In the UK in the first half of 2019, hybrids and battery electric cars accounted for over 6 per cent of all registrations. Dept. of Transport figures (in percentages) were as follows:- 2019 Q1 66.6 (Petrol) 27.2 (Diesel) 4.0 (Hybrid Electric) 1.2 (Hybrid plug-in) 1.0 (Battery Electric) 2019 Q2 65.6 (Petrol) 27.7 (Diesel) 4.5 (Hybrid Electric) [...]
If you wanted to invest $100 billion in fuel for cars, would you be better off buying crude oil or building wind and solar farms? In a recent report BNP Paribas is clear: crude oil would need to sell at $10 - $20 per barrel to match the energy obtained from the wind and solar [...]
No-one can deny that profound change is on its way in the motor industry: electricity, batteries and launch of numerous electric versions of new cars are the stuff of daily discourse. But the Formula E Championship for electric cars, as distinct from the Formula 1 Championship for high performance motor cars, would seems to have [...]
In June 2018 BP announced that it was purchasing Chargemaster, the UK’s largest electric vehicle charging company, for £130 million. That seemed quite a lot to pay for a company with an annual turnover of £12 million and a gross profit of less than £4 million, though BP is not short of money. The company [...]
In the summer, the press gave prominence to the Mayor of London’s announcement that in 2019 London would see the creationof the largest double-decker electric bus fleet in Europeas 68 new electric double-deckers came into service, thus increasing the number of electric buses ten-fold. But, in a sense, these clean buses are only a means [...]
Given the recent news stories about Tesla, this is perhaps a good moment to try to assess how far the electric car has come and whether it needs to travel further before the “electric revolution” can really be said to have arrived. One of the issues is that of overall perspective. For example, Norway has [...]
At an Oxford Energy event on 1 May Andreas Löhrke, Head of R&D High Performance Powertrain Components at BMW, talked about his company’s plans for electric vehicles. Mr Löhrke is based in Oxford, where the company will build the electric Mini, and where it is involved with McLaren and the UK government’s Advanced Propulsion Centre [...]
Electric cars were at the forefront of the Chinese Motor show, which started on Wednesday 25 April in Beijing. News about new models was accompanied by a flurry of announcements about future Government regulation of what is now the largest car market in the world. (Figures from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) show [...]
By James Bradbury, former General Manager Chloride EV Systems Around the turn of the last century, some of the earliest road vehicles were battery powered. But eventually the flexibility and performance of internal combustion engines proved superior. However low-speed electric vehicles continued to play a role in niche markets, such as door-to-door milk delivery, where [...]
Electric cars (EVS) are increasingly prominent in the media and elsewhere. But while the percentage increases in numbers look impressive, the current absolute numbers suggest that there is still a long way to go before electric cars have a substantial market share. Parochially, in the period April to June 2017, 726,000 new vehicles were registered [...]