Weekly-ish News - Episode 35 (January 2, 2022)

What's the Alternative?

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Electric Vehicles:

GM is extending the production halt of the Chevy Bolt until February.

Green Car Reports now has a first drive article for the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and it looks pretty great.

Both the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Ford F-150 can charge other EVs, and this is pretty cool.

• Ford is actually using this as a big marketing point, which is smart.

Ford's MachE is getting a range bump to 314mi (505km) and Ford plans to triple production by 2023 to 200k vehicles per year.

• They're gonna triple production by 2023.

Tesla is now offering LFP (Lithium-Iron Phosphate) batteries in its Model 3s.

• They are less efficient than the previous batteries, but allow the owner to regularly charge to 100% without risking faster degradation.

Tesla has applied for regulatory approval to move forward with Gigafactory Texas, and they're on track to begin making vehicles in 2022.

• This factory will produce 500k Model Y's per year, as well as Cybertruck and Tesla Semi.

Nissan has announced an $18b investment in electrification, to be spent over the next 5 years.

• This includes a goal of 15 EVs on the market by 2030.
• They're also investing in their own battery production.

Mazda is selling their Mazda 2 hatchback as a "self-charging hybrid" in Europe, which is dumb.

• This is real similar to Toyota calling their hybrids "self-charging electric vehicles".
• Norway actually forced Lexus to change their language when they used that same marketing term back in 2019.

Audi may pursue "urban charging lounges" as a way to provide EV charging in a user-friendly way.

• The concept basically looks like a luxury lounge to hang out in while vehicles charge.

The charging network IONITY plans to increase its European charging network to 7,000 chargers by 2025 with a 700m Euro investment.

• Locations will have an average of between 6 and 12 charging ports.
• They currently operate over 1,500 charging points.

The charging provider HyperCharge and the parking company Target Park are partnering to install 2,500 public Level 2 chargers across North America, starting in Toronto.

• They will install these chargers over the next three years.

Electrify America has Tesla Powerpacks (batteries) at 140 stations around the US to avoid demand charges.

Energy:

Murray County, Oklahoma has a new operational wind farm that can produce 118MW of electricity.

The U.S.'s second offshore wind project has been approved, which will be a 132MW installation off the shore of New York.

• Operation is expected to begin in late 2023.
• This project is being built by Ørsted, a Danish company.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has finalized its environmental study of the potential impacts of offshore wind energy in the New York Bight area and found it will have minimal impact.

• This means we may soon see leases for offshore wind operators to begin developing offshore of New York and New Jersey.
• More than 7GW of electricity can be produced by offshore wind in this area.

Louisiana's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has an open comment period (ending on Jan 7, 2022) to get feedback from offshore fishers about proposed offshore wind development.

• If this goes well, we may see continued push for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico.

Policy:

The EPA has finalized its new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

• The long and short of it is that manufacturers will have to reach an average fuel economy of 55mpg by 2026.