai’s newest EV so interesting. The inner workings of the Ioniq 6 include an updated battery module with improved cooling functions and so-called “hairpin wiring” that packs more energy into a smaller space.

Here’s how all those things work together to create more range and power for this EV.

Aerodynamics and “Pop-Tart” battery cells

When Hyundai launched the Ioniq 5 nearly two years ago, it was a big improvement over the original Ioniq EV from 2016, which topped out at 100 miles per hour and offered only 124 miles of range. The Ioniq 6 has taken things up another notch, maxing out at an impressive 361 miles of range with the rear-wheel-drive Long Range version of the EV. That’s 58 miles better than the best of the Ioniq 5 options and nearly triple the range of the original.

How did Hyundai make that kind of progress over a quick couple of years? One key factor is the aerodynamic improvements, on display with a swoopy ducktail in the back, active air flaps, and a low-to-the-ground nose. The coefficient of drag, which quantifies the aerodynamics, is 0.21 for the Ioniq 6, compared with 0.29 for the boxier Ioniq 5. (For efficiency, you want that number to be as low as possible.) At its starting price of $42,715, the Ioniq 6 has no business showing off a drag coefficient that is better than cars that cost three times as much, but it does.

Another important element is the battery design, which in the case of the Ioniq 6 is built into Hyundai’s Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP). Also used as the underpinning platform for the Ioniq 5, this versatile platform acts as the ground floor for a row of battery modules.

“Each battery module is made up of individual cells that are stacked neatly, like a stack of Pop-Tarts,” Dean Schlingmann, Hyundai manager of electrified management systems explains. “We can vary the number of modules and configurations depending on the segment and what the goals are for that vehicle.”

With the packaging improvements Hyundai has made to the battery module, the automaker has been able to reduce the part count significantly, which lightens the vehicle overall. Energy density increased by 7 percent. 

“We can cram more electrons in [the battery], which means more EV range or [heating and air conditioning] usage, wherever you want to use it,” Schlingmann says. 

Amping up the density with flat wires

For all intents and purposes, Schlingmann says, the Ioniq 6 motor is identical to the Ioniq 5’s, but with improvements to the motor winding design. Hyundai uses hairpin winding technology, named for the metal pins used in a salon for elaborate hairstyles, and this technology is widely known to be more efficient, with a higher power density and performance under a variety of hot and cold settings.

“Instead of using a perfectly round wire that goes through some of the winding gaps in the motor housing, we have more of a flat, rectangular wire. The [hairpin wiring] fills the gaps in the spaces around the motor itself more efficiently,” Schlingmann explains. “The more dense you can get the wire (or the more fill you can achieve in those gaps) the more power or performance—or whatever characteristic you’re looking to push with the motor—you can do so more effectively.”

The effectiveness lends itself to other applications, as well. Schlingmann helped develop the vehicle-to-load (V-to-L) capability for the Ioniq 6. This function takes advantage of Hyundai’s bidirectional power capability and allows access for customers to 110-volt power. There is an interior outlet available in Limited trim, and users can also export power with a V-to-L connector accessory. 

Schlingmann personally tested several plug-in devices with the Ioniq 6: air compressors and even a welder, which like an air compressor is not recommended but shows that pickup trucks aren’t the only electric vehicles that can power up a house. If you want to plug in a blender and whip up a smoothie on the road, you can do that. It might not be the ideal camping vehicle because of its ground clearance, but it could be useful for camping at less-remote sites. 

Range is the magic word

At $42,715, Hyundai’s Ioniq 6 is priced to compete with the Tesla Model 3, which starts at $44,380. The EPA says the Model 3 will get 272 miles of EPA-estimated driving range with the base rear-wheel-drive model, and up to 358 miles with the Long Range model (compared to the Ioniq 6’s max range at 361 miles). 

Both of these EVs can charge up quickly. In 15 minutes, Tesla’s SuperCharger network can pump 200 miles of range back into a Model 3. The Ioniq 6 can go from 10 percent to 80 percent charged in 18 minutes. Automakers are eager to kick the ball down the road and get customers to start buying EVs, and that charge-up time makes a difference.

Most trims of the new Ioniq 6 are on sale now at dealerships.

Read our full review, here.

The post Hyundai’s new Ioniq 6 is a long-range EV with Art Deco vibes appeared first on Popular Science.

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For decades, Automobili Lamborghini has built its reputation on creating supercars with large-displacement engines. Mid-mounted naturally aspirated V12 combustion engines have been its signature since the debut of the classically stunning Miura in 1966.

But change is on the horizon, and Lamborghini’s rivals at Ferrari and McLaren have already begun the shift toward turbocharged smaller-displacement engines to maximize efficiency. Characteristically, Lamborghini is plotting a different course. Battery-electric Lamborghinis are on the CAD screens of the company’s engineers, but before they debut, Lamborghini aims to give its naturally aspirated V12 models a fitting send-off with a hybrid-electric assist.

The Revuelto is that V12 tribute model. As is customary, the car’s name comes from a traditional Spanish fighting bull. Revuelto was famous in 1880, so you’re forgiven if you haven’t heard of him. The word means “mixed up,” and it was chosen in reference to the Revuelto’s combination of combustion and electric power. The bull was said to be mixed up because eight different times he leapt out of the ring into the crowd in the stands.

The Revuelto is a plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle

In a step toward the electric future, Lamborghini has for the first time ever added a plug-in hybrid drivetrain that boosts efficiency and, crucially, lets the Revuelto drive into the fashionable city centers of Europe, where there are often prohibitions on combustion power. This is only the first from Lamborghini, which will electrify its entire portfolio in coming years, states chairman and CEO Stephan Winkelmann during my visit to Lamborghini’s Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy headquarters to view the Revuelto.

“The Miura and Countach established the V12 engine as an icon of Lamborghini,” notes Winkelmann. 

“However, things change and we have new challenges in front of us right here and right now,” he continues. “Geopolitics are a constant companion to all of our planning.” 

The company will roll out a hybrid-electric Huracan by the end of 2024, with the first battery-electric cars arriving in 2028 or 2029. Considering the likely finite lifespan of the Revuelto, one might expect that Lamborghini would make the vehicle simply an evolutionary development, but instead they went the extra mile with a full redesign. 

The Revuelto features an all-new carbon fiber platform, an all-new combustion engine, an all-new transmission, and even a new drivetrain layout in the chassis. The chassis is 10 percent lighter and 25 percent stiffer than before, and employs a new carbon fiber front impact structure in place of the Aventador’s aluminum structure.

The Revuelto’s V12 engine, explained 

The new 814-horsepower, 6.5-liter, L545 V12 engine still rides behind the cockpit, nestled in an all-aluminum rear subframe that is where the rear suspension attaches. At a time when rivals’ engines are muted by turbochargers, you’ll hear the Revuelto’s song better than ever, because the L545 now spins to a 9,500-rpm rev limit and explodes each combustion stroke with the force of a 12.6:1 compression ratio rather than the Aventador’s 11.8:1 ratio.

This 12-cylinder beast is even 37 pounds lighter than the Aventador’s power plant. As the Revuelto contains the last Lamborghini V12, we can chart the progress from the original engine in the Miura, which displaced 3.5 liters, spun to 6,500 rpm and churned out 280 horsepower under the more optimistic rating system of that era.

The Miura’s V12 rode side saddle, bolted transversely across the back of the cockpit, with its transaxle behind it. Its replacement, the Countach, rotated the V12 90 degrees into a longitudinal position and routed power to a transmission installed ahead of the engine. This “Longitudinale Posteriore” location was the source of the Countach’s LP500 designation, and the layout has remained that way ever since.

Until now. The Revuelto’s 8-speed dual-clutch paddle-shifted transmission was designed by Lamborgini’s engineers and is built by Graziano, the same company that built the Aventador’s transmission and also supplies them to McLaren for that company’s sports cars like the Artura, which is also a plug-in hybrid. The Aventador’s single-clutch automated manual transmission was consistently criticized for clunky shifts, so the buttery smooth action of the new dual clutch should be a dramatic improvement, especially in urban driving.

The gearbox contains a 147.5-hp electric motor from Germany’s Mahle that boosts the power going to the road. The electric motor also serves as the V12’s starter, and provides the Revuelto’s reverse function, eliminating the need for a reverse gear in the transmission. This motor can also work as a generator, letting the combustion engine recharge the battery pack when driving in Recharge mode.

This gearbox is a transverse design, mounted behind the longitudinal engine, which provides abundant packaging benefits. But crucially for the hybrid-electric Revuelto, this location leaves the car’s center tunnel vacant, so there is space there now for the car’s 3.8-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack.

The Revuelto’s battery and electric motors 

Yes, 3.8 kWh is a tiny battery. Lamborghini engineers wanted to minimize the amount of mass the battery would add to the car, and the short six miles of electric-only driving range should be enough to get the Revuelto to the trendy urban club’s valet parking line on electric power. 

The Revuelto is all-wheel drive thanks to a pair of 147.5-hp electric motors under the front hood. These are Yasa axial flux motors from Britain, another similarity to the McLaren Artura, which also employs compact pancake-shaped axial-flux motors.

The V12 and trio of electric motors produce a combined 1,000 horsepower. Remember that combustion engines and electric motors produce their peak power at different speeds, so you can’t just add up the peak power of all the motors in a hybrid system to calculate the actual horsepower total. They combine to push the Revuelto to 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds and to a top speed of more than 219 mph.

Revuelto’s performance also benefits from advanced aerodynamics in a body shell that incorporates extra space for improved comfort. There’s an extra inch of headroom to make it easier to operate while wearing a helmet for track driving and the added 3.3 inches of legroom is a blessing, as the front wheel wells intrude into the footwell of mid-engine cars like the Revuelto.

Despite the added size, the Revuelto optimizes the balance between drag and downforce using adaptive aerodynamics, such as a rear wing that can lie flat for less drag or stand up for traction-boosting downforce. The transverse transmission leaves more space under the car’s rear, so the diffuser ramps upward at a steeper angle, contributing to the 74 percent increase in rear downforce.

At the front, downforce is increased by 33 percent thanks to a complex front splitter. That’s the chin jutting out from beneath the front bumper, and on the Revuelto it has a radial leading edge in the center between the headlights and slanted outer edges that provide downforce and create vortices (like the ones you might see off airplane wing tips in humid air) to push airflow away from the drag-inducing front tires.

The engine is exposed (kind of) 

Revuelto’s coolest styling detail is its exposed engine. While typical cars have their engines covered with sheet metal hoods, and exhibitionist supercars have recently showcased their power plants beneath glass covers, the Revuelto’s combustion V12 is on proud display through an opening in the engine cover. At least, it appears to be. That’s because the engine wears a plastic cover that looks like a crinkle-finish intake plenum, so that is what is actually visible from outside the car. 

The engine’s exhaust note is authentic, even if the engine itself is wearing a mask. Since this is the final V12, and to draw a contrast with turbocharged rivals with fewer cylinders, Lamborghini engineers prioritized Revuelto’s sound, says chief technical officer Rouven Mohr. “It is not only about the numbers,” he says, referring to the car’s impressive performance. “It is also about the heart. The sound. And the Revuelto is the best-sounding Lamborghini ever.”

Engineers specifically targeted the sharp frequencies in the engine’s exhaust note to cultivate a mellower bellow, he explains. And in an unprecedented Lamborghini capability, the car’s six miles of pure electric driving range means that you can also drive completely silently when exiting your neighborhood in the morning. Your neighbors will surely think this combination of roar and snore is the best kind of “mixed up” at 6 am.

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Earlier this month, a new kind of electric boat was demonstrated in Colombia. The uncrewed COTEnergy Boat debuted at the Colombiamar 2023 business and industrial exhibition, held from March 8 to 10 in Cartagena. It is likely a useful tool for navies, and was on display as a potential product for other nations to adopt. 

While much of the attention in uncrewed sea vehicles has understandably focused on the ocean-ranging craft built for massive nations like the United States and China, the introduction of small drone ships for regional powers and routine patrol work shows just far this technology has come, and how widespread it is likely to be in the future.

“The Colombian Navy (ARC) intends to deploy the new electric unmanned surface vehicle (USV) CotEnergy Boat in April,” Janes reports, citing Admiral Francisco Cubides. 

The boat is made from aluminum and has a compact, light body. (See it on Instagram here.) Just 28.5 feet long and under 8 feet wide, the boat is powered by a 50 hp electric motor; its power is sustained in part by solar panels mounted on the top of the deck. Those solar panels can provide up to 1.1 kilowatts at peak power, which is enough to sustain its autonomous operation for just shy of an hour.

The vessel was made by Atomo Tech and Colombia’s state-owned naval enterprise company, COTECMAR. The company says the boat’s lightweight form allows it to take on different payloads, making it suitable for “intelligence and reconnaissance missions, port surveillance and control missions, support in communications link missions, among others.”

Putting sensors on small, autonomous and electric vessels is a recurring theme in navies that employ drone boats. Even a part of the ocean that seems small, like a harbor, represents a big job to watch. By putting sensors and communications links onto an uncrewed vessel, a navy can effectively extend the range of what can be seen by human operators. 

In January, the US Navy used Saildrones for this kind of work in the Persian Gulf. Equipped with cameras and processing power, the Saildrones identified and tracked ships in an exercise as they spotted them, making that information available to human operators on crewed vessels and ultimately useful to naval commanders. 

Another reason to turn to uncrewed vessels for this work is that they are easier to run on fully  electric power, as opposed to a diesel or gasoline. COTECMAR’s video description notes that the COTEEnergy Boat is being “incorporated into the offer of sustainable technological solutions that we are designing for the energy transition.” Making patrol craft solar powered and electric starts the vessels sustainable.

While developed as a military tool, the COTENERGY boat can also have a role in scientific and research expeditions. It could serve as a communications link between other ships, or between ships and other uncrewed vessels, ensuring reliable operation and data collection. Putting in sensors designed to look under the water’s surface could aid with oceanic mapping and observation. As a platform for sensors, the COTEnergy Boat is limited by what its adaptable frame can carry and power, although its load capacity is 880 pounds.

Not much more is known about the COTEnergy Boat at this point. But what is compelling about the vessel is how it fits into similar plans of other navies. Fielding small useful autonomous scouts or patrol craft, if successful, could become a routine part of naval and coastal operations.

With these new kinds of boat come new challenges. Because uncrewed ships lack humans, it can make them easier targets for other navies or possibly maritime criminal groups, like pirates. The same kind of Saildrones used by the US Navy to scout the Persian Gulf have also been detained, if briefly, by the Iranian Navy. With such detentions comes the risk that data on the ship is compromised, and data collection tools figured out, making it easier for hostile forces to fool or evade the sensors in the future.

Still, the benefits of having a flexible, solar-powered robot ship outweigh such risks. Inspection of ports is routine until it isn’t, and with a robotic vessel there to scout first, humans can wait to act until they are needed, safely removed from their remote robotic companions.

Watch a little video of the COTEnergy Boat below:

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As we’ve learned over the past few years, almost anything that connects to the internet, uses Bluetooth or any other wireless protocols, or simply has a computer chip inside can be hacked—and that includes cars. There are just too many potential vulnerabilities across all these surfaces for hackers to exploit, and every time there’s a software update, there is a chance that new ones get introduced even as the old ones are patched out. (Seriously, keep your software up-to-date, though. It’s the best way to stay as secure as possible.)

With that in mind, researchers from French security firm Synacktiv have won $530,000 and a Tesla Model 3 at Pwn2Own Vancouver, a security competition where “white hat” hackers and security researchers can win the devices with previously unknown vulnerabilities (that they discover and exploit)—plus a cash prize.

The team from Synacktiv demonstrated two separate exploits. In the first, they were able to breach the Model 3’s Gateway system, the energy management interface that communicates between Tesla cars and Tesla Powerwalls, in less than two minutes. They used a Time of Check to Time of Use (TOCTOU) attack, a technique that exploits the small time gap between when a computer checks something like a security credential and when it actually uses it, to insert the necessary malicious code. For safety reasons, they weren’t hacking a real Model 3, but they would have been able to open the car’s doors and front hood, even while it was in motion. 

The second exploit allowed the hackers to remotely gain root (or admin) access to the mock Tesla’s infotainment system and from there, to gain control of other subsystems in the car. They used what’s known as a heap overflow vulnerability and an out-of-bounds write error in the Bluetooth chipset to get in. Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), told Dark Reading, “The biggest vulnerability demonstrated this year was definitely the Tesla exploit. They went from what’s essentially an external component, the Bluetooth chipset, to systems deep within the vehicle.” 

According to TechCrunch, Tesla contends that all the hackers would have been able to do is annoy the driver, though the researchers themselves aren’t so sure. Eloi Benoist-Vanderbeken, one of the Synacktiv researchers, told TechCrunch, “[Tesla] said we wouldn’t be able to turn the steering wheel, accelerate or brake. But from our understanding of the car architecture we are not sure that this is correct, but we don’t have proof of it.” Apparently they are looking forward to fact-checking Tesla’s claim as soon as they get their hands on their new Model 3. 

This is the second year in a row that Synacktiv has been able to hack a Tesla. Last year the French security team were also able to exploit the infotainment system, but weren’t able to gain enough access to the rest of the system to win the car. 

It’s worth noting that Tesla was a willing participant and provided the car to Pwn2Own. It—along with all the other companies involved—uses the competition as an opportunity to find potentially devastating “zero day” or undiscovered vulnerabilities in their devices so they can fix them. Apparently, the company is already working on a patch for these latest bugs that will roll out automatically. 

As well as Tesla, some of the big names at Pwn2Own were Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Zoom, and Adobe. An exploit using two bugs in Microsoft SharePoint was enough to win Star Labs $100,000, while two bugs in Microsoft Teams won Team Viettel $75,000. Synacktiv also picked up another $80,000 for a three-bug exploit against Oracle’s Virtual Box. 

In total, contestants found 27 unique zero-day bugs and won a combined $1,035,000 (plus a car). 

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The Dodge brand leans heavily into performance, with commercials talking about “the brotherhood of muscle” and cars with names like “Demon” and “Hellcat.” So it’s no surprise that when releasing its first electrified vehicle, Dodge came up with a crossover to meet the market demand for family-friendly vehicles that includes a concession to in-your-face swagger. The new vehicle is called the Hornet, and it’s available in both a gas-only (GT) and a plug-in hybrid version (R/T).

Chris Piscitelli, one of the designers of the all-new Hornet, says the vehicle’s stinging-insect namesake is “a nasty little thing.” He says that with a mischievous grin, clearly happy with the association; the five-seater exudes intentional personality. In both drive and looks, the Hornet exhibits the Dodge legacy in the form of a small SUV that feels more like a hot hatch than a family car. 

The Hornet R/T (that stands for road/track) offers a unique feature called PowerShot. When the driver chooses Sport mode and pulls both paddle shifters (for changing gears in manual mode) simultaneously, the system tacks on a bonus 30 horsepower. Then, stepping on the accelerator and mashing it down through a palpable click triggers a mechanism called a detent that tells the car to get moving. Pronto.

Dodge’s first electrified vehicle

This is Dodge’s first foray into electrification, and the brand is not taking any chances with its reputation. In its base iteration, the Hornet G/T is propelled by a 2.0-liter turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine that Dodge labeled the Hurricane4. As a plug-in hybrid, the Hornet R/T combines a turbo four-cylinder 1.3-liter engine and a single electric motor mounted to the rear axle, and together it’s good for 288 horsepower and 383 pound-feet of torque. During the presentation, Dodge representatives said the Hornet’s closest competitor is the Mazda CX-5, which gets 256 horsepower and 320 pound-feet of torque.

Dodge vehicle synthesis senior manager Brian Del Pup has worked with the automotive companies under the Stellantis umbrella (including Dodge and Chrysler) for the last two decades or so. He says the team pushed the Hornet to be as true to the brand as possible, stretching the limits of what a typical crossover—like a Subaru Outback or a Honda HR-V—might be.

“A lot of [crossovers] are appliances, and people buy them to get from point A to point B and that’s it,” Del Pup tells PopSci. “There’s a lot of things that we did with this vehicle to make it fun and make it stick out. It’s a plug-in hybrid, but that wasn’t the focus. The focus was, ‘Hey, how much performance can we get out of this architecture?’ And ‘How can we make it perform like a sports car?’ It had to feel and drive like a Dodge.”

Part of that vision included the PowerShot for the Hornet PHEV, complete with the detent that requires mashing the pedal to the floor. Other vehicles use that type of tactile click to indicate the pedal is near the end of travel, and it announces the initiation of a more aggressive maneuver. 

During testing, Del Pup was sitting in the passenger seat and encouraged me to press the accelerator more firmly until I could feel it; soon we were traveling at a much higher rate of speed as though we were experiencing a tiny wrinkle in time. 

Boosting the power, 15 seconds at a time

In the Hornet R/T, a PowerShot activation shaves 1.5 seconds from the 0-to-60 time for a total of 5.6 seconds from a dead stop. That said, the feature doesn’t offer a never-ending buffet of power boosts. Depending on the battery health and state of charge, the actual boost will vary, and it lasts for about 15 seconds. 

“[PowerShot works best] at a higher state of charge and when the battery is at temperatures that high-voltage batteries like, which is around 72 degrees,” Del Pup explains. “When you deviate from that, it will still allow a PowerShot, but it may take some away based on where the system is.”

It also requires a 15-second cooldown period between activations. Unlike a video game, however, it doesn’t limit the total number of PowerShots per drive. 

Plugging the Hornet R/T into a Level 2 charger fills up the battery in about 2.5 hours, Dodge says. The 15.5-kilowatt-hour battery pack is capable of 30 miles of all-electric driving under ideal conditions, which is about three miles short of the average American commute (according to AAA). The EPA hasn’t released fuel economy numbers for the R/T, but we expect those to beat the 21 miles per gallon city/29 miles per gallon highway numbers from the Hornet GT. 

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Nestled in the heart of California’s high-tech Silicon Valley is the Alliance Innovation Lab, where Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi work in partnership. The center is a cradle-to-concept lab for projects related to energy, materials, and smart technologies in cities, all with an eye toward automotive autonomy.

Maarten Sierhuis, the global director of the laboratory, is both exuberant and realistic about what Nissan has to offer as electric and software-driven vehicles go mainstream. And it’s not the apocalyptic robot-centric future portrayed by Hollywood in movies like Minority Report.

“Show me an autonomous system without a human in the loop, and I’ll show you a useless system,” Sierhuis quips to PopSci. “Autonomy is built by and for humans. Thinking that you would have an autonomous car driving around that never has to interact with any person, it’s kind of a silly idea.”

Lessons from space

Educated at The Hague and the University of Amsterdam, Sierhuis is a specialist in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. For more than a dozen years, he was a senior research scientist for intelligent systems at NASA. There, he collaborated on the invention of a Java-based programming language and human behavior simulation environment used at NASA’s Mission Control for the International Space Station.

Based on his experience, Sierhuis says expecting certain systems to fail is wise. “We need to figure there is going to be failure, so we need to design for failure,” he says. “Now, one way to do that—and the automotive industry has been doing this for a long time—is to build redundant systems. If one fails, we have another one that takes over.”

[Related: How Tesla is using a supercomputer to train its self-driving tech]

One vein of research has Nissan partnering with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to develop an uncrewed rover prototype for NASA. Based on Nissan’s EV all-wheel drive control technology (dubbed e-4ORCE) used on the brand’s newest EV, Ariya, the rover features front and rear electric motors to navigate challenging terrain. 

Sierhuis calls the Ariya Nissan’s most advanced vehicle to date. It is a stepping stone toward combining all the technology the lab is working on in one actual product. He and the team have switched from using a Leaf to an Ariya for its hands-on research, even simulating lunar dust to test the system’s capabilities in space.

‘There is no autonomy without a human in the loop’

There is an air of distrust of autonomous technology from some car buyers, amplified by some high-profile crashes involving Tesla’s so-called “Full Self-Driving” vehicles.

“It’s hard for OEMs to decide where and how to bring this technology to market,” Sierhuis says. “I think this is part of the reason why it’s not there yet, because is it responsible to go from step zero or step one to fully autonomous driving in one big step? Maybe that’s not the right way to teach people how to interact with autonomous systems.”

From the lab team’s perspective, society is experiencing a learning curve and so the team is ensuring that technology is rolled out gradually and responsibly. Nissan’s approach is to carefully calibrate its systems so the car doesn’t take over. Computing is developed for people, and the people are at the center of it, Sierhuis says, and it should always be about that. That’s not just about the system itself; driving should still be fun.

“There is no autonomy without a human in the loop,” he says. “You should have the ability to be the driver yourself and maybe have the autonomous system be your co-driver, making you a better driver, and then use autonomy when you want it and use the fun of driving when you want it. There shouldn’t be an either-or.”

[Related: Why an old-school auto tech organization is embracing electrification]

The Ariya is equipped with Nissan’s latest driver-assist suite, enhanced by seven cameras, five millimeter-wave radars and 12 ultrasonic sonar sensors for accuracy. A high-definition 3D map predicts the road surface, and on certain roads, Nissan says the driver can take their hands off the wheel. That doesn’t mean a nap is in order, though; a driver-attention monitor ensures the driver is still engaged.

New driver assistance technologies raise questions about the relationship between technology and drivers-to-be: What if someone learns how to drive with a full suite of autonomous features and then tries to operate a car that doesn’t have the technology; are they going to be flummoxed? Ultimately, he says, this is a topic the industry hasn’t fully worked through yet.

Making cities smarter

The Alliance Innovation Lab is also studying the roads and cities where EVs operate. So-called “smart cities” integrate intelligence not just into the cars but into the infrastructure, enabling the future envisioned by EV proponents. Adding intelligence to the environment means, for example, that an intersection can be programmed to interface with a software-enabled vehicle making a right-hand turn toward a crosswalk where pedestrians are present. The autonomous system can alert the driver to a potentially dangerous situation and protect both the driver and those in the vicinity from tragedy.  

Another way to make cities smarter is by improving the efficiency of power across the board. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average home consumes about 20 kilowatt-hours per day. Nissan’s new Ariya is powered by an 87-kilowatt battery, which is enough to power a home for four days. Currently, Sierhuis says, we have a constraint optimization problem: car batteries can store a fantastic amount of power that can be shared with the grid in a bi-directional way, but we haven’t figured out how to do that effectively.  

On top of that, car batteries use power in larger bursts than inside homes, and the batteries have limited use before they must be retired. However, that doesn’t mean the batteries are trash at that point; on the contrary, they have quite a bit of energy potential in their second life. Nissan has been harnessing both new and used Leaf batteries to work in tandem with a robust solar array to power a giant soccer stadium (Johan Cruijff Arena) in Amsterdam since 2018. In the same year, Nissan kicked off a project with the British government to install 1,000 vehicle-to-grid charging points across the United Kingdom. It’s just a taste of what the brand and its lab see as a way to overcome infrastructure issues erupting around the world as EVs gain traction.

Combining EV batteries and smart technology, Nissan envisions a way for vehicles to communicate with humans and the grid to manage the system together, in space and here on Earth.

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Lexus, Toyota’s luxury arm, just started delivering its first all-electric vehicle to dealerships in the US. Starting at $59,650, the RZ 450e is offered in two flavors—Premium and Luxury—and it will play a starring role in the Lexus lineup as the brand works toward an all-electric product offering by 2035. Highlights for this new car include a steer-by-wire system with a controller that looks like it belongs in a commercial jet; radiant heaters to warm your feet and legs where a glovebox usually sits; and silky-smooth acceleration that distinguishes the RZ from its competitors.  

Here’s what sets it apart and what it’s like behind the yoke—more on that detail in a bit.

Two motors

The public got its first glimpse of the RZ 450e when it was unveiled last spring. The RZ was built with some familiar parts and design elements borrowed from Toyota’s bZ4X, including the “skateboard” platform the Subaru Solterra also uses. Automakers build EVs on these flat surfaces as a painter uses a blank canvas, creating unique structures unencumbered by engine and transmission placement. The lithium-ion battery is distributed under the subfloor of the vehicle, establishing an even weight balance and sports car feel when cornering.  

Effectively, that’s where the resemblance ends. The RZ employs two motors instead of one (as in the bZ4X or Solterra), and combined, the dual-motor setup delivers a total of 308 horsepower. Even more importantly, the RZ is tuned for luxury customers with incredibly smooth acceleration and a quiet cabin enhanced by active sound control, which balances unwanted cabin noise with directed sound frequencies. When testing it recently in Provence, France, my driving partner and I found we could carry on a conversation in normal voices with no problem, even on somewhat bumpy rural roads.

Inside the cabin, Lexus is now using more bio-based sustainable materials like plant-based “polyester,” or simulated suede (Lexus calls it Ultrasuede) replacing the yards of leather from previous model years. The RZ’s 14-inch touchscreen was first seen in the Lexus NX when the brand finally replaced the often-criticized touchpad that held court in the console of many Lexus vehicles. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard, and Wi-Fi connectivity is available for up to five devices. 

A panoramic moonroof is also standard in both trims of the RZ. At the base Premium level, the roof has a special coating called low-e, or low emissivity, to keep the interior cool by blocking some wavelengths of light. Or, you could jump up to the Luxury variant for upgraded dimmable glass that Lexus calls Dynamic Sky. In either case, Lexus opted to remove the motor-driven automatic shade present in many cars with a glass roof. By doing so, the RZ affords more head room and more importantly, it shed 12.8 pounds from the total vehicle weight. 

Steer-by-wire

Also unique to the RZ is an optional steer-by-wire system that Lexus is calling a “game changer.” It’s not the first car to include a U-shaped steering control, typically called a yoke in the aircraft world. A couple of years ago, Tesla dabbled with yoke steering and then offered a retrofit traditional steering wheel for those who didn’t like it. Lexus is not going down that road for good reason: the steering systems are completely different. 

The RZ’s steer-by-wire option is not just a reshaped wheel in the way Tesla attempted. There is no mechanical link between the steering wheel and steering rack with a steer-by-wire setup, as it would be in a car with a traditional steering system. Instead, information is relayed electronically (“by wire”). While a traditional steering wheel can be turned all the way around for a total of about 720 degrees, the steer-by-wire controller tips only 150 degrees in either direction.

“Up until now, there have been other [steer-by-wire systems] but this actually extends the capability by far,” Lexus assistant chief engineer Yushi Higashiyama told PopSci. “Of course, there will be customers who prefer the traditional steering system. The reason why the RZ team took on the challenge of implementing the steer-by-wire system is because that’s also taking on the challenge of the future of electrification and what’s coming next.”

Lexus representatives advised us to take it slow the first time out to get used to the difference in motion, but we found it to be very intuitive and easy to adjust to. Making a 90-degree turn required a gentle twist instead of a hand-over-hand turn, and I thought the steering felt more like a direct connection from my arm motion to the car itself. The RZ is engineered such that the steering ratio adjusts depending on how fast you’re driving, which is intended to feel agile at low speeds and stable at higher speeds.

Before you get too excited about it, know that the steer-by-wire option won’t be available at launch. Lexus has not revealed when it will offer the alternative steering choice; all that the representatives will reveal right now is “not yet.” Incidentally, this feature is called One Motion Grip—OMG, for short—in Europe, and Lexus decided that abbreviation would not play as well in the US market.

Does the RZ offer enough range? 

Because it’s an EV, range anxiety is still a concern for buyers in the US. The Biden administration’s new rollout of standards for EV charging stations, powered by $7.5 billion in federal funding, is aimed at standardizing charging stations across the country. That should help alleviate apprehension, but the market has plenty of room to grow. Still, it may be a surprise to some that the RZ was launched with a range of 220 miles with the standard 18-inch wheels, or 196 miles with the upgraded 20-inch wheels. Bigger wheels mean less rolling resistance and decreased range. 

With a DC fast charger, the RZ’s battery can top up from zero to 80 percent in about 30 minutes. At home with a Level 2 charger, expect it to recharge from zero to 100 percent in roughly 9.5 hours. 

Lexus knows that the RZ’s range is lower than some of its competitors, but Aono says that most RZ buyers will opt for home charging, and that the range is still far above what they need on a daily basis. To entice potential customers who might be skittish about buying an EV, the brand is offering a new benefit called Lexus Reserve. This dealer-led program allows RZ owners to borrow any other available Lexus car from the dealership for free for a total of 30 days over the first three years. That way, if an RZ owner wants to take an extended road trip that exceeds the range, they can borrow a gas-powered GX SUV, for example, to bring the family.

“Americans’ daily average is 40 miles,” Aono says. (According to research from AAA, that number was about 33 in 2021.) “Are you going to be driving 200 miles [in a day]? Probably not. Instead of worrying about that, you can swap your vehicle. We want to make sure our customers are comfortable.”

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Amplitude modulation transmissions, better known as AM, have been a mainstay in traditional car radios for decades. But consumers’ adoption of electric vehicles could soon end the avenue for easy-to-access public safety announcements—and emergency response experts are sounding the alarm.

AM radio may be most often associated with rural church pastor sermons, local high school football coverage, and colorful talk radio hosts, but it actually still serves an extremely vital purpose—few sources are as reliable during disasters and emergencies. These messages can travel the farthest on low radio frequencies, and AM operates on some of the lowest: between 525 to 1705 kHz. Time and again, they inform upwards of 47 million Americans of real-time federal and state information for hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms, wildfires, and other major public safety incidents.

[Related: Pete Buttigieg on how to improve the deadly track record of US drivers.]

Unfortunately, many current electric vehicles’ propulsion systems generate electromagnetic noise that can interfere with AM signals. Both Tesla and Ford have already dropped AM support in their vehicles, including the 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning, and emergency management professionals are worried the cuts could spread.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, seven former administrators of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent a letter on Sunday to both Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and several congressional committees, urging legislators to guarantee continued AM radio support in carmakers’ EVs. According to FEMA via WSJ, an estimated 75 radio stations operating on the AM band covers over 90 percent of the entire US population, and are reinforced by backup comms equipment and generators allowing them to continue issuing crucial information in the event of an emergency. Although EVs’ arrival are needed to speed transitioning to a green transportation industry, losing an affordable, easy-to-maintain, and reliable safety tool could create major problems in the future.

[Related: EV companies call out their own weaknesses in new clean energy report.]

Sen. Ed Markey (D, Mass) previously drew attention to the situation in December 2022 via a letter to 20 EV manufacturers, urging them to commit to continue AM availability in their products. The WSJ reports that the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a group representing major carmakers in the US, pledged a commitment to “maintaining access to safety alerts,” and has been meeting with the National Association of Broadcasters to discuss possible solutions.

For now, at least two automakers—Hyundai and Toyota—have stated they have no plans to remove AM radio support from their EV models, although representatives for the latter company conceded to WSJ that AM radio static “is a challenge” in its electric models.

Correction (March 16, 2023): AM stands for amplitude modulation, not amplitude modification.

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On January 24, Prerak Patel’s new 2023 Tesla Model Y was delivered. Five days later, according to tweets from Patel’s account, the car’s steering wheel fell off while he was driving. Luckily, no one was hurt. But this wasn’t an isolated incident. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the exact same issue has happened to another Model Y. It was enough for the NHTSA to begin looking into the problem, which they estimate could affect over 120,000 cars.

“I wasn’t sure what to do,” he said in an interview with Scripps News. “I was really scared—kids were scared too.”

The exact cause of the issue, according to the NHTSA document, is a manufacturing defect. The retaining bolt, the part of the steering wheel designed to keep it in place and attached to the rest of the steering mechanism, was missing. The report says that both cars received repairs before being delivered that involved removing the steering wheel. 

According to the NHTSA, after being delivered, the steering wheels were held in place by pure friction until they eventually experienced “complete detachment.” In Prerak Patel’s case, that happened while he and his family were on the highway. Luckily, there was no car behind him, and Patel was able to stop safely. After making sure his family was safe, Patel started a thread on Twitter to ask Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the company’s customer support for help. 

The NHTSA investigation is just the latest in a long string of Tesla mishaps. As early as 2018 and 2019, Tesla owners posted videos of poor build quality on their newly delivered cars. Tesla has consistently ranked near the bottom of the Consumer Reports reliability survey, placing second to last in 2021 and 19th out of 24 brands in 2022. But in addition to the manufacturing defects and reliability issues, the so-called self-driving software has also faced regulatory scrutiny.

[Related: Massive new Tesla recall focuses on dangers of self-driving software]

In February, the NHTSA announced a recall of hundreds of thousands of Teslas because of issues in their autopilot system. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) system has been linked to fatal accidents. That NHTSA report explains that the FSD Beta was driving unsafely around intersections and ignoring speed limits. The problems were reportedly set to be fixed by an over-the-air software update. 

Tesla isn’t the only automaker to cope with a serious problem like the steering wheel coming off. Not long after Toyota’s first electric SUV, the BZ4X, was released, the company quickly recalled the EVs they had begun delivering because of problems that could lead to the wheels—the ones the vehicle rolls on—completely falling off. After an investigation, Toyota discovered that part of the issue was that a wheel supplier had been manufacturing the wheels to a different specification. Just 260 vehicles were affected. 

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It’s hard to go faster on the road than in a Formula One car, which can reach top speeds of 220 miles per hour. The so-called pinnacle of motorsport races takes place around the world, from Australia to Sao Paulo. And after an exciting week of preseason testing, the 2023 season got underway at the Bahrain International Circuit on March 5. Reigning world champion Max Verstappen won for Red Bull Racing, with his teammate Sergio Perez in second. There are 20 drivers across 10 teams in F1, and none of the other 18 drivers finished within 30 seconds of Verstappen. Only time will tell if the other teams will be able to catch up.

Below F1 are Formula Two and Formula Three, which are called the feeder series, and function in a similar fashion to baseball’s minor leagues. They’re mostly young drivers attempting to prove their worth by competing against each other for a spot in the big leagues. It’s how most drivers gain one of the 20 seats currently available in F1. (All three F1 rookies this season, Nyck DeVries, Oscar Piastri, and Logan Sargeant, drove at least one season in F2.)

But like any other vehicle with an internal combustion engine, Formula One vehicles burn fossil fuels, which is a problem in a world that must decarbonize to combat climate change. Beyond the 20 Formula One cars racing on tracks every other weekend, there are the massive transportation costs to move the teams and drivers across the globe and the millions of fans traveling to and from the racing circuits.

The Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Formula One’s governing body, realizes that. In November 2019, F1 and the FIA announced plans to become fully carbon neutral by the end of 2030, and the plans to make that transition are already underway. 

Formula One currently uses a hybrid fuel that’s 10% biofuel and will make the transition to fully renewable fuels in 2026, meaning all carbon output by the cars will be offset by the production of the fuel. There will be other regulatory changes as well. 

Now, F1 has announced that their feeder series will be following along. Starting with the opening sprint race of the 2023 season at Bahrain last weekend, F2 and F3 cars will use a blend consisting of 55% “Advanced Sustainable Fuel.” And by 2027, according to The Race, the feeder series aim to use a type of sustainable, carbon-captured fuel called e-fuel.

What are sustainable fuels?

“Sustainable fuel” is a catch-all term for a bunch of different alternative ways of producing fuels for planes and cars with the goal of reducing their carbon footprint. It includes biofuels, which recycle organic materials into fuel (this is what F1’s hybrid fuel is) but also carbon-capturing e-fuels that are made by taking carbon from the air, which is what F2 and F3 plan to switch to in 2027. But what all sustainable fuels have in common are their low net carbon emissions.

When it comes to e-fuels created by carbon capture, Nikita Pavlenko, the fuel program lead at the International Council on Clean Transportation, says there are two different sources—getting it directly from the atmosphere, or getting it from smokestacks: “You have a fuel that is pretty close to zero carbon, just produced from renewable electricity and carbon dioxide captured from the air or from a smokestack.” While F1 is allowed to source their carbon from so-called point sources (Pavlenko says this is almost always taken from smokestacks), F2 and F3’s fuel must be fully sourced by direct-air carbon capture technology.

That strict direct-air carbon capturing is what differentiates e-fuel from biofuels and other sustainable power sources, and according to Pavlenko, it’s a very new technology. The F2 and F3 experiments will be one of the first large-scale applications of e-fuel, which has implications for the future of transportation. Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, the chief technology officer at Aramco, who will supply the e-fuel, tells The Race that the FIA understands this is a hard goal to reach because of how underdeveloped carbon capture technologies are but is committed to setting the course. 

Pavlenko says he’s excited that F1 is pursuing e-fuels, because of their very prohibitive cost. “F1 would be one of the use cases that’s best able to support the cost difference,” he says. “It’s a relatively small quantity [in relation to the quantity of non-sustainable fuels] and I assume there’s a high willingness to pay.”

Even better: EVs

There are some concerns, however. The FIA will have to ensure that its e-fuel is made using renewable energy sources. Much like electric cars, producing e-fuel using electricity created by fossil fuels simply moves the source of emissions rather than limits it. In addition, Palvenko says that e-fuel generally has more applications in aviation than on the road, where using electric vehicles is the generally best way to go.

In the past 20 years, F1 has exploded in popularity, thanks to new ownership and a series on Netflix. But as it’s gone global, it’s come under increasing scrutiny for its sustainability, or lack thereof. The FIA is making an effort, however. Even before the fuel changes, F1’s sister electric-only series Formula E launched in 2014. Only time will tell if the two series will eventually merge, but anyone who’s watched Formula E can confirm that the racing is just as electric as the cars are.

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Concept cars are designed to be flights of fancy—showpieces that give automakers the chance to put their creativity on display. Quite often, a concept car represents just a blip on a timeline and a blast of buzzy excitement, later shelved in a museum for all of us to marvel at a company’s foresight or folly. 

A concept, by definition, is an idea; in this case, a concept car is an idea that takes the temperature of the public to see how buyers might react to a set of features and designs. Automakers don’t necessarily release a concept every year, and they have to balance the cost of building a vehicle that may or may not ever see the light of the production line. While it’s true that some concepts fade into oblivion, others become successful models that carry many of the same characteristics as the concept. Even those that are wildly futuristic and wacky lay the groundwork for innovations to come. 

Most recently, truck maker Ram announced the 1500 Rev, the production version of its Revolution EV concept. The Revolution (not the Rev) was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, with some exciting features, like coach doors (which open at the center like French doors in a home), and a glass roof that adjusts its tint electronically. But when the production version launched at the Chicago Auto Show in February, some expressed disappointment in how much it looked like its gas-powered sibling. Where were the cool removable third-row seats from the concept? Where was the storage tunnel to hold long objects?

To be fair, automakers—especially when they’re large, public companies—are beholden to not just manufacturing and safety regulations but their shareholders. In the case of the Ram 1500 Rev, the company will build the production vehicle on the new all-electric architecture from its parent company Stellantis instead of the one used by the gas version of the 1500 truck.

Otherworldly concepts

There’s a long history of wild concept cars, many of which never became actual production models.

Consider the otherworldly Berlinetta Aerodynamica Tecnica series commissioned by luxury automaker Alfa Romeo in the mid-1950s. These three cars featured unusual, gorgeous bodies that evoke sea creatures in motion. And somehow, all of them survived in remarkable shape and sold as a set for more than $14 million at auction in 2020. These concepts, which never became production vehicles, were more art than realism, unlike recent modern offerings. 

In 2021, Genesis unveiled its X Concept EV, a sleek coupe with wraparound parallel LED lights defining its curves. Last year, it followed up with the X Concept convertible that peeled back the top and showed off more futuristic details. To our great joy, Automotive News reported that the X Convertible recently got the green light for official production. 

Also under the Hyundai Motor Group, Kia introduced a streamlined concept in 2011 that eventually gave way to the Stinger, which was widely lauded by the industry as a game-changer for the Korean manufacturer. Engineered by a former BMW vice president of engineering and sketched out by celebrated former Audi designer, the Stinger was finally launched to the world in 2017. It was taller than the concept and included more buttoned-down design features on the outside, but under the hood the performance was impressive, especially the 365-horsepower GT model. A moment of silence for the now-discontinued Stinger, please. Hope springs eternal, as rumors of an all-electric Stinger have been swirling. 

On the gas-powered side, the raw and rowdy Dodge Viper started life as a concept showcased for the first time at the 1989 Detroit auto show. Using an existing truck engine as its base, the concept evolved over three years into the 1992 Viper RT/10 and delighted fast-car enthusiasts for more than two and a half decades until it was discontinued in 2017. 

From Revolution to Rev

In the same automotive manufacturing family as the Viper, the Ram 1500 Rev moved quickly from concept to production. And while the Rev may not be exactly the same as the Revolution, it retains the benefit of sharing some parts with the gas-powered Ram 1500 pickup. That will both speed production and keep the cost on the manageable side. Ford did the same thing for its F-150 Lightning, which is purposely built to feel familiar to F-150 customers to avoid alienating its loyal base. 

The 1500 Rev will not be equipped with the removable jump seats from the concept, which could have turned the Ram pickup into the first third-row truck. Ryan Nagode, Ram/SRT’s chief designer for interiors, was inspired to add the track seating when he noticed parents hauling around stadium seats to make hours of sitting on the bleachers at their kids’ sporting events more comfortable. He wondered if something like that could be incorporated into the truck and successfully integrated the idea into the cabin of the Revolution concept. 

“There have been vehicles in the past with jump seats, and I think there is a lot of reality built into these ideas,” Nagode told PopSci at the Concept Garage of the Chicago Auto Show in February. “Obviously, some of these things take a little pushing and pulling with the engineering team, but I think it’s not far-fetched.” 

Alas, those seats won’t be included in the Rev, but the seeds of creativity could feasibly show up sometime in the future. 

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You may not have heard of the Speciality Equipment Market Association, but SEMA, as it is known, hosts a massive event annually to showcase the hottest parts and technology in the automotive industry. But with cars changing, and new types of vehicles emerging in the space, the 60-year-old organization debuted SEMA Electrified in 2019 to highlight gas-free machines and parts. Since then, the section has grown from a handful of features to 60 exhibits encompassing 21,000 square feet.

That’s a big leap for an organization that was founded by a bunch of performance equipment makers making a living from gas-guzzling hot rods. And yet it makes sense, says SEMA director of vehicle technology Luis Morales. Everything about the EV market is growing, including the aftermarket for spare parts, accessories, and components. It only makes sense to give these cars their share of the automotive spotlight—even if some of the event’s audience may be anti-electric.

“There are going to be diehard gas or diesel fans who may be hesitant to convert, and that’s fine. We love where we came from,” Morales told PopSci. “Then again, we also want to bring in all the new options that are coming out to the market.”

Encouraging electrification in the aftermarket

Long before the Prius and other electrified cars were even a twinkle in Toyota’s eye, SEMA formed as an alliance of manufacturers in 1963. Then, gas-powered vehicles were in full swing while alternative fuels were a far-off futuristic idea. As hybrid and electric technology started to take off, leaders at SEMA started to notice not just new powertrains but innovations like portable battery packs and full conversion kits.

SEMA vice president of marketing RJ de Vera points to California-based EV West as an example of a company seeing incredible success selling electric car parts, conversion kits that turn a gas-powered car into an EV, and charging accessories. Interest in full conversions is growing as parts for older gas-powered cars become scarce; after all, an electric motor is made up of just a few components, while combustion engines can contain hundreds of parts. 

Conversion kits are a hot aftermarket item, de Vera says, some with wait lists that are two or three years long. EVs don’t require an engine, fuel tank, or fuel pumps, for example, and really just one moving part: the motor. 

[Related: Chevy’s first electrified Corvette, the E-Ray, is a heavyweight built to be quick]

“That seems to be more and more of an interest point for a lot of enthusiasts that are doing a restomod,” de Vera says. Restomod is the process of revamping a classic car with more modern technology.  “They might be thinking it’s going to be such a pain to get the original engine or get gaskets or things that are no longer made, especially for quirkier vehicles. An EV conversion becomes a lot more enticing because the powertrain is so simple.”

Discovering enthusiasm within the EV market

As recently as the 2018 SEMA show, EVs were scarce and aftermarket parts even more so. However, slowly, then all at once, interesting new niche companies emerged. For instance, companies like Juice Technology, which was founded less than a decade ago, are now selling portable EV chargers that weigh just a few pounds and are capable of charging even at temperatures as low as -22 degrees F or as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s music to an EV owner’s ears, since temperature fluctuations can affect range and charging in a big way. A portable charger for an EV means that it can be toted around for emergencies like a charging bank for a smartphone; it’s meant to offer a bit of a respite from range anxiety with a quick burst of power to get you to the next charging station. 

“Range anxiety is the reason everybody is focused on getting a car with the most mileage they can get per charge, and that drives up the price of the vehicle, which can make EVs a little bit less attractive to the consumer,” Morales says. Portable chargers could ease that. Plus, it’s kind of an old automotive practice, but just in a slightly newer form. 

“If you look at the overland scene, for example, there are trucks that go camping 30 or 40 miles off road. You’ll notice that they carry their spare fuel, just in case they run low on fuel,” he adds. “[These portable chargers] can get you out of a situation where you need to get to a charging station as opposed to calling a tow truck.”

Whether it’s devices, parts, alternative fuels and powertrains, or new technology, SEMA leadership is striving to embrace it all. Not to mention there’s a lot of room for small startups to think creatively, chip away at current challenges, and grow fast in the space. 

“It’s not just about [internal combustion] vehicles or EV vehicles,” de Vera says. “It’s really about the culture of being a proud vehicle owner and having that passion for automotive culture as well as aftermarket customization and modification. And that’s really our message: to make sure that the love for cars and modifying cars and customizing them stays around for generations.” 

Correction on March 6, 2023: This article has been updated to correctly describe SEMA as the Speciality Equipment Market Association, not the Speed Equipment Manufacturers Association.

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Solar canopies built above parking lots are an increasingly common sight around the country—you can already see these installed at university campuses, airports, and lots near commercial office buildings. Because the sun is a renewable resource, these solar canopies reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with energy production. 

The clean energy benefits are clear: A 32-acre solar carport canopy at Rutgers University in New Jersey, for instance, produces about 8.8 megawatts of power, or about $1.2 million in electricity. They also make use of existing space to generate clean energy rather than occupying croplands, arid lands, and grasslands.

There may be other perks to adding solar panels over parking lots, too. Research shows that the benefits of solar canopies can be taken a step further if electric vehicles (EVs) are able to charge right in the parking lot. People can tap into this potential by installing EV chargers in solar carports, which makes charging more accessible for owners and creates a small-scale local energy grid for the community. The expense of installation and other barriers, though, can make deployment challenging. 

EV charging in the carport

A solar carport canopy with 286 solar modules is able to produce about 140 megawatt-hours of energy per year for EV charging, according to a new Scientific Reports study. That’s enough to provide electricity to more than 3,000 vehicles per month if each car parks for an hour. The authors say charging EVs this way can generate 94 percent lower total carbon dioxide emissions than electricity from traditional grid methods. 

To maximize these benefits, smart technology that controls the timing and speed of charging is critical, says Lynn Daniels, manager at RMI’s Carbon-Free Transportation program who was not involved in the study. Smart charging allows users to optimize energy consumption by charging only when prices are cheaper due to low-energy demand or when more renewable energy is available on the grid.

[Related: Solar energy company wants to bolt panels directly into the ground]

EV ownership is growing so swiftly that entire electric grids are at risk of being stressed. If most owners across the US Western region continue to charge their EVs during nighttime, peak electricity demand can increase by up to 25 percent, according to a 2022 Applied Energy study. Accessible daytime charging at work or public charging stations would help address this problem and reduce GHG emissions.

There are ways to maximize emission reductions when smart-charging electric vehicles, according to a recent report from RMI, a nonprofit organization focusing on sustainability. “Our report found that, today, charging one million EVs at the right times is equivalent to taking between 20,000 and 80,000 internal combustion engine vehicles off the road,” says Daniels. If EVs represent 25 percent of vehicles by 2030, “emissions-optimized smart charging,” he adds, would be the equivalent of removing an additional 5.73 million automobiles with combustion engines.

A source of revenue, goodwill, and more

Solar canopies provide vehicles with protection from rain, sleet, hail, and other inclement weather, says Joshua M. Pearce, whose research specializes in solar photovoltaic technology and sustainable development at Western University in Canada. The shade they provide also means car owners may require less cooling from air conditioning at start-up because the vehicle didn’t stay under the sun. But that’s not all they can do.

A solar carport canopy with EV charging can be an opportunity for site owners to earn money if drivers have to pay a fee to charge their cars, says Daniels.

On the other hand, if businesses or large-scale retailers provide EV charging for free, Pearce says, that may develop goodwill with customers. Shoppers might spend more time and money while waiting for their cars to charge, allowing business owners to earn even more profit, he adds. And shopping centers have lots of potentially convertible areas: If Walmart deployed 11.1 gigawatts of solar canopies over its 3,571 Supercenter parking lots in the US, that would provide more than 346,000 solar-powered EV charging stations for 90 percent of Americans living within 15 miles of a store, according to a 2021 estimate.

[Related: What you need to know about converting your home to solar]

Solar canopies also save energy, since about 5 percent of electricity is lost each year as it travels from a power plant to your home or business. If the electricity the solar panels produce is used directly by the buildings they’re connected to or the EVs charging in the parking lots, transmission losses can be reduced, says Pearce.

The widespread deployment of solar canopies across parking lots may be an opportunity to create a small-scale local energy grid as well. The electrical grid is highly vulnerable to natural disasters, intentional physical attacks, and cyberattacks. Solar systems in parking lots can be used as anchors for microgrids—local, autonomous power systems that can remain operational while the main grid is down—that could make communities more resilient, “similar to how the US military uses solar to improve national security,” says Pearce.

Logistics of transforming parking lots

Upfront capital costs are the primary roadblocks to solar-powered carports with EV charging, says Pearce. The physical structure needs to be taller and more robust than a conventional solar farm, requiring more materials like metal and concrete, he adds. EV chargers also cost money, increasing the price even further. Commercial EV charging stations can cost around $2,500 to $40,000 for a single port. An installation often requires permits and approval from local authorities or inspectors, all of which are additional expenses and barriers to faster deployment.

The design of the solar array may be a challenge, too. “There’s a trade-off between right-sizing the solar array for current EV charging needs versus anticipated future demand and the costs of the solar array,” says Daniels. “The solar array design and location on the site can create significant variability in installation complexity and project costs.”

Daniels recommends raising awareness about the currently-available tax credits and other incentives, such as the federal solar tax credit that can deduct 30 percent of total commercial solar installation costs. There is a tax credit of 6 percent (with a maximum credit of $100,000 per unit) on commercial charging equipment as well, given that it is placed in a low-income community.

When it comes to new regulations, Pearce suggests that policymakers begin with a small step, like mandating solar-powered carports with EV charging capabilities for new surface parking or government-owned lots. After that, requirements for other locations like public universities could follow, he adds.

States or municipalities could also offer incentives other than the existing federal solar tax credit. To encourage state agencies, government offices, businesses, and nonprofits to install EV-charging solar canopies over parking lots, the Maryland Energy Administration’s Solar Canopy and Dual Use Technology Grant Program is offering grants. In 2019, one of these grants enabled IKEA to install a 1.5-megawatt solar canopy with EV charging stations at its Baltimore store.

Moreover, offering low- or no-interest loans to small- and medium-sized businesses can help them “keep up with the big firms investing millions in solar now simply to make money,” says Pearce. In general, if the federal government hopes to break one of the biggest barriers to the installation of solar canopies with EV charging capabilities, reducing upfront costs would be the key.

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Franklin Chang-Díaz gets into his car, turns on the radio and hears the news about another increase in the price of gasoline. But he sets off knowing that his trip won’t be any more expensive: His tank is filled with hydrogen. His car takes that element and combines it with oxygen in a fuel cell that works like a small power plant, creating energy — which goes into a battery to power the car — and water vapor. Not only will Chang-Díaz’s trip cost no more than it did yesterday, it will also pollute far less than a traditional gasoline-powered car would.

Chang-Díaz would like to have a public hydrogen station nearby whenever he needs to fill his tank, but that isn’t possible yet, either in his native Costa Rica or in any other Latin American country. He ends up instead at the hydrogen station he built himself, as part of a project aimed at demonstrating that hydrogen generated with renewable energy sources — green hydrogen — is the present, not the future.

A physicist, former NASA astronaut and the CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company, Chang-Díaz has a clear vision. Green hydrogen, he believes, is a fundamental player in lowering emissions from transportation and converting regions that import fossil fuels — such as his small Central American country — into exporters of clean energy, key to avoiding the catastrophic effects of global warming.

According to data from the Inter-American Development Bank, the most polluting sectors in Latin America to which clean hydrogen technology could be applied are transportation (which generates 40 percent of the region’s CO₂ emissions) and electricity and energy (36 percent of emissions). And Chang-Díaz is not alone in his belief in the promise. Large-scale hydrogen transportation will be part of the future, says Nilay Shah, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London. “By 2050, hydrogen could deliver 18 percent of the global energy supply … 28 percent of which would be destined for the transport sector,” he and his colleagues note in an article on the application of hydrogen in mobility technologies in the 2022 Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

But for green hydrogen to become an important player in the world’s energy resources, the technologies for obtaining it will need to be developed on a large scale. Latin America wants to be part of this future and is already preparing, with projects throughout the region.

CREDIT: COURTESY OF AD ASTRA ROCKET COMPANY

Not all hydrogen is the same

Hydrogen is the lightest chemical element: Its nucleus has only one proton, orbited by an electron. It’s also the most common: Up to 90 percent of the atoms in the universe are believed to be hydrogen atoms. In its gaseous state (H ₂), it is tasteless, colorless and odorless. In the terrestrial environment, it is usually found in more complex compounds, such as two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen atom to form a water molecule (H ₂O), or four hydrogen atoms bonded to one carbon atom to form methane (CH ₄). If we need the hydrogen atoms alone, we must uncouple them from these compounds.

The use of hydrogen as an energy source is not new. For decades, NASA mixed H₂ gas with oxygen to generate the energy needed to lift hundreds of tons and send its shuttles into space. The US Department of Energy lists it as a safer fuel than fossil fuels because it is non-toxic and dissipates quickly in the event of a leak, since it is lighter than air.

At present, hydrogen as an energy source is mainly used in the production of petroleum derivatives, steel, ammonia and methanol. According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2020 the world’s population consumed about 90 million tons of hydrogen — equivalent to only 2.5 percent of global energy consumption. Latin America uses only 5 percent of this hydrogen, mainly in countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Chile. It is mostly dirty hydrogen, which pollutes the planet due to the processes used to obtain it.

Depending on how it is derived, hydrogen can be classified as gray, blue, green — or even black. Gray hydrogen is generated using fossil fuels — natural gas especially, in the case of Latin America. In a process called steam reforming, carbon monoxide (CO) and water vapor (H₂O) are subjected to high temperatures, moderate pressure and a catalyst, producing carbon dioxide (CO ₂) and hydrogen (H ₂). If coal is used instead of gas to generate the heat necessary for steam reforming, the hydrogen is then considered black — the worst of all, from an environmental point of view.

Blue hydrogen uses gas or coal in the same steam reforming process, but in this case 80 percent to 90 percent of the carbon emissions end up underground through a process called industrial carbon capture and storage (CSS). Finally, green hydrogen — also called clean hydrogen — uses electrical energy generated by renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, to separate the water molecule into its two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, by means of an anode and a cathode in a process called electrolysis.

Currently, less than 0.4 percent of the hydrogen utilized in Latin America is green; the rest is linked to fossil fuels. In fact, in 2019, hydrogen production for the region required more natural gas than all of the gas consumed in Chile, a country with 19 million inhabitants. And it generated more polluting emissions than those produced in a year by all the cars in Colombia, a nation with some 7 million vehicles.

Globally, 4 percent of hydrogen production is already the result of electrolysis, but the remaining 96 percent still requires gas, coal or petroleum derivatives.

Toward green hydrogen

With the goal of producing more and more green hydrogen, several projects on different scales are taking shape in Latin America.

• The Brazilian company Unigel plans to inaugurate a $120 million plant in 2023, which will produce 10,000 tons per year of green hydrogen — the equivalent of 60 megawatts (MW) — in its first stage.
• Sener Ingeniería Mexico announced in August 2022 the creation of the first of a series of small plants, of about 2.5 MW.
• Chile, for its part, is already seeing some of the fruits of its National Green Hydrogen Strategy, launched in 2020. This South American country says it plans to “conquer global markets” in 2030, mainly Europe and China, where it aims to send 72 percent of its production. The port of entry to Germany will be Hamburg. “With its great potential for green hydrogen production, Chile is on the verge of becoming an exporter of global magnitude,” said the mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschenscher, during the signing of a cooperation agreement in September 2022.
• Uruguay launched the Green Hydrogen Sector Fund, with $10 million non-reimbursable funding from the government to finance projects. In August 2022, nine companies won a spot, some with names such as “Green H ₂ Production for Forest Transport” and “Palos Blancos Project: green hydrogen, ammonia and fertilizer production plant with wind and solar photovoltaic renewable energy.”
• And in Costa Rica, Chang-Díaz is helping lead the way to add green hydrogen to the country’s portfolio of clean energy sources (about 99 percent of electricity in Costa Rica is generated through sources such as the sun, wind and water from dams). In July 2022, Chang-Díaz demonstrated on social media how he fueled his car, at a prototype station, with green hydrogen produced in his own country.

While some Latin American countries may benefit from the production of green hydrogen, others will benefit from large-scale consumption of the clean energy source. For example, Trinidad and Tobago, which consumes 40 percent of the region’s hydrogen for its oil refining processes, emits 12.3 metric tons of carbon per person per year (by comparison, Costa Rica emits 1.6 metric tons per capita per year, according to 2019 World Bank data). If Trinidad and Tobago used green hydrogen in its processes instead of gray hydrogen, its carbon footprint would be significantly reduced.

Other countries are being creative and are not yet focusing on either production or consumption of green hydrogen. Panama, for example, seeks to become a storage and commercialization node for the element, like the air and maritime transport hub it already is. As part of this national energy transformation plan, called Green Hydrogen Roadmap, the authorities of this country signed a memorandum of understanding with Siemens Energy. Panama also has plans to produce some of its own green hydrogen eventually: The Ciudad Dorada Biorefinery, expected to begin construction this year, will have the capacity to generate 405,000 metric tons.

“Green hydrogen technology is developing worldwide and by 2030 Latin America will be the third region in the world with the most projects, after Europe and Australia,” says José Miguel Bermúdez, chemical engineer and energy technology analyst at the IEA.

For Shah, the reason for this growing interest is clear: Many Latin American countries have the potential to generate more clean energy than they need. “Let’s take Chile, for example,” he says. “The amount of potential for renewable electricity is probably 10 times more than the amount of electricity you need in the country.” Exporting that clean energy from Chile or Costa Rica in the form of electricity over long distances is complicated and expensive. But using it to create hydrogen and transport it in tanks to practically any place in the world is realistic, he says, although it will require investments — just as investments in oil tankers and gas pipelines were once needed.

But, Shah adds, green hydrogen could also be transported with existing infrastructure if it is used to create popular products, such as ammonia (NH₃, a nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms, a compound widely used in agriculture) or synthetic fuels.

Challenges to be solved

After the production and distribution of green hydrogen comes its myriad uses. To power car batteries, it’s combined with oxygen in a fuel cell and generates water vapor and energy. To manufacture iron, hydrogen is used to transform one molecule of iron oxide (Fe₂O ₃) into two molecules of iron (Fe) and three molecules of water (H ₂O) at high temperatures — fossil fuels are currently used for this purpose. Processing this iron further, with more energy, produces steel.

The manufacture of cement also requires high temperatures, currently generated with fossil fuels: The IEA indicates that as much as 67 percent of hydrogen demand in 2030 could come from this industry. In addition, hydrogen combined with carbon in the Fischer-Tropsch process generates synthetic fuels, which are cleaner than traditional fossil fuels. Aircraft are already allowed to fly on up to 50 percent synthetic kerosene.

Some 50,000 hydrogen vehicles are already on the road worldwide, Bermúdez adds. Projections are that the number will soon skyrocket — China alone expects to have 1 million on its streets by 2035 — but experts agree that, in the short or medium term, hydrogen will not completely replace the most polluting fuels; instead, it will be one alternative in a matrix of different options, such as traditional electric cars or solar-powered airplanes. However, the experts also agree that it will be a significant option, not a marginal one.

“There will be a series of technologies and areas of opportunity that do not have to be specifically the same in all the countries of our region,” says Andrés González Garay, a process engineer at the chemical company BASF and a coauthor of the article on hydrogen production and its applications to mobility in the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “It is also true that hydrogen, although it can be applied in a lot of areas, will not make sense in all of them, and it will depend a lot on our political, social and economic systems.”

To arrive at the more environmentally friendly scenario that green hydrogen offers, its production should be increased as soon as possible and, at the same time, its consumption needs to be encouraged, Shah says. “Global hydrogen production is expected to grow six to 10 times between now and 2050,” González Garay says, and the increase is projected to be mainly in clean hydrogen.

The role of governments will be pivotal, the scientists say. “If governments become the first users of hydrogen — for their buildings, for their vehicle fleets, for their other operations, for power generation — they become the customer. Then they can create the supply chain of hydrogen and give confidence to the producers that there is a market,” Shah says.

Adds Bermúdez: “The public sector needs to put the regulations and support programs in place to accelerate the private sector. Public policies are needed to force demand for green hydrogen…. If Latin America does not position itself well and start producing and closing agreements, it runs the risk of being left behind.”

Chang-Díaz, for his part, fears that countries like Costa Rica, despite producing almost all its electricity through clean renewable sources, risk moving too late to take advantage of the wave of green hydrogen that is already beginning to rise. In December 2022 he participated as a speaker at an international meeting held in San José, the capital of his country. But at the same time, a few kilometers away, the bill to support the green hydrogen sector, which has been under discussion for months, has not advanced in the Legislative Assembly.

So, at least for now, Chang-Díaz will remain the only one in his country who can travel in a car that uses green hydrogen as fuel.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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Tesla is carrying out a recall because of issues with its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta, according to an announcement posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website, which cites the software’s potential to cause crashes. The supposed fix will come in the form of a free software update issued over the air.

According to the announcement, certain Teslas with the FSD Beta engaged could “act unsafe around intersections, such as traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution.” The software also could encounter problems with “changes in posted speed limits.” The recall affects all 2016-2023 Model S and Model X vehicles, 2017-2023 Model 3s, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles utilizing FSD Beta. All told, as many as 362,758 could be affected.

Tesla’s autopilot technology employs machine learning and cameras to aid in steering, lane changes, braking, and speed changes. Alleged incidents, some fatal, involving cars with versions of the software have been reported over the years, while the electric vehicle maker continued to offer public testing subscriptions to its customers.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

At the end of 2021, over 475,000 vehicles faced a recall due to front trunk hood and rearview camera issues. As CNBC reports, Tesla has never disclosed the exact number of vehicles using FSD Beta, but CEO Elon Musk said in the company’s most recent earnings call that it had been deployed to “roughly 400,000 customers in North America.” He added during the call that, “This is a huge milestone for autonomy as FSD Beta is the only way any consumer can actually test the latest AI-powered autonomy.” Musk tweeted today contesting the word “recall,” while Tesla plans to release a free over-the-air (OTA) software update.

[Related: YouTube pulls video of Tesla fan testing autopilot on kid.]

In October 2022, news leaked that the Department of Justice was conducting an ongoing investigation into alleged misleading and false claims regarding its “Autopilot” systems, which still explicitly requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times. As recently as last fall, Musk said FSD mode was close to being able to drive people “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel.” Tesla also faces investigations from the state of California over similar statements. Last month, the NHTSA said it was “working really fast” on another “extensive” Tesla Autopilot probe that could affect more than 830,000 vehicles.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has called terms like Autopilot “extremely problematic.”

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Two up-and-coming electric vehicle companies, Polestar and Rivian, aren’t mincing words about their industry’s shortcomings. In a new report commissioned by the automakers from global management consulting firm Kearney, experts warn the EV economy remains “far off track” from doing its part to meet targets set by the Paris Climate Agreement. Signed by 196 countries in 2015, the Paris Agreement aims to keep the world’s temperature from increasing more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The team-up between two technically competing carmakers is outside the norm, but as Ellen Broomé, a spokesperson for Polestar, explained to The Verge on Thursday, the report’s “shocking and sobering” data confirmed their suspicions that “everything was moving too slow.”

[Related: A new solution could keep old wind turbine blades out of landfills.]

“We have both been frustrated by the lack of an honest, data- and science-led pathway for the car industry to remain in line with [Paris Agreement’s] 1.5-degree limit,” they added.

As the new report explains, despite the rising interest in EVs alongside automakers’ commitments to retiring internal combustion engines, companies’ primary focus on eliminating greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions is simply not enough. Instead, Kearney’s conclusions urge businesses to rapidly increase investments in renewable energy power grids, as well as reducing emissions generated across their entire supply chains. Polestar and Rivian concede carmakers haven’t been traditionally involved directly within these separate industries, but urge rethinking the approach to such topics in order to meet climate change goals. Potential avenues include vehicle companies investing more heavily in clean energy companies, or starting their own projects in the field.

[Related: Honda’s newest Accord hybrid is a sleek, brawny beast.]

One of the main areas requiring improvement is battery sourcing and construction, by far the largest source of pollution within EV production. Automakers must simultaneously focus on vastly reducing emissions, the authors of the report argue, alongside revising what materials are used in the batteries themselves.

The report’s conclusions depict an extremely tall order, one that will require unprecedented cooperation between automakers across the board to accomplish the already lofty goals. “We need to come together to create a plan to tackle the challenge and deliver on that plan as quickly as possible,” the paper’s authors urged.

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In 2009, Prince Albert II of Monaco asked experimental vehicle manufacturer Venturi to take a crack at designing an electric vehicle that could handle the harsh cold of Antarctica. Over the next 12 years, the company went to work. After testing out two full prototypes, the company pulled off a final product launch on June 1, 2021. The Venturi Antarctica, as the vehicle is called, has been transporting scientists and lab equipment in eastern Antarctica since December 2021.

Designing an electric vehicle for the harsh climate of Antarctica is no easy feat. The battery and other components have to be able to tolerate the frigid Antarctic temperatures, and there needs to be space to store research equipment and transport the researchers comfortably. Venturi has experience with experimental electric vehicles going back to 2000, and has competed in Formula E, the top-tier electric car racing competition in the world, since its inaugural season in 2014. 

[Related: Boaty McBoatface’s new mission is more serious than its name]

According to Venturi, scientists based at the Belgian Princess Elizabeth research station have driven the Antarctica EV over 500 kilometers (310 miles) in just one summer of use. The vehicle has a range of 50 kilometers (31 miles), with space for a second battery if the scientists need more range. However, its range can vary depending on how compact the snow it has to drive on is, and scientists started noticing some problems. 

As climate change has affected global temperatures, Antarctica has warmed. Average temperatures on the icy continent ranges from a frigid -50 degrees Celsius (-58 F) inland to around -10 C (14 F) on the coasts, and the vehicle, designed for the extra cold, needed tweaks to tolerate the relative warmth. Venturi instructed researchers to limit trips to 40 kilometers (25 miles), and is beginning work on modifications to restore the vehicle to its true glory. 

Since Antarctica is covered almost entirely in snow, the Antarctica EV uses a continuous track system, just like you’d expect on a snowcat or a snowmobile. The treads spread the 5,500 pounds of vehicle over its entire surface area, preventing the Antarctica EV from sinking into the snow like a wheeled vehicle would. But the warmer temperatures have caused the snow to stick to the sprockets that drive the treads, creating unwanted vibrations that could further damage the vehicle. The company has since redesigned and replaced the sprockets in an attempt to keep the vehicle in working order.

Increasing temperatures also made it more likely for the cabin, which is packed with electronics and exposed to the sun, to overheat. To balance that out, Venturi has had to install a new ventilation system for a more comfortable riding experience. They also made a new cooling system for the power electronic systems themselves.

Venturi announced on January 24 that their next set of improvements will be focused on redesigning the treads and increasing the vehicle’s range in Antarctica. Barring any other unforeseen circumstances, these should allow the vehicle to putter around the ice and snow of the southern continent more and more in the years to come.

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Something remarkable has happened in Hoboken, New Jersey over the past six years: No one has died in a traffic crash since early January, 2017. 

But Hoboken, with a population of some 60,000 people, unfortunately is not representative of the United States as a whole, where traffic deaths have risen since the beginning of the pandemic. In 2020, more than 38,800 people died because of traffic crashes, a nearly 7 percent increase from the year before. And then they climbed again in 2021, up by more than 10 percent compared to 2020 and hitting nearly 43,000. 

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg draws a comparison between this problem and casualties from firearms. “Most Americans know that there’s a difference between the rate of gun death in the US and in most developed countries. I’m not sure most Americans know that something similar is going on with roadway deaths,” Buttigieg tells PopSci. “Not the same disparity—but a comparable pattern, where a lot of other places that also have cars and drivers and advanced economies don’t have the level of carnage that we do.” 

That carnage has continued into 2022, although initial data from the first nine months of that year suggest that traffic deaths may have declined a tiny amount compared to the same time frame in 2021. But pedestrian and cyclist deaths still continued to climb last year, as they have throughout the pandemic—vulnerable people on the roads are being killed by vehicles, and in climbing numbers. 

Here’s why experts think it’s been happening, how technology can help (even as it also causes problems), and what to know about the simple changes that Hoboken has made to try to make its streets safer. 

Why did traffic deaths spike as the pandemic began?

“One prevailing theory is that you saw less traffic, higher speeds, and the crashes that happened were more likely to be fatal,” Buttigieg says. 

That’s a big piece of the equation, says Leah Shahum, the director of the Vision Zero Network, a nonprofit that aims to help connect communities with one another to fight traffic deaths. Another underlying issue is that “we’ve supersized our roads,” she says, allowing people to speed when congestion is absent. “And then secondly, our vehicles are getting a lot bigger.” 

Buttigieg also notes that in general, the tech inside some vehicles right now acts as a double-edged sword. 

He mentions in-car systems where the vehicle might track your eyes to see if you’re paying attention while cruise control is engaged. “What that means is that we have some technologies that are being developed to protect you from over-reliance on some of the other technologies that are being developed,” he says. “And it just shows you what a complicated and sensitive time we’re in.” 

Complicating the landscape are terms like “Autopilot,” the Tesla feature whose name alone implies that the vehicle is on a type of autopilot, like an aircraft. “There is no commercially available technology that doesn’t require that you be paying attention and driving,” Buttigieg says. “Words like ‘autopilot’ I think are extremely problematic.” 

[Related: What can ‘smart intersections’ do for a city? Chattanooga aims to find out.]

Tesla is in the crosshairs of the Justice Department and reportedly the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a part of the DOT. (Meanwhile, an option from Mercedes-Benz called Drive Pilot achieves what’s known as Level 3 autonomy, but is only legal in Nevada and comes with a speed restriction.) 

“I think we also need to recognize the responsibility that exists outside of just the technical design of the vehicle, to how you market, how you talk about it, and what expectations you create for drivers,” Buttigieg says.

How do you protect against ‘murderous’ human drivers? 

Advanced driver assistance tech can be a benefit, too, he argues. “I think we need to be very thoughtful about emerging technologies because they hold huge promise,” Buttigieg adds. “The track record of human drivers is borderline murderous.” 

He says that there is potential for in-vehicle tech to help improve the situation, arguing that it could “represent a major safety” improvement. But there are also low-tech changes that cities can make to their streetscape that can protect people from driving machines made of metal, glass, and plastic. 

Hoboken holds clues. The current mayor, Ravinder Bhalla, says that when he was a council member, an 89-year-old woman, Agnes Acerra, was killed in 2015 while crossing Washington Street after being struck by a vehicle. Bhalla attended Acerra’s funeral and wake. “That’s when it really hit home for me,” he says. “In the years that have passed, we’ve made multiple improvements that could have avoided that crash.” 

One of those, he says, are curb extensions. A curb extension, as the name implies, extends the sidewalk space out into the street to about the width of a car. “It reduces the distance that someone like Agnes would have to cross the street, thereby reducing the possibility of being hit by a vehicle,” Bhalla says. “It increases the visibility for both pedestrians and drivers” because the curb extension makes it harder for a vehicle to park right next to the crosswalk. 

They’ve also reduced the speed limit to 20 mph in the city. Shahum, of the Vision Zero Network, says that changes like these are important. “Most importantly, at the local level at least, it really is about redesigning streets—it really is about slowing drivers down so that there’s more safe, comfortable, shared space,” she says. 

[Related: It’s an especially dangerous time to be a pedestrian in America]

Bhalla says that they have made a tweak to the way the signals work when pedestrians cross, too. “Pedestrians have 30 seconds to cross Washington Street,” he says. Baked into that time is a “pedestrian-only interval” that lasts seven seconds. “All traffic lights are red, and only pedestrians can cross the street” during that time, he says. 

Bhalla’s advice to other cities is to move both slowly and quickly, depending on the issue. The slow approach refers to routine street maintenance, and using that moment to make safety tweaks. “We do that on an incremental, block-by-block basis, and I think over time, in the aggregate, the data shows positive results,” he says. The fast approach refers to acting when something urgently needs a change, like examining areas with high accidents. 

It’s not copy-paste from place to place, though. “Find out what works well in your own community, and do those things as well as possible,” he says. 

Can you change culture? 

Pedestrian deaths in the first three-quarters of 2022 climbed by 2 percent, and cyclists deaths by 8 percent, even as the total traffic fatalities declined a tiny bit. In 2020, more than 6,500 pedestrians were killed because of traffic crashes, and some groups are much more vulnerable than others: the DOT reports in the Safety Strategy they released last year that people who are American Indian or Alaskan Native, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders are all more likely to be killed as pedestrians. 

“There are a lot of measures that we can take that make a difference” with the pedestrian and cyclist fatality problem, Buttigieg says. That involves “making sure that we have more separated bike lanes, making sure that we have better lighting—basically reducing the frequency and the severity of situations where a pedestrian or bike and a vehicle can cross each other’s paths to begin with.”

[Related: US pedestrian deaths are reaching a new high]

“Part of it also I think though, beyond the physics of it, is frankly the culture—making sure that drivers are aware,” he adds. 

So how does one go about changing culture, and trying to get drivers to pay attention? He points out that street engineering can play a role in how people act. “We know that if the road is designed a certain way, it can force you to pay attention at a complex intersection, or nudge you toward driving at a safe speed,” he says, “and so these are among the things that I’m eager to see developed through the hundreds of planning grants that we’re supporting in different communities around the country.” 

Those grants total hundreds of millions of dollars and were announced on Wednesday. For example, they include $9 million for a “Complete Streets Project” on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles that will “include new pedestrian crosswalks and signals.” On the other coast, a project in Boston is also getting $9 million for changes like “raised crosswalks, pedestrian island refuges, street right-sizing, curb extensions,” and more. Here’s the list. 

The cultural issue is on Bhalla’s mind, too. “There is a certain culture and cultural adaptation that’s occurring in Hoboken,” he says. “We’ve come to realize that everyone is a pedestrian at some point, even if you’re a motorist.” After all, he says, drivers have to walk to their cars to get in them in the first place. 

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The name Lamborghini evokes powerful acceleration and large engines, with oodles of cylinders and a sound to match. But the supercar builder isn’t blind to the electrification movement. And while Lamborghini is not yet phasing out its thundering herd of combustion engines, the brand is moving towards a compromise that feels true to itself: internal combustion plus an electric motor. 

In 2019, Italy’s Raging Bull automaker teased its future with a hybrid, the V12 Sián FKP 37. The vehicle went above and beyond with 819 horsepower, the company’s most powerful model ever. However, with a $3.5 million price tag, it wasn’t made for the masses (nor even an average Lamborghini buyer). Only 63 were made in honor of the year Lamborghini was founded, and collectors snapped them up quickly. The Sián, which means “lightning” in Italian, contains a 48-volt electric motor that adds 34 horsepower to V12; it was made to showcase the brand’s capabilities and show a hint of what’s to come. Here’s what’s next.

Vitamin V12 deficient

The leadership team is making it clear that it’s not the right time for the Raging Bull to go all electric. All in due time, Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann says.

“If you would have asked me five or six years ago, I would have been convinced that hybridization would happen, but I’d have my doubts on the execution and acceptance,” Winkelmann told PopSci. “Now, it’s a generational issue. We have a lot of young fans who are telling us we’re on the right path in terms of sustainability.”

While an all-electric vehicle is slated to be revealed in 2028, Lamborghini is first launching a hybrid-powertrain successor to its top-of-the-line Lamborghini Aventador sports car before the end of Q1 2023. 

[Related: Behind the wheel of the thunderous Lamborghini Aventador]

“We have to take care that we have this kind of emotional attachment, but always the technology will find a way,” Lamborghini chief technical officer Rouven Mohr told PopSci. “Even if I personally like the combustion [engine], it would be a mistake to think that there will be no tipping point.”

Mohr says they are not following the engine-downsizing trend, pairing a smaller powerplant with an electric motor to compensate for power. The plan is to take existing internal-combustion vehicles and add power in the form of electricity, so the electric motor isn’t a replacement but an enhancement, with the benefit of hopefully fewer CO2 emissions.  

Rumors hold that the follow up to the Huracán, which is more compact and less expensive than the Aventador, will be a V8 hybrid, which is a smaller engine than the current V10. Whether or not the whispers are true, Lamborghini isn’t yet willing to say. It’s too soon to talk about that, Winkelmann told PopSci.

The heart of the bull

In the last couple of years, the automotive market has flipped inside out. The pandemic affected the supply chain in ways no one anticipated, but even more surprising to Lamborghini was the uptake of luxury products in the aftermath. Lamborghini broke its own sales records for 2022, delivering 9,233 vehicles worldwide: that’s a stunning ten percent over the sales figures for 2021. Lamborghini launched its SUV, the Urus, in 2017, which has been an explosive seller for the brand. Winkelmann says 80 percent of its new customers are Urus buyers; breaking into the SUV segment also helps attract more female buyers.

In the meantime, in 2021 Lamborghini shared the details of its Direzione Cor Tauri (“Heart of the Bull”) program, which lays out a roadmap for a nearly two billion dollar cash infusion. This, the highest-ever investment in the company’s history, translates directly to the development of hybrid and all-electric cars to get the Italian automaker primed for the switch to EVs in the next few years. That funding will be welcome as the automaker shifts its design and production to include electrification. Software and its upkeep will be another significant line item as driver-assist technology advances.

[Related: Behind the wheel of McLaren’s hot new hybrid supercar, the Artura]

Machine learning, for example, will allow engineers to do new things. Imagine there’s a kind of algorithm Lamborghini could use to train its motorsports teams to be better drivers on the track. “You can have an intelligent stability control, for example, that understands exactly your driving style, analyzes it, and helps you enter the corners [more efficiently],” Mohr said.

It may seem incongruous to tie advanced driver-assist tech to a supercar for people who love to geek out on cars and live to drive. What’s the attraction of a car that takes over for you when a car like a Lamborghini Huracan—or even the Urus SUV—is designed for the sheer pleasure of driving it? The technologies Lamborghini is looking at can enable a driver to improve their driving skills and enjoy the limits of the car, Mohr says.

The sounds of silence

For the 2023 Rolex 24 endurance race at Daytona International Speedway this month, Lamborghini fielded five teams: four in the GT Daytona class and one in the GT Daytona Pro category. The distinctive sound of the Raging Bull Huracáns echoed across the lanes, its voice calling out clearly. One of those teams was the only all-female lineup, the Iron Dames, piloting a can’t-miss-it hot pink Huracán. 

Motorsports like this endurance race give manufacturers a chance for research and development in high-stress situations for the cars. It also gives them an ear to the ground to listen to the fan base and get more insight on what’s needed to improve. 

What Lamborghini is hearing now is that the younger generation is demanding more sustainability, and they want to see change. The other is an open question about a personality crisis for supercars when EVs take over. EVs are much quieter than combustion engines, and that will affect not just motorsports events but everyday satisfaction while driving the cars. 

Mohr, who grew up admiring a poster of a purple Lamborghini Diablo on his wall, says he’s not about to let the brand lose its grip on the super sports car community. While both he and Winkelmann say they don’t have an answer to the sound question quite yet, they know it’s going to be uniquely Lamborghini. 

Mohr says people often suggest to him that he might have enjoyed working for Lamborghini 20 years ago instead of today, but he disagrees. “I say no, because from the engineering perspective, you now have much more freedom,” Mohr says. “To influence this kind of new generation of cars, this is a good change. I want to ensure that in 20 years I still like to buy cars, and if they are only boring cars, it will be really a mess. Because at the moment, to be honest, there are a lot of boring cars on the market that I will not buy. And I can see that in the electric world the dream of Lamborghini is continuing on. It’s pretty exciting.” 

The Huracán and other models by the Bull remain a touchstone goal for many, and Mohr welcomes the challenge to make sure it lives up to its reputation as it shifts into hybrid, and eventually all-electric, mode. 

“The favorite part of my job is the fact that I can influence the dream cars,” Mohr tells PopSci. “Because at the end of the day, every Lamborghini is a dream. It’s not like [with] volume manufacturers, they [launch] a kind of icon of the brand every 20 years. In our case, you work permanently with dreams.”

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Vehicle electrification is a major step toward decarbonizing the transportation sector, the biggest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the US. In 2020, it accounted for 27 percent of the country’s emissions, more than half of which came from light-duty vehicles.

Replacing fossil fuel-powered automobiles with electric vehicles (EV) provides significant benefits for environmental and human health. Not only will carbon emissions decline, but air quality also improves, and there are fewer negative health outcomes due to pollution, says Daniel Horton, assistant professor at the Northwestern University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

New research also shows that vehicle owners may see reductions in their transportation energy burden, or the percentage of their income that is spent on vehicle fuel. In a new Environmental Research Letters study, researchers found that more than 90 percent of vehicle-owning households in the country would shrink GHG emissions and their transportation energy burden if they switched to EVs.

“Due to the fuel cost savings, EVs effectively reduce the percentage of income that households have to spend on vehicles,” says Joshua Newell, professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan and an author of the study.

Newell and his colleagues estimated fuel costs in terms of US dollars per mile. They created an equation that included the gasoline price for vehicles with internal combustion engines. For EVs, they used the levelized cost of charging (LCOC), which accounts for electricity prices as well as charging location, time of day, and power level. According to the study, areas with high transportation energy burden reductions have lower LCOC compared to gasoline prices, smaller temperature- and drive cycle-related impacts on fuel consumption (like how extremely cold temperatures tend to affect battery performance or how batteries or fuel cells adapt when vehicles conditions change abruptly), or both. 

Unequal benefits of driving an EV

Widespread deployment of EVs would effectively double the number of households with a low transportation burden, based on the authors’ modeling, which they defined as spending less than 2 percent of their income on fuel annually. However, the study also revealed that more than half of the lowest-income households (based on area median income) would continue to have a high energy burden—spending more than 4 percent of their income on fuel annually—despite driving an EV.

[Related: Thousands of EV chargers will soon line America’s highways.]

Currently, higher-income households and those with higher levels of education dominate EV ownership in the country. Vehicle-related energy costs are a relatively small portion of higher-income households’ monthly income, but they can be sizable chunks for lower-income households, says Newell.

Additional factors that contribute to this energy burden include vehicle miles traveled, fuel consumption, and electricity and charging infrastructure costs. Newell says suburban and rural households tend to experience a higher energy burden due to the lack of public transit and greater travel distances to services and jobs. 

Since the lowest-income households are not distributed uniformly in the US, the study mapped where high-energy burden communities are clustered, which were concentrated in the Midwest, Alaska, and Hawaii. This would enable policymakers and planners to “develop targeted strategies to address the uneven distribution of burdens as society transitions from internal combustion vehicles to EVs,” says Newell.

The authors recommend localized approaches to improve the benefits of EV adoption, which include regional subsidies for charging infrastructure, reducing the cost of electricity, and expanding access to cycling, walking, and other forms of low-carbon transportation.

EV policies can boost accessibility

Incentives such as tax credits to lower the upfront costs of buying new and used EVs are critical for accelerating their adoption, says Newell. The Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law last August, currently provides significant tax credits for these purchases.

Individuals who purchase a new EV, whether it’s the plug-in or a fuel cell kind, may qualify for a clean vehicle tax credit of up to $7,500. However, there are different rules for the tax credit depending on when the vehicle was purchased. To check if you and your vehicle qualify, visit the Internal Revenue Service websites for vehicles purchased before 2023 or those in 2023 and beyond. Those who buy a used electric vehicle starting in 2023 may also be eligible for a tax credit that equals 30 percent of the sale, with a maximum credit of $4,000.

[Related: Self-driving EVs use way more energy than you’d think.]

Other policy interventions that may increase EV accessibility for older and lower-income households include incentives for new and used vehicles that aren’t necessarily tied to taxes and programs that target low-income households. For instance, low-income California residents who live in a district that implements the Enhanced Fleet Modernization Program may receive up to $1,500 for scrapping their old, high-polluting vehicle. Those who choose to replace their old vehicle altogether with a cleaner, more fuel-efficient one may get up to $4,500.

Aside from purchasing incentives, access to charging infrastructure is also critical in the transition of light-duty passenger fleets to EVs in lower-income communities, says Horton, who was not involved in the new study. According to the study, increasing access to residential or cheaper public charging is a major factor in establishing the fair distribution of benefits and burdens among everyone, especially for renters and rural, lower-income, or multi-family households.

All of these solutions hope to balance out a major barrier to EV adoption—they are costly for many. “EV batteries make up about one-third the cost of the vehicle,” says Newell, “and until these costs are reduced through economies of scale and technological improvements, EV incentives are needed to achieve price parity with gasoline-powered vehicles.”

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It was just a few short years ago that Chevrolet debuted the first mid-engine version of its venerable all-American Corvette. After more than six decades punctuated with whispers and rumors, the mid-engine ‘Vette was finally a reality, and it was all-new from the ground up for model year 2020. That eighth generation (commonly called C8) Corvette was touted as the quickest one in history, leveraging better weight distribution and improved responsiveness.

Now Chevy has done it again, launching a new sports car on January 17 that shakes up the market. The 2024 Corvette E-Ray is electrified for the first time in the car’s history, moving the General Motors company toward its electrification goals. 

Here’s how we got here.

Seven decades of power

General Motors set hearts aflutter back in 2015 when it filed an application to patent the name E-Ray. Eight years later, the hybrid sports car is finally a reality. In fact, the E-Ray was launched 70 years to the day after the first Corvette prototype debuted at Motorama in New York City on January 17, 1953. Every one of the first batch of Corvettes was white with a red interior, only available with a convertible top.

While the Corvette is best known for its roaring V8, the first ‘Vette was built on a modified passenger car chassis and was propelled by a 3.9-liter inline-six engine called the “Blue Flame.” In 1955, Chevy upped the ante with a 4.3-liter V8 making 195 horsepower paired with a three-speed manual.

[Related: Behind the wheel of the most technically advanced Corvette on the market]

In 1966, the Corvette was the first to get the 427 cubic-inch engine, one of several powertrain options that included a 300-horsepower small-block 327 cubic-inch engine along with the larger 427, which came in 350-, 390-, and 425-horsepower versions. With stats like these, it’s no surprise that the Corvette’s appeal has grown through the decades with everyone from early astronauts like Alan Shepard to President Joe Biden counted as fans.

In 2019, the last year of the front-engine Corvette, the car was available with a 6.2-liter naturally aspirated V8 in 455- and 460-horsepower flavors. The Z06 came with a supercharged version making 650 horsepower and the even fiercer ZR1 was good for 755 horsepower and 715 pound-feet of torque. 

As for the forthcoming E-Ray, it pairs the 6.2-liter V8 from the gas-powered mid-engine 2022 model (called Stingray, a term that has been in the Corvette family since the 1960s) with an electric motor for a total power output of 655 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque. This combination gives the E-Ray all-wheel drive, and the brand says the E-Ray is the quickest production Corvette in history, boasting an impressive zero-to-60 miles per hour time of 2.5 seconds.

The E-Ray is a heavyweight 

That very first Corvette weighed less than 2,900 pounds. Over the decades, Chevy’s sports car has steadily gained heft, tipping the scales at about 3,600 pounds in 2020. Electrified powertrains like the one in the E-Ray are heavier than gas-only engines, requiring revised calculations for everything from the frames to the axles to the wheels and tires.

Chevrolet says the coupe version of the E-Ray will weigh in at 3,980 pounds, and the convertible adds 76 pounds for a total of 4,056. That’s a heavyweight sports car, compared to McLaren’s plug-in hybrid Artura at 3,303 pounds. It’s still lighter (and exponentially less expensive) than the ultra-exclusive all-electric $2 million Rimac Nevera, which is 4,750 pounds.

[Related: Strapping into the 2020 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray to take turns at 1.3 Gs]

Starting at about $60,000, the reimagined mid-engine 2020 Stingray was a shockingly affordable American stunner. The E-Ray, however, starts at a whopping $104,295 and tops out at $120,000 or more with options. 

While it may not be as destined to be as affordable for the masses as the gas-only Stingray, it still handily beats the price of rivals such as McLaren’s Artura and the Ferrari 296 GTB. Plus, the E-Ray doesn’t require a plug like the McLaren and Ferrari; the E-Ray’s small 1.9-kilowatt battery pack regenerates energy when the car slows and brakes. Unlike an all-electric vehicle, the hybrid E-Ray leans heavily on the gas-powered engine and uses the battery to increase torque and conserve fuel. 

Stealth mode and more

The E-Ray will also have a lower and wider stance; it’s 3.6 inches wider overall than the Stingray and offers a bit more elbow room. Plus, the tech of the new electric motor will affect how this iconic vehicle sounds.

Believe it or not, the delightful roar of a V8 isn’t music to everyone’s ears. When in hybrid mode, the Corvette will retain its distinctive growl. However, those who prefer a less-flashy approach in the neighborhood will appreciate Stealth Mode, which is a quiet all-electric drive mode that operates up to 45 miles per hour (let’s hope that doesn’t surprise pedestrians). 

EVs are quiet by nature, but automakers like Ford have created ways to make gas-powered vehicles quieter as well. You might remember the debut of Ford’s “Good Neighbor Mode” on the 2018 Mustang, which muffled the muscle car’s voice by adapting the active exhaust function.

As the US continues to explore new ways to bolster the EV infrastructure in terms of charging stations and alternate energy, the E-Ray is timed perfectly. While this iteration doesn’t ever need to be charged because it’s a hybrid, we expect to see an all-electric version next. 

In the meantime, expect to see the 2024 Corvette E-Ray available for sale later this year.

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Truly self-driving cars are still at least a few years down the road—but if the day does come when the software becomes a de facto means of navigation, a new study indicates it’s going to need to be much more energy efficient. If not, autopilot features could ostensibly neutralize any self-driving electric vehicles’ environmental benefits. According to a new study from researchers at MIT, statistical modeling indicates the potential energy consumption needed to power a near-future global fleet of autopiloted EVs would generate as much greenhouse gas as all of the world’s current data centers combined.

The physical locales which house the massive computer arrays powering the world’s countless applications today generate about 0.3 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions—roughly the annual amount of carbon produced by Argentina. Researchers estimated this level would be reached from the self-driving tech in 1 billion autonomous vehicles, each driving just one hour per day. For comparison, there are currently around 1.5 billion cars on the world’s roads.

[Related: Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims.]

Researchers also found that in over 90 percent of the models generated, EV computers would need to use less than 1.2 kilowatts of computing power just to keep within today’s realm of data center emissions, something we simply cannot achieve with current hardware efficiencies. For example, in another statistical model analyzing a scenario in which 95 percent of all vehicles are autonomous by 2050 alongside computational workloads doubling every 3 years, cars’ hardware efficiencies would need to essentially double every year to keep emissions within those same levels. In comparison, the decades’ long accepted industry rate known as Moore’s Law states that computational power doubles every two or so years—a timeframe that is expected to eventually slow down, not accelerate.

The parameters for such scenarios—how many cars are on the roads, how long they are traveling, their onboard computing power and energy requirements, etc—might seem relatively clear , but there are numerous unforeseen ramifications to also consider. Autonomous vehicles could spend more time on roads while people multitask, for example, and they could actually spur additional demographics to add to traffic, such as both younger and older populations. Then there’s the issue of trying to model for hardware and software that doesn’t yet exist.

And then there are the neural networks to consider.

[Related: Tesla driver blames self-driving mode for eight-car pileup.]

MIT notes that semi-autonomous vehicles already rely on popular algorithms such as a “multitask deep neural network” to navigate travel using numerous high-resolution cameras feeding constant, real-time information to its system. In one situation, researchers estimated that if an autonomous vehicle used 10 deep neural networks analyzing imagery from 10 cameras while driving just a single hour, it would generate 21.6 million inferences per day. Extrapolate that for 1 billion vehicles, and you get… 21.6 quadrillion inferences. 

“To put that into perspective, all of Facebook’s data centers worldwide make a few trillion inferences each day (1 quadrillion is 1,000 trillion),” explains MIT.

Suffice to say, these are serious hurdles that will need clearing if the automotive industry wants to continue its expansions into self-driving technology. EVs are key to our sustainable future, but self-driving versions  could end up adding to the energy crisis.

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There are a multitude of wonderful aspects about electric vehicles—they have a low carbon footprint, are pretty easy to maintain compared to gas guzzlers, and affordable options seem to be expanding. But, just like most solutions, they come with drawbacks—when an EV gets in a crash, it can be more expensive and more destructive than a typical accident. 

One reason why an EV crash can be so disastrous is their weight. To get an electric car from place to place requires energy that utilizes batteries. And for cars that can handle a lot of range and power, those batteries add up. For instance, a GMC Hummer EV weighs over 9,000 pounds, around 2,900 of which is just batteries. Similar distinctions exist between the electric and ICE (internal combustion engine) versions of the Ford F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E, Volvo XC40 EV, and RAV4 EV. These electric versions may have lost the need for gasoline—but they’ve taken on some serious weight in return.  

The startling difference between EVs and their ICE counterparts was the focus of a keynote speech at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting on Wednesday from National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy.

“The U.S. transportation sector accounts for the largest portion of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and I firmly believe it is a human right to breathe clean air,” she said. “But we have to be careful that we aren’t also creating unintended consequences: more death on our roads.”​  

[Related: The 3 most exciting automotive reveals from CES 2023]

These concerns aren’t particularly new, at least when it comes to concerns about heavy vehicles in general. As far back as 2011 Michael Anderson, a University of California professor of economics, published a study that found that being hit by a car 1,000 lbs heavier than your own results in a 47 percent increase in the probability of your fatality. 

Nowadays, when there are not only big cars but big electric cars on the road, it can be worrisome for drivers in small cars, whether they are electric or gasoline powered. “What matters is less the average weight than the heterogeneity,” Anderson told Bloomberg last year. “There could be a window where it’s pretty unsafe to be driving (small, gas-powered vehicles) and getting into multi-vehicle accidents.”

Research is already underway to make EV batteries lighter, denser, and safer. Nevertheless, it’s crucial that policymakers, corporations, and consumers are aware of the risks that EVs pose to everyone on the road.

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Government incentives might encourage you to add another goal to your new year’s resolutions in 2023: reducing your carbon footprint. Starting this year, Americans can take advantage of a stream of tax credits to make their homes, cars, and businesses more sustainable thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The new legislation narrowly passed Congress after a lengthy political battle in the Senate last August. Considered one of President Biden’s signature achievements, the $440 billion package provides money for clean energy and lowers drug costs for older people, among other things. The government plans to pay for the credits through raising taxes on corporations that make over $1 billion in profit per year, taxing stock buybacks and investing in the Internal Revenue Services to catch tax cheats. If all works out as planned, the package will actually bring in $300 billion extra dollars, which will go towards paying off government debt.

Climate policy experts like Rachel Cleetus, the policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, see the IRA as the stimulus the country needs to make America’s energy infrastructure more sustainable, even if it’s just an initial step to meeting emission reduction goals. Cleetus says the law is the culmination of years of work.

“It’s a moment of relief, more than anything else,” she says. “Clean energy is already so competitive in the marketplace, here in the US and around the world, and this will really tip the scales in favor of accelerating that momentum around renewable energy, wind, solar, etc.”

With a receipt and tax form, consumers can save up to thousands of dollars on everything from electric cars to solar panels to two-pane windows. As you take stock of your sustainability resolutions this year, review how to apply for IRA credits.

“By being proactive, consumers can have a plan to make the most cost-effective upgrades for their specific housing and local policy circumstances once IRA funding is made available,” says Dan Esposito, a senior policy analyst at the an energy and climate policy think tank, Energy Innovation.

What are the tax credits?

There are two main buckets of credits you might qualify for: electric vehicle credits and home improvement credits. The first is purchasing an electric vehicle. To reap maximum benefits from the credits, you’ll want to make sure that it complies with a long list of technical and trade manufacturing requirements, like making sure the vehicle’s final assembly was in a US facility. 

Consumers should pay special attention to electric vehicle credits because they will most likely give buyers “the biggest bang for their buck,” Esposito wrote in an email to PopSci. A new electric vehicle can qualify for up to a $7,500 credit and used vehicles could be $4,000. (You can find more details about IRA tax credits from electric vehicles in our guide.) 

“The tax credits for electric vehicles are generally most impactful in terms of reducing one’s climate footprint, as the average US passenger vehicle emits roughly 60 percent more greenhouse gases than the average US home using natural gas,” he says. “However, the [exact] climate benefit depends on several factors, such as the vehicle you currently have (hybrid vs. gas guzzler), how often you drive, the climate you live in, and your home’s insulation,” Esposito writes.  

[Related: Check before you buy: Here are the new EVs that qualify for the clean vehicle tax credit]

The second bucket of IRA credits can be collected by reducing your home’s emissions through switching to renewable energy and making it more energy efficient. Consumers can save money on a range of products designed to reduce their home’s reliance on fossil fuels. You can get money for putting a solar panel on your roof. You can also get money from buying energy efficient products like two-pane windows that better insulate your house. You can also receive a $300 tax credit for purchasing a heat pump, instead of the typical furnace or energy inefficient air conditioners that most Americans own. 

If you plan to replace both the furnace and an air conditioning unit, then the tax credit for heat pumps could be worthwhile as well. How much you actually get back in credits, however, will vary from house to house—wiring might need to be upgraded or a heat pump designed to tolerate colder climates. “The timing of when these credits will become available will vary by state, with state energy offices set to play the dominant role in facilitating their rollout,” Esposito writes. “In the meantime, homeowners can assess the state of their house to determine which upgrades to seek out in the coming years.”

While renters might be locked out of some credits that require home ownership, they are still eligible for many incentives. It might be worth it to make the long-term investments if they plan to stay in their rental space for a year or more, Cleetus says.

[Related: How heat pumps can help fight global warming]

“The question for renters is obviously, how long are you going to be in a place? And is that something that you and your landlord want to split the cost?” she says. “In some cases, you can recoup the cost within a year, so even if you’re renting for just a year, it might make sense to do it.”

For example, it might make sense to purchase a more energy efficient air conditioner that will save you money on heating and cooling bills in the long run. And with the insulation-related tax credits, you can recoup the cost faster, perhaps in a year or two, than you would otherwise, according to Cleetus.

What to know before filing for the credits

Consumers should research what tax credits they can take advantage of before they buy any green products, says Susan Allen, senior manager for tax practice and ethics with the American Institute of Certified Professional Accountants (CPA). 

The amount of money you get will differ depending on your income, the number of dependents you have, and if you rent or own your home, so it’s important to do your research before buying anything that could have a tax credit or an upfront discount, Cleetus and Allen say.

“Planning before you buy helps you make the most informed decision on the ultimate savings you can accomplish,” Allen says. “If you can work with a CPA tax or financial planner, wonderful. They can help guide you and maybe save a lot of time and headache while you might be trying to navigate it.”

One of the best ways to make sure you can cash in on the credits is to ask the manufacturer before you make a purchase, Allen says. Car dealers will be aware of which vehicles qualify for the credits and appliance companies that manufacture electric stoves or other green products will likely know how much you can save. 

Cleetus says stores should start adopting labels that indicate if a product is eligible for tax credits. “That’s the kind of thing that will be really impactful, so that people don’t have to search,” she says. 

[Related: The Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS could kick US climate policy back into action]

If you don’t have an accountant, you can also take advantage of a number of government guides, Allen and Cleetus say. Consumers can refer to the White House’s interactive clean energy website, which helps users determine what credits are available to them. The Department of Energy published a list of the credits people can save specifically on green energy and energy-efficient household appliances. The Internal Revenue Services details the cars eligible for electric vehicle credits. For those who want a more thorough breakdown of the credits, the White House also published a 183-page guidebook. And further guidance is still coming out, Cleetus says. 

And while the tax credits can help you save money on clean energy investments, the IRA doesn’t quite live up to what the country promised during global climate negotiations.The US pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030. The package aims to reduce emissions by about 40 percent. “It’s not enough, for sure. From a science perspective, we know we have to go further, faster,” Cleetus says. 

Still, the IRA is a vital step in accelerating the nationwide transition to clean energy infrastructure. “It’s important to think about this in a holistic way,” Cleetus says. “These tax credits will go a long way towards many, many households lowering their carbon footprint. But they’re also part of a broader system that has to shift.”

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