Weekly-ish News - Episode 32 (October 29, 2021)

What's the Alternative?

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to find me on Twitter @archduketyler

Electric Vehicles (and other fuels):

Apple is apparently struggling to find a battery manufacturer for its electric car.

• As I've said a billion times, any company serious about electric vehicles needs to get into the battery game.

GM is going to install 40k Level 2 charging stations in North America starting in 2022.

• Not clear when they will have these installed by.
• This program will provide up to 10 chargers to a GM dealership and that dealership will determine good community locations to install the chargers in.
• This article is weirdly pessimistic because Level 2 chargers aren't incredibly fast, I think that's goofy.
• 4k of these chargers will be installed in Canada.

Tesla plans to triple its Supercharging network over the next two years.

• The network has doubled in the last 18 months.

Tesla plans to switch to Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries in the Model 3 and Y globally.

• These batteries are a shift from more expensive but higher performing Nickel Manganese Cobalt batteries currently used in their U.S. vehicles.
• This shift will free up the more high-performing batteries for harder applications such as the Cybertruck or Semi.

Panasonic has produced prototype 4680 battery cells with plans to begin test production in March of 2022.

• These are the new, larger (fatter) battery cells that Tesla announced on Battery Day.
• 4680 means 46mm diameter, 80mm height
• For more info on these batteries, this video by Sandy Munro gives a breakdown.

Hertz, the car rental company, has announced the purchase of 100k Tesla Model 3's.

• They cited the Supercharger network as being a reason for choosing Tesla.
• These vehicles will be in both the U.S. and in Europe.

Uber will have access to 50k of these Hertz-owned Teslas for Uber drivers.

• These Teslas will cost drivers $334 per week with maintenance and insurance covered.
• Uber also offers $1/ride up to $4000/year to drivers who use electric vehicles.

Fairfax County, Virginia is receiving 8 new electric school buses and chargers with 10 more on the way in 2022.

• The first eight are being bought in partnership with the utility, Dominion Energy.
• The 10 coming in 2022 are through a Virginia Department of Environmental Quality grant.
• The school district hopes to go all electric by 2035.

Buffalo, New York has purchased 10 new New Flyer electric transit buses with an option in the contract to purchase 140 more.

Moscow, Russia has officially deployed its 800th electric transit bus, still on target to reach 1000 electric buses by the end of 2021.

A fleet in Virginia is converting 49 of its vehicles to run on renewable propane.

• Renewable propane is a fairly new fuel, produced much like renewable diesel (which you can learn a bit about in the Petroleum Pat episode).
• Renewable propane is *very* hard to come by.
• Blossman Gas is providing this propane.
• This project was helped along by a colleague of mine at Virginia Clean Cities.
• Renewable Propane is likely in the ballpark of 40-60% lower carbon than gasoline, but data is scarce.

A group of Brazilian companies, including the airline, Gol, are partnering to deploy 250 electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft for a rideshare service, to launch in 2024.

• These craft will have a range of 100 miles (160 km) at 200mph (320 kmh).
• They will carry 4 passengers per flight.
• They will be deployed in São Paulo.

Energy:

Construction has begun on a 250MW wind farm in Ellis County, Oklahoma, expected to generate 1.1 TWh per year.

• Operation will begin by the end of 2022.
• Expected to offset 676k tons of CO2 per year.

Cypress Creek Renewables has a 270MW solar project in construction in Texas.

Georgia is getting a 250MW solar project in Lee County with construction to begin soon.

A hydroelectric power station in Alaska may see its output increase by 50% due to a melting glacier.

• It currently produces 120MW.

Dubuque, Iowa has finished construction of its landfill Renewable Natural Gas project.

• This facility will produce the equivalent of 1.7 million gallons of gasoline worth of natural gas per year.
• This is a huge project.

The company, Chart Industries, has won a Department of Energy grant for a carbon capture project.

• The goal is to capture upwards of 95% of the CO2 in the "flue gas" stream (flue gas is basically waste gas from the industrial process).

North Dakota regulators approved the state's first carbon capture project.

• The project would inject carbon deep below ground and they expect to be able to store 250 billion tons of CO2.
• This is being installed near an ethanol plant that would utilize the well.

Policy:

California's Clean Fuel Reward program is reducing its plug-in vehicle rebate from $1,500 to $750 as of November 1, 2021.