evs and hybrids

“The ‘heart of joy’ effectively takes 30 years of experience and blends it into a single control unit,” BMW chief technical officer Frank Weber tells WIRED. “Everything that is driving-performance-related, chassis-control-related, powertrain-related—it’s all integrated into one control unit. If you love the idea of the ultimate driving machine, there are functions in there that are crazy. It’s the same for the infotainment system. To do it properly for your customers, you have to own the critical software stacks and the…

I experienced the City NGP function under XNGP in a P7i in Shanghai, and later in a G6 in Guangzhou. With my second experience I soon realized it was a tale of two cities. In Shanghai it was quite smooth, and at least one of the interventions made was due to me being disoriented rather than the car. In a few other cases it was me being overly cautious.While in Shanghai the system appeared to cut out for no obvious reason only once or twice, this happened far more frequently in Guangzhou. One possible reason for this is…

Chinese automakers are starting to equip electric cars with camera drones. For now, this drone integration is aimed at content creators who want to collect videos of themselves driving. These systems typically enable one-click filming of a moving vehicle, with the action viewable live on the car's interior display as well as recorded for posterity. The flights can also be voice-controlled by the (distracted) driver.The $150,000 Yangwang U8 plug-in hybrid SUV from BYD, the world’s largest maker of electric vehicles, sports…

Every six months, the automotive research company JD Power surveys some 5,000 US electric vehicle owners about their experiences driving their battery-powered cars. The latest edition of this survey, out this week, found that EV’s perennial bugbear is still bugbear-ing. In fact, it’s got worse: Drivers say they are even more dissatisfied with the availability of public charging stations than they were a year ago.In North America, additional charging stations are on their way, thanks in part to a US federally funded…

All these firms seek to capitalize on what Apple recognized a decade ago: The software and connectivity now built into new autos gave tech incumbents a jump on traditional auto-builders. But those advantages haven’t always proven out.Project Titan had plenty of other challenges. High-profile executives from tech companies, tech-inspired automakers like Tesla, and legacy automakers alike joined and then left the program, reportedly frustrated by the project’s shifting timeline and ambitions. Meanwhile, the autonomous…

Such is the fluidity of this interchange between electric and combustion that, after a time, you stop thinking of the car as being a hybrid at all, and settle to simply enjoy the visceral experience of the Revuelto—which, although hugely entertaining, is more refined than any previous Lamborghini. And not just in the powertrain. The suspension is also exceptionally judged, while the new eight-speed, twin-clutch gearbox is a huge step-up.Under braking, the e-axle and rear e-motor contribute to the stopping power, so the…

“There are companies that have partnerships and collaborations, but they’re all still in development,” claims Berdichevsky, “while we’re ready for scale production manufacturing.”Not coincidentally, Moses Lake is also home to REC Silicon, a formerly shuttered supplier to the photovoltaics industry, and now one of only two US makers of silane gas. Group14 will be sourcing locally; Berdichevsky preferred not to say where Sila is sourcing its silane. Both companies received federal grants of $100 million to build their…

This story first appeared on Grist, a nonprofit media organization covering climate justice and solutions.Electric vehicle sales in the United States set a record this past quarter and are on track to break the 1 million mark in 2023, which would be a milestone for the industry. This surge comes even as many vehicle models have lost their eligibility for federal, and some state, incentives.Analysts at Wards Intelligence and Cox Automotive reported that consumers bought nearly 300,000 EVs between the beginning of April and…

Tesla’s new Supercharger strategy allows the company to make money off its competitors’ customers by collecting charging fees from them. (Pricing varies by region, time of day, and whether an EV was made by Tesla, but it generally costs between $10 and $30 to charge up a car.) And if more carmakers follow Ford and GM and choose to use Tesla’s connector standards, it could future-proof Tesla vehicles by guaranteeing that owners always have easy access to public charging. “Tesla’s walled garden thing was great in the near…

If you live in the US, the stuff you buy—that new dining room table, bag of rice, or pair of pants heading to your home right now—may experience the all-electric future of global transportation before you do.Tens of millions of tons of goods move through California’s ports each year, proceeding from ship to port and beyond on hulking semitrucks. Forty percent of the nation’s containerized imports move through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach alone, vital links in a global chain of commerce connecting factories all…