For ten straight months auto sales have fallen in China. April saw another sharp decline of 14.6% compared to the year before. Trefor Moss reports at MarketWatch: Vehicle sales were down 14.6% year over year at 1.98 million, the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on Monday, as concerns over the Chinese economy's growth prospects sapped consumer confidence. Sales had declined 11.3% in the first quarter of 2019, having fallen 12% and 9.6% in the two previous quarters, respectively. Passenger-car sales were down 17.7% in April, while sales of commercial … [Read more...]

Lithium based batteries are the best mass-production batteries in the world today, but they have a nasty habit of exploding. Can engineers solve the batteries' problems or is a new approach needed? Bloomberg's Brian Eckhouse and mark Chediak report: Another lithium-ion battery has exploded, this time at an energy-storage complex in the U.S. At least 21 fires had already occurred at battery projects in South Korea, according to BloombergNEF. But this latest one, erupting on Friday at a facility owned by a Pinnacle West Capital Corp. utility in Surprise, Arizona, marked the first time it has … [Read more...]

Automakers are currently racing to fix one of the most significant problems with electric vehicles, charging times. Ultra fast chargers are available that could add 215 miles of range to a battery in 10 minutes, if today's batteries could handle it. Unfortunately they cannot, and so automakers are looking for solutions. Bloomberg's David Stringer reports: A typical, slow-speed public EV charger offers about 20 miles of driving distance per hour at the plug. The next level up, called a fast charger, can add about 75 miles in 30 minutes, according to Los Angeles-based station operator EVgo … [Read more...]

For the first time ever, electric cars have outsold fossil fueled cars in Norway for a month. In March, 58% of all car sales were of electric vehicles. NPR's Bill Chappell reports: Electric vehicles are now the norm in Norway when it comes to new car sales, accounting for 58 percent of all car sales in March. Tesla's mass market Model 3 was especially popular, accounting for nearly 30 percent of new passenger vehicle sales, the Norwegian Information Council for Road Traffic, or OFV, says. The figures reflect Norway's desire to move away from fossil-fuel vehicles — with help from lucrative … [Read more...]

The Chinese government has signaled a phase out of electric vehicle subsidies that experts are saying will kill off many of the smaller firms in the industry. The country's EV industry has exploded under government support, with 487 manufacturers operating in China last year. Now all that is about to change. Trefor Moss explains in The Wall Street Journal how a mixture of national and local subsidies are to be reduced and eliminated, and what it means for the industry as a whole: Under a Finance Ministry plan released this week, the maximum central-government subsidy for an electric car is … [Read more...]

Batteries have always had problems in extreme temperatures, that why it is interesting to see such surprise at revelations from a AAA study that suggest that electric vehicles perform worse in hot and cold temperatures than they do in milder weather. Lucas Laursen reports for Fortune: Not too hot and definitely not too cold–that’s when electric car batteries work best. “Batteries are like humans,” Anna Stefanopoulou, director of the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute told Wired: they do best at temperatures between 40°F and 115°F. In results that are unlikely to shock the many … [Read more...]

Volvo has purchased a portion of Momentum Dynamics, a company building wireless charging stations for battery powered vehicles. Volvo is trying to gain an edge in what has become a worldwide race among the largest car companies to gain an advantage in the electric powered vehicle market. Kate Beioley reports for the FT that Volvo isn't alone in exploring wireless charging technology. She writes: The Volvo Group Venture Capital AB, a subsidiary of the Volvo Group, said it was investing in the Philadelphia-based company which develops high-power wireless charging systems for trucks, buses and … [Read more...]

Tesla has been forced to cut prices on its Model 3 sedans after missing missing expected deliveries on the vehicles. The price cuts also target an expected loss of demand from the end of federal tax credits for Tesla in 2019. The Wall Street Journal's Tim Higgins reports: Chief Executive Elon Musk had promised to increase sales and production of the Model 3 in the fourth quarter from the third quarter. He spent the final weeks of the quarter urging buyers to take advantage of the $7,500 federal tax credit that phases out for the company this year. Deliveries of the Model 3 in the fourth … [Read more...]

Bloomberg's John Bowker reports on an Axios interview Tesla CEO Elon Musk in which he said that Tesla, at one point, had only a few weeks to live. He writes: Elon Musk has revealed how close Tesla Inc. came to collapse during the frantic and costly effort to ramp up production of the Model 3 sedan: Little more than a couple of months. “The company was bleeding money like crazy, and if we didn’t solve these problems in a very short period of time, we would die,” Musk told the news service Axios in an interview aired Sunday on HBO. When asked how close Tesla was to failing, he replied: “I … [Read more...]

Chinese auto sales were down for the third month in a row in September. The slowdown could be a sign of declining consumer confidence in China, or even worse, the beginning of a slowdown in the economy. Trefor Moss writes in The Wall Street Journal: Auto sales in China fell for a third straight month in September, as the country’s auto sector faces what looks to be its first yearly decline in passenger-car sales in almost three decades. Fragile consumer confidence amid a falling stock market and U.S.-China trade tensions led to weak September results for most auto makers, as overall sales … [Read more...]