Freudenberg Sealing Technologies has provided its Thermal Interface Material (TIM) elastomer for use in high-quantity series production of a EV charging port for a well-known car manufacturer. The elastomer, which is heat conductive and electrically insulating at the same time, was first introduced in 2020 with an eye toward applications... Read more →

Mercedes-Benz will be the first German OEM to implement NACS ports into its new electric vehicles starting in 2025. As part of a phased transition, Mercedes-Benz will initially offer an adapter that enables the company’s existing CCS BEVs to charge seamlessly on the NACS network from 2024 onwards. Mercedes-Benz drivers... Read more →

California will invest more than $1.5 billion—including approximately $450 million for zero-emission infrastructure, locomotives, vessels and vehicles—in port infrastructure upgrades. Awards of $1.2 billion will fund 15 projects creating an estimated 20,000 jobs and increase the capacity to move goods throughout the state’s global trade gateways while lessening environmental impacts... Read more →

Applications are now available for $150 million allocated in the state budget to support California public school districts in their efforts to transition toward zero-emission bus technology and help pay for related infrastructure needs. The effort is a collaboration between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the California Energy... Read more →

Indian Oil Corporation and Praj Industries signed a term sheet to advance plans to strengthen biofuels production capacities in India. Various biofuels covered under this MoU include Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), ethanol, compressed bio-gas (CBG), biodiesel and bio-bitumen among others. Earlier in October 2021, both the companies had entered into... Read more →

bp ventures has committed $10 million, leading the Series B investment round, in WasteFuel, a California-based biofuels company that will use proven, scalable technologies to convert bio-based municipal and agricultural waste into lower carbon fuels, such as biomethanol. Globally, solid waste production totals about 2 billion metric tons annually and... Read more →

TTTech Auto, a leader in automotive safety software, and ZettaScale Technology, a developer of communication technologies and protocols, have launched Zetta Auto. Zetta Auto is a data-centric communication solution focusing on safe, performant, and predictable Serviced-Oriented Architecture (SOA) communication. Extending the scope of the collaboration, Zetta Auto is also paving... Read more →

Altilium Metals, a UK-based green technology group, signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with Marubeni Corporation, Japanese trading and investment group. Under the framework of the MOU, the two companies will work together to explore opportunities to jointly develop EV battery recycling businesses in the UK. (Earlier post.) This will... Read more →

The California Air Resources Board announced a Clean Truck Partnership today with the US’ leading truck manufacturers and the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association that advances the development of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) for the commercial trucking industry, which includes flexibility for manufacturers to meet emissions requirements while still reaching the... Read more →

Stellantis N.V. and NioCorp Developments Ltd. have signed a rare earth offtake term sheet. The objective is to enter into a definitive rare earth supply agreement to support Stellantis’ commitment to build resilient supply chains and reach carbon net zero by 2038 and to help accelerate NioCorp’s path to commercial... Read more →

Inceptio Technology, a China-based developer of autonomous driving technologies for heavy-duty trucks (earlier post), announced that the Inceptio Autonomous Driving System has powered more than 40 million kilometers of accident-free trucking on China’s highways. This latest milestone underlines the safety and reliability of Inceptio’s full-stack autonomous driving solution, as well... Read more →

Continental has opened a new TechCenter for hydrogen technologies at its site in Hamburg-Harburg, Germany. In the future, the ContiTech group sector will use the TechCenter as a collaborative platform for knowledge exchange in this area. Innovations and the transfer of existing technical solutions for new applications in the field... Read more →

Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (VWGoA) is starting its first autonomous vehicle test program in Austin beginning in July 2023. The company will kick off its program with a batch of 10 all-electric ID. Buzz vehicles outfitted with an autonomous driving (AD) technology platform developed by the global Volkswagen Group... Read more →

Lightbridge Corporation, an advanced nuclear fuel technology company, announced that Texas A&M; University (TAMU) has been awarded approximately $1,000,000 by the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program R&D; Awards to study the deployment of advanced nuclear fuels in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The project will be conducted over... Read more →

Norilsk Nickel USA, Inc., Nornickel’s exclusive distribution company for nickel, platinum group metals, and cobalt in the Americas, has been acquired in an all-cash transaction by TMP Metals Group, Inc. TMP Metals Group, Inc. refines, distributes and tokenizes nickel and platinum group metals. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of TMP... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) announced the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: Silicon Solar Manufacturing and Dual-use Photovoltaics Incubator funding opportunity (DE-FOA-0003057), which will award $45 million for projects to enable continued solar cost reductions while developing next-generation solar technologies and boosting US solar manufacturing. The... Read more →

Volta Trucks announced a long-term agreement with ZF for some of the core systems and components in the all-electric Volta Zero. ZF technologies fitted to the Volta Zero have been designed and configured specifically for commercial vehicle use and form part of the key systems. These systems include the OnGuardACTIVE... Read more →

FluoRok, a spin-out of the University of Oxford developing a new method for the direct synthesis of high value fluorochemicals, announced £3 million (US$3.8 million) of seed funding from Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), an independent, billion-pound investment company that funds businesses via its unique partnership with the University of Oxford.... Read more →

Origin Materials, a carbon negative materials company (earlier post), has begun startup of Origin 1, the first commercial CMF plant, located in Sarnia, Ontario, in-line with prior guidance. The plant represents a significant scale-up of Origin’s technology platform for converting sustainable wood residues into versatile intermediate chemicals. The Origin platform... Read more →

In an open letter, Nick Molden, CEO, Emissions Analytics and Dr Andreas Mayer, Chairman of the Scientific Committee, VERT Association, call on European regulators to apply the same approach they have applied to the tailpipe to the growing issue of tire emissions. The authors urge the inclusion of particle mass,... Read more →

Nikola Corporation announced that the California Transportation Commission (CTC) has awarded Nikola and sponsor California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), a $41.9-million grant under the Trade Corridor Enhancement Program (TCEP) to build six heavy-duty hydrogen refueling stations across Southern California. Caltrans sponsored the application and will work in partnership with Nikola... Read more →

Nikola Corporation announced its quarterly deliveries for its battery-electric truck, with wholesale of 45 trucks (up from 31 in Q1) and retail of 66 trucks (up from 33 in Q1) in Q2 ended 30 June 2023. Production dropped to 33 units in Q2 from 63 in Q1. Nikola said that... Read more →

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that the state will move to adopt the Advanced Clean Cars and Advanced Clean Trucks rules, which will set annual targets for the sale of new zero emission cars and trucks in New Mexico over time. The rules would require vehicle manufacturers to... Read more →

Stellantis N.V. unveiled STLA Medium, a global BEV-by-design platform with state-of-the-art features including range of 700 kilometers (435 miles), energy efficiency, embedded power and charging power. STLA Medium is the first of four global BEV platforms to be launched less than two years after EV Day presentation in July 2021.... Read more →

Consip S.p.A. Roma, the central purchasing agency in Italy, has placed an order for 98 Solaris electric buses. Among them, 80 are Urbino 12 electric models, and 18 are articulated buses. The vehicles will be delivered to CTM Cagliari, the company managing urban transport in the capital of Sardinia, in... Read more →

Rolls-Royce has approved its mtu Kinetic PowerPacks, based on the mtu Series 4000 and 1600 diesel engines, for use with renewable diesel (HVO/Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil) and the other synthetic diesel fuels of the EN15940 standard. With HVO the CO2 footprint of the mtu systems for dynamic uninterruptible power supply (DUPS)... Read more →

A team from Karabuk University in Turkey reports in a paper in the journal Biofuels that using Fe-Ni-TiO2/activated carbon (AC) nanoparticles as an additive in a diesel–biodiesel fuel blend can improve engine performance and decrease emissions. Biofuels, which are widely used as alternative fuels to reduce fossil fuel consumption and... Read more →

Every year tens of thousands of containers of production material destined for Volvo Cars factories are carried across the world’s oceans on container ships. From now on, most of these seafaring journeys are made with renewable fuel instead of traditional fossil fuel. The first global car maker to announce such... Read more →

The Volkswagen brand aims to make significant gains in South America with a major product offensive. By 2027, the company plans to grow by 40% in Brazil, the region’s largest market. For example, 15 new electric and flex-fuel vehicle models are being launched by 2025 alone. Hybrid vehicles will also... Read more →

HF Sinclair selected Topsoe as a technology provider for the production of renewable fuels at three facilities: Sinclair, Wyoming; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Artesia, New Mexico. The renewable units in Cheyenne (6,000 BPD) and Sinclair (10,000 BPD) are from the conversion of crude oil refinery assets whereas the Artesia (9,000 BPD)... Read more →

NIO officially opened its new 1,500 square meter Innovation Center in Berlin, Germany. In response to the need for software that’s central to the user experience, the Berlin Innovation Center will be responsible for the development of new technologies and its respective localisation, testing and validation in Europe. NIO’s new... Read more →

Lotte Chemical plans to invest up to 3 trillion KRW ($2.3 billion) through 2028 to boost production of copper foil for EV batteries, the company said. In March, Lotte completed the 2.7-trillion KRW (US$2-billion) acquisition of electric foil manufacturer Iljin Materials, and changed Iljin’s name to Lotte Energy Materials, in... Read more →

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced that the Green Hydrogen Pilot Project in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, has begun producing green hydrogen to replace natural-gas-based hydrogen in its refinery in Xinjiang. As China’s first green hydrogen demonstration project of over 10,000-tonne capacity and based on solar... Read more →

In a new report, Deloitte forecasts that the clean hydrogen market will top the value of the liquid natural gas trade by 2030 and grow further to US$1.4 trillion per year by 2050. In the report, Deloitte uses clean hydrogen to encompass both green hydrogen— produced from renewable electricity via... Read more →

SSAB and Fortum are launching a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) study to explore the possibilities of making hydrogen-reduced sponge iron in SSAB’s Raahe steel plant. Raahe, established in 1960, is a 2.6 million tonnes per annum blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steel plant operating in Raahe, Finland; its... Read more →

The new “Pendik” bicycle bag from the pinqponq brand by baesiq GmbH (Cologne, Germany) has a significantly reduced CO2 footprint due to BASF’s Ultramid Ccycled, a mass-balanced polyamide that supports the use of alternative raw materials from chemical recycling of plastic waste. BASF feeds pyrolysis oil from end-of-life (EOL) tires... Read more →

Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. has developed an oil that can be used with e-Axle drive units, electronics and battery systems in electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs): E AXLE and Electric Parts Cooling Oil. Including this newly developed oil, Idemitsu now offers a lineup of products in six... Read more →

MAN Engines is now offering pre-chamber spark plugs adapted to the respective combustion chamber to all turbocharged natural gas engines of the current MAN E3262, E3268, E0836 and E0834 series as an option, as well as MAN E3872 as obligatory. Due to backward compatibility, existing combined heat and power plants... Read more →

Sparc Technologies announced that Sparc Hydrogen, a JV between the University of Adelaide, Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) and Sparc Technologies, has executed a Kick-Start agreement with the CSIRO to undertake on-sun testing of Sparc Hydrogen’s photocatalytic water splitting (PWS) reactor at the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle, New South Wales,... Read more →

By 2024, nearly 40 La Poste vans fitted with the Michelin Uptis airless tire (earlier post) will deliver letters and parcels in the Lesquin, Valenciennes and Douai sectors, in the Hauts-de-France region (North of France). Three initial vehicles will be put into circulation as of June 27, within the framework... Read more →

In Q2 2023, Tesla delivered 466,140 vehicles and produced 479,700, setting its latest record. Model 3/Y accounted for 96% of the vehicles delivered (446,915) and 96% of the vehicles produced (460,211). Q2 2023 deliveries were up 83% year-on-year, and topped market estimates. Tesla will post its financial results for the... Read more →

Technology group Wärtsilä has been contracted by Swedish ferry operator Stena Line to carry out and convert some of its vessels to operate with methanol fuel. The conversions will include the fuel supply system and engine modifications, as well as integrating the new installations with the ships’ existing systems. The... Read more →

Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) holdouts are digging in their heels, with That’s according to Study,SM released today, which finds that Overall consumer EV consideration in Canada has declined 13 percentage points to 34% from 47% in 2022, and significantly lags EV consideration rates in the US where 61% of consumers... Read more →

At the end of 2023 and early 2024, PEUGEOT Cycles will expand its range of electric bikes with several new innovative models benefiting from the best connected technologies. These, through a new dedicated smartphone application, offer users at launch, among other things, adaptive electrical assistance, an anti-theft system, an alarm,... Read more →

Johnson Matthey (JM) and Diffusion Alloys, a specialist diffusion coatings producer, are partnering to scale-up production and enable the increasing demand for low-carbon hydrogen used to reduce global carbon emissions. By partnering, JM and Diffusion Alloys will share their areas of expertise and ensure a robust supply chain for the... Read more →

MagLev Aero, which recently emerged from stealth mode with its proprietary MagLev HyperDrive aero propulsion platform for eVTOL aircraft, has selected GE Additive’s AddWorks consultancy team to support the development of additive technologies and materials for the platform. MagLev Aero’s innovation enables a large rim-driven circular rotor that maximizes efficiency... Read more →

Milan Nedeljković, BMW AG Board Member for Production and also Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW South Africa, announced that from 2024, the company will manufacture the BMW X3 as a plug-in hybrid for global export at Plant Rosslyn in South Africa. An investment of 4.2 billion rand... Read more →

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Department of Energy (DOE) are partnering to provide more than $1 billion in funding to help reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector through the creation of the Methane Emissions Reduction Program. This collaboration will leverage EPA and DOE’s shared... Read more →

Following a successful pilot project, Audi has begun rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system for quality-control of spot welds in car body construction. The AI was developed and tested beforehand at the Neckarsulm site. By the end of the year, the technical infrastructure for the use of AI will... Read more →

Imerys, a global leader in mineral-based specialty solutions, and British Lithium, a private company having developed a processing route to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate from mica in Cornish granite, (earlier post) have formed a joint venture with the objective of creating the United Kingdom’s first integrated producer of battery-grade lithium... Read more →