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UCLA now has the first zero-emission, all-electric mobile surgical instrument lab
Electrification in the automotive industry isn’t just about consumer cars: There are plenty of commercial and specialist vehicles that are prime candidates for EVs, including in the healthcare industry. Take the new UCLA mobile surgical lab developed by Winnebago, for instance — it’s a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle that will move back and forth between two UCLA campuses, collecting, sterilizing and repairing surgical instruments for the medical staff there.
Why is that even needed? The usual process is sending out surgical instruments for this kind of service by a third-party, and it’s handled in a dedicated facility at a significant annual cost. UCLA Health Center estimates that it can save as much as $750,000 per year using the EV lab from Winnebago instead.
The traveling lab can operate for around eight hours, including round-trips between the two hospital campuses, or for a total distance traveled of between 85 and 125 miles on a single charge of its battery, depending on usage. It also offers “the same level of performance, productivity and compliance” as a lab in a fixed-location building, according to Winnebago.
Aside from annual savings on operating costs, UCLA also got some discounts toward the purchase of the lab from a few grant programs, including the Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (an admitted mouthful, but it does have its own acronym luckily — HVIP). These programs all encourage the adoption of electric vehicles through financial incentives that help defray the upfront costs, which is yet another good reason for industries like healthcare to look at EVs as a way to not only reduce costs long term, but upfront as well.
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The 2020 Chevy Bolt EV now has a 259-mile range thanks to some cell chemistry tinkering
The 2020 Chevy Bolt EV now has 259 miles of range, a 9% increase from previous year models of the electric hatchback, according to the EPA.
To get there, the company focused on cell chemistry, not the battery pack. The GM brand did not add more battery cells or change the battery pack or the way it is integrated into the vehicle structure, a spokesperson confirmed.
Instead, Chevrolet’s battery engineering team made what the company described as “impactful changes to the cell chemistry.” The changes to the cell chemistry allowed the team to improve the energy of the cell electrodes, and ultimately enabled them to squeeze more range out of the battery.
The increase pushes the 2020 Chevy Bolt ahead of the Kia Niro and the standard range plus variant of the Tesla Model 3, with 239 and 240 miles of range, respectively. Other versions of the Model 3, the long-range and performance, have a much longer 310-mile range. It’s also just one mile better than the 258-mile range Hyundai Kona EV. Nissan Leaf Plus, the laggard in the group, can travel 226 miles on a single charge.
That might not seem like much. But in this small, yet growing pool of electric vehicle models, jumping from 238 to 259 miles could help Chevrolet sell more Bolt EVs next year. It could also cannibalize sales this year.
The electric vehicle has never been a top seller for the GM brand, particularly compared to its top-selling SUVs and trucks. It has beat out some of its other Chevy models and sales are high enough for the company to stick with the compact hatchback for now.
GM delivered 23,297 Chevy Bolt EVs in 2017, the first model year of the electric vehicle. But the following year, deliveries fell 22%, to 18,019. Sales have rebounded in the first half of the year.
The 2020 model year, which will be offered in two new exterior colors, is expected to arrive in dealerships later this year. The base price of the electric vehicle is $37,495, which includes destination and freight charges. Tax, title, license and dealer fees are excluded.
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Shell’s first Greenlots electric vehicle fast charger lands in Singapore
Royal Dutch Shell, the energy giant known for its fossil fuel production and hundreds of Shell gas stations, is creeping into the electric vehicle-power business.
The company’s first DC fast charger from its newly acquired company Greenlots launched Monday at a Shell gas station in Singapore. Greenlots, an EV charging startup acquired by Shell in January, installed the charger. This is the first of 10 DC fast chargers that Greenlots plans to bring to Shell service stations in Singapore over the next several months.
The decision to target Singapore is part of Greenlots’ broader strategy to provide EV charging solutions across all applications throughout Asia and North America, the company said. Both Shell and Greenlots have a presence in Singapore. Greenlots, which is based in Los Angeles, was founded in Singapore; and Shell is one of Singapore’s largest foreign investors.
Singapore has been promoting the use of electric vehicles, particularly for car-sharing and ride-hailing platforms. The island city-state has been building up its EV infrastructure to meet anticipated demand as ride-hailing drivers and commercial fleets switch to electric vehicles.
Greenlots was backed by Energy Impact Partners, a cleantech investment firm, before it was acquired by Shell. The company, which combines its management software with the EV charging hardware, has landed some significant customers in recent years, notably Volkswagen. Greenlots is the sole software provider to Electrify America, the entity set up by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with U.S. regulators over its diesel emissions cheating scandal.
Clarification: Shell has other EV chargers. These are the first through its newly acquired company Greenlots.
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Nissan and EVgo to add 200 fast chargers as more electric vehicles hit US roads
Nissan and EVgo said Tuesday they will install another 200 DC fast chargers in the United States to support the growing number of consumers who are buying electric vehicles, including the new Nissan Leaf e+ that came to market earlier this year.
The 100 kilowatt DC fast-charging stations will have both CHAdeMO and CCS connectors, making them accessible to more EV drivers. The inclusion of both charger connectors is logical; it’s also notable for Nissan, once the primary advocates for CHAdeMO chargers.
The announcement builds off of the companies’ six-year partnership, which included building out a corridor of EV chargers along Interstate 95 on the East Coast, as well as between Monterey, Calif., and Lake Tahoe.
Nissan says it has installed more than 2,000 quick-charge connectors across the country since 2010.
Plans to add another 200 fast chargers follows the launch of the 2019 Nissan Leaf e+. The Nissan Leaf e+, which came to the U.S. and Canada this spring, has a range of 226 miles and fast-charging capability.
This new version of the Leaf all-electric hatchback has 40% more range than other versions thanks to a 62 kilowatt-hour battery pack. That 226-mile range puts the Leaf e+ just under the Chevy Bolt EV, which has a 238-mile range, the Kia Niro EV with 239 miles and the Tesla Model 3 standard range plus with 240 miles.
“Given the tremendous driver response to the 2019 long-range all-electric LEAF, Nissan and EVgo will accelerate fast charging by committing to a multi-year charger construction program that will continue to expand fast-charging options for EV drivers across the country,” Aditya Jairaj, director, EV Sales and Marketing, Nissan North America said in a statement.
The companies also plan to partner on a marketing campaign to sell consumers on the benefits of EVs, and for Nissan, hopefully persuade more to buy its Nissan Leaf Plus. Nissan’s July sales figures were down compared to the same month last year, a slump that has affected the Leaf, as well.
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Known for its electric scooters, Gogoro moves toward its future as a mobility platform
Since the launch of its first electric scooter in 2015, Gogoro co-founder and CEO Horace Luke has frequently been asked when the startup is going to expand beyond Taiwan. In its home country, Gogoro’s two-wheel vehicles, with their distinctive swappable battery system, are now the top-selling electric scooters.
But Luke says the company has always seen itself as a platform company, with the ultimate goal of providing a turnkey solution for energy-efficient vehicles. Now with the launch of GoShare*, its new vehicle-sharing platform, and partnerships with manufacturers such as Yamaha, Gogoro is ready to go global.
Founded by Luke, HTC’s former chief innovation officer, and chief technology officer Matt Taylor in 2011, Gogoro develops most of its technology in-house, including scooter motors, telematics units, backend servers and software. GoShare’s pilot program will launch next month in Taoyuan City, where Gogoro’s research and development center is located, with the goal of expanding with partners into cities around the world over the next year, starting in Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia.
“Gogoro has always been out with a thesis that we will be a platform enabler,” Luke told Extra Crunch during an interview in the company’s Taipei City headquarters. “Now you’ve seen the transformation of the company. Doing something this big, like what Gogoro is doing, takes time.”
Since the release of Gogoro’s first Smartscooter in 2015, the company says it has become the best-selling brand of electric two-wheel vehicles in Taiwan, holding a 17 percent share of the country’s vehicle market, including gas vehicles.
Last year, the company began licensing its technology to manufacturers Yamaha, Aeon and PGO to produce scooters that run on Gogoro’s batteries and charging infrastructure. It also has a partnership with Coup, the European electric-scooter sharing startup that plans to increase its fleet to more than 5,000 scooters on the streets of Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Tübingen this year, and is seeking similar deals with other vehicle-sharing services, as well as local governments that want to reduce traffic and pollution (the GoShare pilot program is being launched in collaboration with Taoyuan City’s government).
GoShare’s platform is meant to be a “very robust and cost-effective, very worry-free solution for municipalities and entrepreneurs,” Luke says. Parts of the system can be licensed separately or packaged as a turnkey solution that can be deployed in as little as two weeks.
The company describes GoShare as a “mobility solution.” When asked if this means the platform can be used for other electric vehicles, including cars, Luke says “just think of us as batteries and a motor.”
“It’s just like computers and processing ram,” he adds. “It can be any form factor. It just happens to be that the two-wheel form factor is the one we’re working on and focusing on at the moment.”
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Ford and Volkswagen team up on EVs, with Ford the first outside automaker to use VW’s MEB platform
Automakers Ford and Volkswagen have announced a partnership today that covers a number of areas, including autonomy (via a new investment by VW in Argo AI) and collaboration on development of electric vehicles. This EV tie-up will see Ford use Volkswagen’s MEB platform, which it’s using as the core of its forthcoming line of consumer electric vehicles, to develop “at least one” fully electric car for the European market that’s designed to be produced and sold at scale.
Volkswagen’s MEB is a big bet by the German automaker, meant to provide for all-electric models what the MQB platform before it did for the automaker’s internal combustion engine cars. The idea behind these platforms is that they are modular and flexible enough to cover a range of different vehicle types, while ensuring that there’s enough of a repeatable core that the cost of redevelopment from model to model is greatly decreased.
The MEB platform is already planned for use across a number of announced vehicles to be released by VW and VW-group automakers, including Audi, SEAT, Skoda and more between 2019 and 2023. Ford will be the first announced automaker outside of the Volkswagen Group to make use of the MEB. The automakers specify that there are only concrete plans for one model at the moment, but the option to expand that to more pending how that initial collaboration goes is baked into the deal.
Ford also plans to deliver more than 600,000 cars for the European market based on the MEB architecture over the course of six years for the first model alone, and the automakers note in a press release that there are considerations for a second Ford model to be developed based on the platform. Ford says in the release that this is just part of its overall, ongoing commitment to EVs, and that its work on crossover and other imported U.S. market models, including Mustang and Explorer, for Europe will continue. Both automakers will also remain independently and separately owned.
The general details of a partnership between the two automakers was reported as in the works by Reuters earlier this month, but is now confirmed as official by both automakers. VW also previously announced that German startup e.Go would be developing a vehicle based on the MEB, but details of that plan are not known and Ford is the first company that actually makes and delivers automobiles to make use of the Volkswagen Group tech in a model with concrete release timing and scale production intent.
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Bosch launches cloud-connected battery management to extend the life of EV batteries
Bosch is bringing to market a new cloud-connected software service to manage and monitor the battery life of electric vehicles.
“Bosch is connecting electric-vehicle batteries with the cloud. Its data-based services mean we can substantially improve batteries’ performance and extend their service life,” said Dr. Markus Heyn, member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH, in a statement.
The new connectivity will enable companies to remotely monitor and manage battery status to reduce wear and tear on the batteries by up to 20%, according to Bosch .
By gathering real-time data from batteries on the speed at which they’re charging; the number of charge cycles they’ve undergone; stress from rapid acceleration and deceleration; and ambient temperature, Bosch can optimize recharging and prompt drivers with updates on how to extend their battery life, according to the company.
The first customer for this new cloud-connected service is the Chinese ride-hailing giant, DiDi, which will deploy a fleet of Bosch’s software-enabled electric vehicles in Xiamen.
The tools are not only prescriptive, but predictive, allowing fleet operators to determine when a battery might wear out and provide optimal information on when to replace aging batteries to ensure the best performance from a vehicle, Bosch said in a statement.
“Powerful batteries with long service live will make electromobility more viable,” said Heyn, in a statement.
Bosch sees three advantages in these insights. They’re able to reduce the aging of batteries, improve maintenance and repair times and, by managing the recharging process, can ensure that batteries don’t permanently lose performance and capacity.
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Volkswagen launches WeShare all-electric car sharing service
Making good on plans revealed last year to debut an EV-exclusive car sharing service, Volkswagen is actually launching its fleet for customers – debuting WeShare, a new shared service similar to Car2Go or GM’s Maven, but featuring only all-electric vehicles. Initially, WeShare will be available only in Berlin, where it’s launching today with 1,500 Volkswagen e-Golf cars making up the on-demand rental fleet.
The plan is to add 500 more cars to the available population by early next year, specifically the e-up! electric city company car, and then it’ll also play host to the brand new ID.3 fully electric car when that’s officially launched. VW is still targeting the middle of next year for a street date for that vehicle, which is part of its all-new ID line of vehicles designed from the ground-up based on its next-generation electric vehicle platform. In terms of new geographies, WeShare will look to launch In Prague (in partnership with VW Group sub-brand Skoda) and also in Hamburg, both some time in 2020.
WeShare has a coverage area that includes the Berlin city centre and a little bit beyond the Ringbahn train line that encircles it. The cars are available in a “free-floating” arrangement, meaning they’ll be free to pickup and park wherever public parking is available. This one-way model, which is the one used by competitor Car2go, is distinct from the round-trip style rentals preferred by Zipcar, for instance. It’s more convenient for customers, but more of a headache for operators, who have to worry about ensuring cars remain in the rental zone and are parked appropriately and legally.
WeShare will also take responsibility for recharging the vehicles as needed, and will do so using the public charging network that’s available in Berlin, but later on it will seek to incentive actual users of the system to charge up when vehicles need it.
Car sharing, especially one-way, has had a hit-and-miss track record to date. Car2go shuttered operations in Toronto, for instance, due to incompatibility with city operations regarding parking in the case of Toronto. VW notes in a release that in Berlin, however, the number of car sharing users has grown from 180,000 people in 2010 to 2.46 million in early 2019.
Volkswagen also owns and operates a fully-electric ridesharing service called MOIA, which has built its own fit-for-purpose vehicle and which currently operates in Hamburg and Hanover. Last year, VW said the two mobility service operations, which offer very different service models, will work together in future.
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Canoo, the electric vehicle startup formed from Faraday Future’s ashes, seeks $200 million
Less than a month after rebranding as Canoo, the startup electric vehicle company formerly known as Evelozcity is on the hunt for $200 million in new capital.
The startup, which is backed by a clutch of private individuals and family offices hailing from China, Germany and Taiwan, is hoping to line up the new capital from some more recognizable names as it finalizes supply deals with vendors, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s plans.
Canoo is locking in final contracts with its vendors and is going to be in production with prototypes before the end of the year. The company, which will make its vehicles available through a subscription-based model, already has 400 employees and just announced new key hires along with its rebranding.
It’s a quick ramp for a company that only two years ago was struggling to extricate itself from the morass that was Faraday Future.
Canoo began life as Evelozcity back in 2017. It was formed after Stefan Krause, a former executive at BMW and Deutsche Bank, and another former BMW executive, Ulrich Kranz, absconded from Faraday Future amid that company’s struggles.
Reportedly, Krause and Kranz left over repeated clashes with Faraday’s founding team of Jia Yueting, the main investor and shareholder, and Chaoying Deng, according to the Verge.
The situation at Evelozcity became so toxic that after the two men left, Jia accused them of “malfeasance and dereliction of duty.”
The company was launched in secret, but news of its existence came to light after Faraday Future filed a lawsuit accusing the new company of the theft of trade secrets.
Now, Canoo is rounding out its executive team and pushing forward with plans to bring prototype vehicles to market by the end of the year.
Olivier Bellin joined the company as its head of operations from STMicroelectronics, a Geneva-based semiconductor company where he served as chief financial officer of the company’s U.S. operations.
Former president of BMW manufacturing Clemens Schmitz-Justen also joined the company as its head of manufacturing — overseeing the contract manufacturing strategy, which will see the company outsource production of vehicles in the U.S. and China.
Canoo said that it intends to use a modular “skateboard” approach to its vehicle design where different form factors can rest atop its chassis. The company touts that its different cabins can be tailored to suit the needs of different customers — ranging from commuter vehicles, public or group transportation, delivery vehicles and private cars.
The company is also crafting its user interface and subscription services around its passengers and renters. To that end, Canoo has brought on James Cox, a former Uber executive in charge of product operations for the ride-hailing business’ rider application, who will be developing digital products for the company’s initial customers, according to a March statement.
Initially, Canoo will target customers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, with additional plans to expand to San Diego and Seattle when the company brings its commercial vehicles to market in 2021.
Canoo plans to use blockchain technology to secure its subscription services and ensure an asset-light approach to development by outsourcing its manufacturing in the U.S. and China, according to one person with knowledge of the company’s plans.
With the development of that subscription model, the car company is taking a page from the playbook other automakers are beginning to toy with. Despite the fact that Cadillac cancelled its Book subscription service late last year, companies like BMW, Volvo and Porsche have all pressed on with their experiments with subscriptions.
As it rolls out its subscription service, Canoo is targeting a lower price point than its competitors for its fully electric and “autonomous-ready” vehicles.
At the end of the day the company believes that there are more than 35 cities around the world that are suitable for its offering.
And now that the lawsuits are over and Faraday Future continues to wobble, it seems that plans for Canoo are gathering steam.
The rebranding effort, and the company’s new name itself, is indicative of its goals.
“We picked Canoo because it sounds distinctive, looks cool and creates a feeling of both relaxation and movement,” said Krause, in a statement. “For thousands of years, a canoe has been a simple, sustainable transportation device used all over the world.”
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Sila Nano’s battery tech is now worth over $1 billion with Daimler partnership and $170 million investment
Sila Nanotechnologies and its battery materials manufacturing technology are now worth more than $1 billion.
The company, which announced a $170 million funding led by Daimler and a partnership with the famed German automaker, started building out its first production lines for its battery materials last year. That first line is capable of producing the material to supply the equivalent of 50 megawatts of lithium-ion batteries, according to Sila Nano’s chief executive officer Gene Berdichevsky.
That construction, made on the heels of a $70 million investment round, is now going to be expanded with the new cash from Daimler and 8VC along with previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Chengwei Capital, Matrix Partners, Siemens Next47 and Sutter Hill Ventures.
Berdichevsky would not comment on how much production capacity would increase, but did say that the company’s battery materials would find their way into consumer devices before the end of 2020. That means the potential for longer-lasting batteries in smart watches, earbuds and health trackers, initially.
From its headquarters in Alameda, Calif., Sila Nanotechnologies has developed a silicon-based anode to replace graphite in lithium-ion batteries. The company claims that its materials can improve the energy density of batteries by 20 percent.
“If you can increase energy density by 20 percent… you can use 20 percent fewer cells and each pack can cost 20 percent less,” says Berdichevsky. “The subtext of it is that it is the way to drive price of energy storage down. And that’s the way for the electric vehicle market to sand more and more on its own.”
That kind of cost reduction is what brought BMW and Daimler to partner with the company — and what led to the massive funding round and the company’s newfound unicorn status.
“Our valuation is over $1 billion dollars now,” Berdichevsky says.
Image courtesy of Sila Nanotechnologies
For Daimler, the materials that Sila Nanotechnologies are developing will give the company’s commitment to electrification a much needed boost.
Mercedes-Benz has plans to electrify its entire product suite by 2022, the company has said. That means Daimler has to accelerate its production of electrified alternatives to its fuel-powered fleet — everything from its 48-volt electrical system (the EQ Boost), to its plug-in hybrids (EQ-Power) and the more than 10 fully electric vehicles powered by batteries or fuel cells. The company is projecting that between 15 percent and 25 percent of its total sales will be electric by 2025 — depending on customer preferences, infrastructure development and the regulatory environment in each of the markets in which it sells vehicles, the company said.
In all, Mercedes-Benz cars has committed to investing €10 billion ($11.3 billion) in the production of vehicles and another $1.3 billion into a global battery production network. The global battery production network of Mercedes-Benz Cars will in the future consist of nine factories on three continents.
“We are on our way to a carbon free future mobility. While our all-new EQC model enters the markets this year we are already preparing the way for the next generation of powerful battery electric vehicles,” said Sajjad Khan, executive vice president for Connected, Autonomous, Shared & Electric Mobility, Daimler AG in a statement.
Still, consumers shouldn’t expect to see vehicles with Sila Nano’s technology until at least the mid 2020s, as automakers look to prove that the company’s battery technology meets their quality assurance standards. “The qualification time means there’s many years of work to make sure it is reliable for next 10 to 20 years,” says Berdichevsky. “Our partnership is geared towards mid-2020s production targets, but the qualification is something that takes quite a while.”
The company’s latest round brings its total financing to just under $300 million since its launch in 2011. And as a result of the latest funding, former General Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt will take a seat on the company’s board of directors.
“Advancements in lithium-ion batteries have become increasingly limited, and we are fighting for incremental improvements,” said Immelt. “I’ve seen first-hand that this is a huge opportunity that is also incredibly hard to solve. The team at Sila Nano has not only created a breakthrough chemistry, but solved it in a way that is commercially viable at scale.”
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