Weekly-ish News - Episode 34 (November 28, 2021)

What's the Alternative?

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

Electric Vehicles:

Tesla has continued its price increases, with the Model Y now starting just over $60k.

A study found that adding wireless charging to EVs increased interest in EVs by nearly double.

• The study was performed by an interested party and should be taken with some skepticism.

MIT's Carbon Counter tool has been updated for 2021.

• This tool is a dynamic chart that allows you to look at the GHG emissions and monthly costs of different vehicles of different fuel types.
• It's fun to play around in the settings (under "Customize").
• Removing the "Federal Tax Credit" option is available.

Rivian went public and quickly became the second-most valuable vehicle company in the world.

• They raised $12b by going public.
• Another article with more info.

Ford and Rivian are no longer partnering on producing vehicles together.

• This is apparently a mutual decision the companies made together to focus more on their own offerings.
• The market seems to treat this as a vote of confidence for Ford and the opposite for Rivian.
• Ford is still an investor in Rivian.
• Rivian's stock dropped a decent bit at this announcement.
• Ford's stock seems to have increased.

Ford has begun delivering pre-production versions of its E-Transit van to certain customers for testing.

• This is slightly ahead of schedule, so that's cool.
• Deliveries of proper, production vehicles is expected in early 2022.

Ford has (again) increased their EV production targets, doubling their previous goal to 600k EVs by 2023.

Blue Bird (the bus manufacturer) is getting a Vehicle-to-Grid facility installed at its delivery hub in Georgia.

• Nuvve is installing 200 of its 125kW V2G chargers at the facility.

The company, Connected Kerb, has installed 1k Level 2 chargers across the UK in 2021.

• They hope to install 30k more by the end of 2022.
• More info in the article.

Battery manufacturer, Northvolt, has produced its first batteries made completely from recycled nickel, manganese, and cobalt that they harvested from old batteries.

• Both the recycling and production were done at their site in Västerås, Sweden.
• They claim their process can be scaled to commercial levels and are preparing to build a plant able to recycle 125k tons of batteries per year.
• This will be co-located with a battery plant and the recycled materials will make up half that plant's 60GWh annual output.

8 new electric school buses have been deployed in Minnesota.

• These were partially funded through a grant program run by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).
• The buses cost $388k each, compared to $80k for diesel buses.
• A big portion of these deployments is to collect data on operating the buses in cold climates.
• The buses are manufactured by Lion.

Five school systems in West Virginia are receiving grant money from Appalachian Power to purchase electric school buses.

• This is funding 9 total buses so far.
• $250k of grant funding per bus, plus money for charging infrastructure.

Everett Transit is going to buy and install six inductive charging stations in 2022, which will support 9 new Gillig electric buses to be delivered in 2022.

Los Angeles Department of Transportation has won a grant to install bus charges paired with 1.5MW of solar and 4.5MWh of battery storage.

• These will support 100 Proterra electric buses.
• The grant was for $6m.

Trillium will provide hydrogen fueling for the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District in Illinois.

• Interestingly, the fuel will be produced on-site via electrolysis with their own solar panels, also on-site.
• This will power 20 buses.
• This really confuses me because if you're already producing solar on-site, wouldn't it be more energy efficient to simply use that electricity directly in the buses instead of going through the hydrogen production process?
• For electric buses:
• A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory about hydrogen fueling station costs.

A European shipping company, DFDS, has ordered 100 Volvo FM Electric Trucks, to be delivered starting at the end of 2022.

Energy:

Entergy, Louisiana is planning on building 475MW of solar in Louisiana.

• They currently only have 55MW of renewables on the grid in Louisiana, so that's a big increase.

Entergy is going to deploy 1GW of renewable energy over the next five years.

The Vineyard (offshore) Windfarm is finally going to get built near Cape Cod.

• This is an 800MW project that has been in the works for three years.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has opened a 60 day public comment period on dedicating a large area along the California coast as being open for offshore wind development.

• This is an area off Morro Bay.
• Period opened on November 12.

A farm in Colorado is growing crops under its solar panels, the article is a fun and interesting read.

Policy:

California has announced $1.4b in funding over three years for Electric Vehicle and Hydrogen Fueling infrastructure.

• $314m for light-duty vehicle charging
• $690m for medium/heavy-duty vehicle charging (which includes hydrogen)
• $77m for hydrogen fueling alone
• $25m for "zero or near-zero carbon fuel production and supply" (presumably renewable power for chargers or green hydrogen (hydrogen from electrolysis with renewable electricity))
• $244m for EV/Hydrogen vehicle manufacturing
• $15m for workforce training/development

Germany increased funding for residential EV charging to 800m Euro.

• This provides up to 900 Euro for private or public Level 2 chargers!

Infrastructure Bill PowerPoint Presentation (will need permission to access)

• Alt fuel corridors maps.