Weekly-ish News - Episode 21 (July 7, 2021)

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Sandy Munro talks about the Mach-E door.

Electric Vehicles:

Lordstown Motors' CEO and CFO have both resigned. So that's promising.

Unsurprisingly, stocks immediately dropped by about 20% and has not recovered.

Audi will only sell electric vehicles starting in 2033, will launch only electric models after 2026.

I said Audi is pretty small, this isn't strictly true, but they're like 10th in global production so it's kinda true. Sorry for the mild hyperbole.

VW will only sell EVs in Europe starting between 2033-2035, the U.S. and China later on.

We have a closer look at the Kia EV6 if you're interested in such things.

NREL Report analyzes the state of charging infrastructure in the U.S.:

NREL’s 2017 National Plug-In Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Analysis estimated how much public and workplace charging infrastructure would be required in the United States to meet charging needs for a central scenario in which 15 million light-duty plug-in electric vehicles(PEVs) are on the road by 2030 (601,000 Level 2 and 27,500 DC fast EVSE) (Wood et al. 2017). Based on this analysis, about 63.5% and 14.3% of the necessary DC fast and Level 2 EVSE, respectively, have been installed as of Q4. However, in Q4, the number of DC fast EVSE and Level 2 EVSE per 1,000 PEVs currently on the road was 10.7 and 52.5 respectively, compared with NREL’s projected need of 1.8 and 40.1, respectively. This indicates that infrastructure development is keeping up with, and even surpassing, forecasted needs. It is important to note, however, that the majority (54.2%) of public DC fast EVSE in the Station Locator are on the Tesla network and are therefore only readily accessible to Tesla drivers.DC Fast ChargersLevel 2 Chargers54.2% of public DC Fast Chargers are Tesla-only.afdc.energy.gov/stations/

 

Deployment:

St. Louis has deployed 18 new all-electric transit buses.

Each bus costs $1.33mDiesel buses very roughly cost around $500kOperational costs are expected to be $0.59/miThey also estimate they'll save 100-160 tons of CO2 per year with the new buses.

Moscow plans to only purchase electric buses from now on.

Over the next 4 years, they intend to purchase 2,675 new electric busesFully electric by 2032By the end of 2021 they will have 1,000 electric buses on the road.

Zarazoga, Spain will be deploying 68 all-electric transit buses over the next couple of years.

They're fleet is comprised of 470 vehicles, 111 of which are hybrids, and 4 are electric.

New York City is deploying 7 electric trash trucks.

Not a huge amount of detail, but this does follow a pilot project New York started in 2020.

Miami-Dade County will deploy 75 new Proterra electric buses over the next couple of years.

They already have 33 and are acquiring 42 more.

 

Energy:

Catholics are choosing cremation over burial, and some solar developers are taking advantage of unused cemetery space for solar installations.

A non-profit is plugging abandoned (orphaned) gas wells across the U.S.

Funding is coming from private donations, payments from oil and gas companies, and similar sources.It costs around $30k/site.They are on track to plug a couple dozen more this year.Each well is equivalent to taking upwards of 500 cars off the road.Their website.