Sigh, we see the same thing over and over again. Electric cars start to make inroads and then the automotive industry tries to cut them off at the knees. The shortsightedness and self-sabotage is truly stunning.
It's particularly disappointing to see Toyota, which was a global leader for such a long time in hybrids, fail to take up electric vehicles.
While I understand the need to protect domestic workers and businesses, it absolutely sucks that it comes at the expense of more affordable sustainability options.
"#Ethiopia plans to plant 5 billion trees in 2024 as it seeks to foster #ClimateChange mitigation as the country faces extreme environmental events including drought and torrential rains.
Over 90% of the country’s estimated 110 million-strong population obtain energy from biomass, but unsustainable harvest from natural forests resulted in the widening of the gap between supply and demand of forest."
#Ethiopia has a population of 120 million, and 1.3 million cars. They plan to import only #ElectricCars
"The groundbreaking and ambitious proposal is a stark departure from the rest of the world, as many are waiting years to halt the sale of cars that run on dirty energy sources."
One hurdle to driving an electric vehicle is range anxiety. The Indiana Department of Transportation and researchers from Purdue University are jointly addressing the fear of losing power on the road by installing underground copper coils on a stretch of highway. The coils will provide power to e-vehicles driving past. “Wouldn’t it really be something if we could just drive over the road and catch your charge for your vehicle as you drive across it?” INDOT’s Blake Dollier recently told Inside Climate News. Read their article on this test that could eventually put a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. https://flip.it/DH_d3j#Science#Technology#ElectricCars#ClimateChange
The guys at Jiffy Lube were tickled to see a Nissan Leaf #EV drive up. They don't service many. But I had to get the coolant drained and replaced after someone topped it off with windshield wiper fluid.
Not sure what to think about Toyota as they seem to go around everything expect #bev cars. Their obession to #hydrogen cars is one thing (even if thermodynamics says no) but they have also worked on cold fusion in late 1990s. Would they have put that effort on battery development and we might have sensible electric cars instead of oversized suvs.
Local clinic has a newly build multi-storey car park. It is publicly available and open 24h.
It has 51 22kW #EV charging stations, which is simply amazing, but I fail to see the target audience for those!
a day ticket is 18EUR (so that adds to the charging price) and even if you stomach that, there is a blocking fee of 10ct/min after 4h. 🥴
What is the point of a blocking fee when (roughly) every second spot has a charger and can also be used by gas cars???
Does anyone else find these Tesla Cybertruck off-roading fails as hilarious as I do? I've been watching a few videos and it's a horrible off road vehicle according to those driving it. A month ago it was videos of the Cybertruck beating all takers in dry pavement drag races.
So is the Tesla Cybertruck built for on road street racing and not off-roading like advertised?
The #EU seems to have thrown the UK's #electriccars sector a lifeline with a proposal (responding to representations by industry & UK Govt.) to delay the 10% duty of EV exports to the EU for three (more) years.
Under the post-#brexit trade deal cars with batteries made outside the EU or UK would have had the duty imposed from Jan 1st.
Of course, whether this window will give the sector time to build sufficient UK #battery capacity to then avoid the duty when imposed is another issue!
Shout out to the Porsche Taycan owner plugged into the free charging at Sainsbury's Longstone in Edinburgh with a thick layer of frost over all the windows. Doing a big Christmas shop, right?! #ElectricCars
Meanwhile in the #automotive sector, #China's car exports have (for the first time) by-passed their imports.... no doubt reflecting the growing popularity of their relatively cheap #electriccars.
Its a little bit of an echo of the start of the great ramping up of Japanese car exports... at the start Japan's cars were treated as a joke, but no-one's been laughing for decades.
Are we about to see the same transformation of China's #cars?
If you own an #electric MG you may know the answer!