An early convert to the idea of an all-electrified lineup, Volvo has taken a slightly different tack to most other automakers as it electrifies its product range. Where most would start off with a big and expensive electric vehicle first, it did the opposite, starting out with small and affordable. That means it's now time for a flagship EV, an all-new three-row SUV called the EX90, which we've driven ahead of US deliveries toward the end of this year.

That's later than Volvo planned, and as you'll see, some EX90 features have fallen even further behind and will need to be enabled via software update in the future. Because while the EX90 is a good demonstration of a new, tech-forward approach to car design, it's also the latest example of automakers adopting the "minimal viable product" approach from the tech sector.

Volvo has developed an all-new platform for larger EVs, which the EX90 will share with other brands within the Geely group, notably the Polestar 3 we drove a few weeks ago. The Volvo is a little longer than the Polestar, and unlike the SUV from the upstart startup, the EX90 is a three-row, with seats for either six or seven depending on whether you opt for a bench or a pair of captain's chairs for the middle row.

In a new white paper, the group notes that boosting efficiency allows for smaller battery sizes, which in turn cuts costs. Most EVs average 2.5 miles per kwh, according to the paper, but the Tesla Model Y averages 3.5 miles per kwh. That's a 40% increase which, assuming similar range, allows for a 40% reduction in battery size that's worth up to $4,800 in cost savings, the ACEEE reasons.

Electric cars are the future, and each year we've seen automakers add more EVs to their lineups. Everyone is working on electric vehicles, from well-established existing manufacturers to new names such as Lucid, Canoo, and Rivian. We've compiled a list of every electric vehicle, from concept to production, that isn't available yet but will be soon.

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I've been thinking over this the last few days, and I do not see a situation where ev charging will ever be profitable enough for businesses to install them at large. I assume most public charging is DC fast charging so I'm talking about that.

Where do you put a charger so that is receives the most amount of use? Well that's easy, wherever gas stations currently are—but that's where the problems start. How many chargers do you install, and at what charging speed?

The theoretical max amount of money you can make in an hour is the charging speed x price/kW. So for a 100kW charger at 50¢/kW you're hard capped at $50/hr. I found a 240kW DC charger on aliexpress for $44,000. Using the 50¢/kW from above it'd take 36 days to break even, assuming 24/7 usage at the theoretical maximum. With a normal usage of around 6 hours total (i'm just throwing numbers out there) that jumps to 146 days. After 10 years of operating you're looking at around $1.2 million or a 2727% return

However, the time to break even grows and the return shrinks with the amount of chargers installed. And this is without factoring in installation costs and the power companies electricity price, which could easily cut that down to a fourth. I also do not see a charger going 10 years without a single repair.

I'm just wondering if i'm missing something here.

The Honda Civic has always been a reliable sort. You can rely on it to be a comfortable daily, a track-ready hot hatch, an economical commuter, and a cheap buy. No, wait. Scratch that last one. A Civic is still affordable, but it’s no longer the cheapest Honda to lease. That crown now belongs to the electric Prologue.

Zeekr, which is a premium brand under China’s Geely, wants to expand its presence in Europe with the upcoming launch of the 7X electric SUV. It’s built on the 800-volt SEA platform shared with many other of the group’s offerings, so it offers plenty of range, performance and tech on top of the fact that it’s quite a good-looking SUV.

It measures 190 inches in length and 76 inches wide, so its footprint is somewhere between the new Porsche Macan EV and the larger Cayenne. Despite the possibility of accommodating a third row of seats with its 116-inch wheelbase, the vehicle will only be available with a two-row configuration and a spacious 21.7 cubic-foot trunk. Occupants inside the vehicle won’t have a problem losing their belongings in one of the vehicle’s 32 storage compartments.

Zeekr hasn’t released official power numbers. It does say the 7X can accelerate from naught to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 3.8 seconds in its highest-powered variant, which probably borrows its 637-horsepower dual-motor powertrain from the three-box Zeekr 007. The 7X’s sedan equivalent also comes in a rear-wheel drive, single-motor flavor with 416 hp.

They also share the same 75 kilowatt-hour and 100 kWh battery packs. The former has a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry that is among the world’s quickest charging, and it requires just 10.5 minutes to go from 10 to 80% charge compared to 15 minutes with the larger pack. It gives the 7X a claimed CLTC range of 376 miles, while the larger battery (most likely the only one offered in Europe) increases the range to 484 miles.

The WLTP range will be much lower, probably around the 300-mile mark, possibly even less.

The 7X’s ADAS systems use a combination of lidar, high-definition cameras and millimeter-wave radars, and the information they gather is processed through a pair of Nvidia Orin-X modules with AI functionality designed specifically for semi-autonomous driving. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chipset, one of the most powerful and advanced in the industry, powers the infotainment system.

Everyone wants a better future, not only for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren. Society is supposed to continue getting better with each passing generation, and we hope that this trend continues far into the future. If anything, we want this to happen faster! In this article, I want to discuss how technologies we’re excited about today can improve society in ways much bigger than most of us think. But, to see these full benefits, we’re going to have to do something most people find a little off-putting.

Clean Energy, Efficient Technology, and Autonomous Machines Can Save A LOT of Time & Effort Let’s start with something most readers can agree with: technology means prosperity. I don’t mean to say that there are no drawbacks and that new technologies don’t ever go wrong, but on average, new technologies save us a lot of trouble over time. Instead of walking, we can drive, ride, or fly. Instead of digging a trench or a ditch, machines can help us do it in a fraction of the time. Now, doing heavy and/or tedious labor is becoming even easier with automation.

We may get to the point where there just isn’t enough human work to go around. Automated factories, automated burger machines, self-driving cars, and such will make many jobs obsolete. Some say that the jobs will be replaced with better jobs, while others think that the jobs aren’t coming back, so we’d better do something else to keep the economy going, like pay out a universal basic income (UBI).

I’m going to sidestep this issue for now, largely because I think that the whole framing of UBI being the answer to automation is a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

Regardless of where you stand on UBI, it’s hard to argue against the idea that cheap, abundant energy that doesn’t hurt us combined with automation massively increases productivity and creates a lot of wealth. Possible social ills aside for now, there’s a lot of value that these technologies unlocks.

GM’s BrightDrop electric commercial vehicle experiment is over—sort of. The vans themselves aren’t going anywhere for now, but the BrightDrop name itself appears to have been … dropped. Instead, the EV commercial vans will be folded into the Chevrolet brand, which has a substantial fleet sales operation.

BrightDrop currently sells two vehicles: the 600 long-wheelbase van and the 400 short-wheelbase van, in front- and all-wheel-drive configurations. Max combined range for all configurations is 164 miles (estimated), and the 600 uses a 165-kWh battery pack with Level 3 fast-charging capabilities of up to 120 kW. We’ve driven one (briefly, and with reduced power output) and found the 600 to be remarkably car-like and comfortable compared to a typical (and typically ancient) step van. The optional Ultium Max Range pack will offer an estimated 272 miles of total combined range, GM says.

In recent months, we’ve seen the automotive industry pivot away from a focus on battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Now, the EV movement faces a unique set of challenges that could come after the rise of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). If people get hooked on PHEVs, we could find ourselves having a tough time getting car buyers to want to move on from “the best of both worlds.” In this article, I want to talk about what some of those challenges are and what we can do to get past them.

The Challenges PHEV Dominance Could Pose First, we need to talk about infrastructure. The cold hard fact is that the federal government simply can’t fund all of the charging stations we’d need for everyone to be able to go electric. The government theoretically could afford it, but the kind of spending that would be needed would fail to get past political hurdles.

The funding for EV charging stations in the Infrastructure Bill wasn’t meant to solve the problem entirely. It was meant to break the Catch-22 where people don’t want EVs because there aren’t enough charging stations, allowing more early mainstream adoption, which in turn would lead to more demand for charging stations. This, it was thought, would lead to more private investment to meet the new demand.

In other words, the Biden folks don’t want to fuel the car. They only want to jump-start it. If the next generation of mainstream electrified vehicles doesn’t need the infrastructure, that could cause the growth of EV infrastructure and BEVs to sputter.

It's hard to know who or what to believe when it comes to the auto industry eventually going all-electric.

Lots of other media outlets, political pundits and EV detractors alike will say that EV sales have completely nose-dives, and the whole attempt at a zero-emission transition was a waste of time. Others say that EV sales are better than ever; a fact backed up with data. A recent study from J.D Power affirms the latter rather than the former—EV sales are definitely up. But interest in, and adoption of, the technology are both slower than expected.

DETROIT -- Jaguar is telling owners of about 3,000 electric SUVs to park them outdoors and away from structures due to the risk of battery fires.

The British automaker is recalling I-Pace SUVs from the 2019 model year, but has not yet developed a final remedy.

As an interim fix, dealers will update the battery energy control computer to limit battery charging to 80% of capacity. The company has issued three previous recalls for the same problem, and all of the SUVs will need the new remedy. The previous recalls updated diagnostic software.

The automaker says in documents posted Thursday by U.S. safety regulators that there have been three fires in the U.S. after previous software updates on the vehicles. No injuries were reported.

“Owners who have previously had their vehicle updated with the improved diagnostic software are under the impression that their vehicle is protected from thermal overload which, for 2019 MY (model year) vehicles, may not be the case,” the documents say.

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The share of electric and hybrid vehicle sales in the United States increased in the second quarter of 2024 (2Q24) after a slight decline in 1Q24. Combined U.S. sales of hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) increased from 17.8% of total new light-duty vehicle (LDV) sales in 1Q24 to 18.7% in 2Q24, according to estimates from Wards Intelligence.

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BEIJING, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab reported improved net profits in the second quarter thanks to its extended market leadership, even though it led a protracted price war with aggressive discounts on its best-selling models. BYD's net profit hit 9.1 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) in the April-June quarter, up 32.8% from a year earlier and its fastest growth since end-2023, while revenue grew 25.9% to 176.2 billion yuan, it said in a stock exchange filing.

Sales of autos and related products accounted for 75.8% of BYD's overall revenue and their gross margin rose to 23.9% in the first half of 2024, up 3.3 percentage points from the same period last year. Gross margin fell to 18.69% in the second quarter from 21.88% the first quarter, per Reuters' calculations based on its fiscal disclosure. BYD has taken a significant lead in the Chinese electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle sector, leveraging its vertical integration strategy by using key components such as batteries made by the company.

It has also expanded its international presence, such as in Europe and Mexico, where it has plans to set up manufacturing. The company is facing a 17% additional tariff for exporting EVs from China to countries in the European Union. "For vehicles priced (in China) under 150,000 yuan ($21,046), BYD holds absolute pricing power because, aside from glass and tires, it manufactures almost everything in-house," said Rosalie Chen, analyst at Third Bridge.