November 29, 2022
It’s a world first, says the British airplane engine manufacturer Rolls Royce with the same name as the car, but no other than historical connections: a modern turboprop airplane engine running on green hydrogen. It didn’t fly yet, but it was a successful ‘ground test’ together with the British low-budget airline easyJet. H2ZERO, as the […]
November 28, 2022
Cars that fail technical inspection in Flanders for a defective or insufficient working diesel particulate filter (DPF) will have one year to fix it and present it again for review. Minister for Mobility Lydia Peeters (Open Vld) decided after weeks of consultation to extend the period from three to twelve months, the newspaper Het Belang […]
November 25, 2022
On Thursday, Renault Trucks and Coca-Cola’s Belgian-Luxembourg branch Europacific Partners (CCEP) presented to the press the four first fully electric delivery trucks of a total fleet of thirty, which is to be commissioned in the next twelve months. The trucks with a range of 180 km to 400 km are charged overnight at Coca-Cola’s depot […]
November 24, 2022
Belgian retailer Colruyt is testing the Estonian Clevon delivery robot on Belgian public roads with its Smart Technics innovation team. That’s a Belgian first as it required a special federal government permit and the local mayor’s and police chief’s blessing to have an autonomous vehicle on public roads. The idea is to see if home […]
November 24, 2022
American hydrogen high-tech startup Hyperion, known for its 1000-mile range XP-1 hypercar, showed in Los Angeles its idea to tackle the infrastructure headaches: a mobile, spaceship-like filling station for FCEVs that can make its own hydrogen on-site but also fast-charge an EV alongside in 20 minutes. The idea behind it is simple, but a substantial […]
November 23, 2022
Chinese premium electric carmaker NIO is opening up its offer in Europe with a purchase option and battery renting. It is a complement to meet European clients’ wishes to the monthly car subscription it started in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, the first countries the brand was launched after Norway. Prices start at €51 […]
November 22, 2022
Belgian retail giant Colruyt Group will have its own truck fleet running on electricity or hydrogen by 2030 and forces all its suppliers to deliver using zero-emission transport by 2035. CEO Jef Colruyt announced the latter at the opening of the group’s fourth DATS 24 hydrogen station near its distribution center in Ollignies. According to […]
November 21, 2022
ElectroMobility Poland (EMP) will use Chinese Geely’s Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) for its electric car brand Isera. It’s the first company from outside the Geely group, where Zeekr and Smart #1 and #3 use it, to do so. The first model will be a compact SUV, and EMP announced plans for two other models, a […]
November 18, 2022
Those who hoped to appease their appetite for more details about the Gravity SUV in this week’s Lucid’s Launch Event come home empty-handed. Besides a new teaser video for Gravity (see below), the focus was basically on the long-awaited basic version of the luxury sedan Lucid Pure, as it should. That one finally goes into […]
November 17, 2022
Mercedes-Benz announced on Wednesday that it was slashing its list prices for the fully electric EQE and EQS models in China by 10 and 15%, respectively, a price drop of up to 237 600 yuan (€32 283). According to Chinese media, the Mercedes EQ range performs weakly in the world’s most active new energy vehicle […]
November 17, 2022
Next to the new Prius, Toyota showcases the full battery-electric bZ Compact SUV Concept at the Los Angeles Motor Show, a sleeker interpretation of its first BEV, the bZ4X. This new concept might become the second BEV production model in the lineup for Europe and the rest of the world. Technical details about the powertrain […]
November 16, 2022
Within a few weeks, the European Commission will review the truck’s CO2 standards, and lobbying groups of the industry and the environmental NGOs are bringing the heavy cannons to bear for the last influencers’ battle. So does Transport & Environment, publishing a study proving e-fuels can’t compete with battery electric trucks even in the most […]
November 15, 2022
Tesla is opening its new Supercharger EV connector design to the world, pushing a new fast-charging standard up to 900 kW to one megawatt. It has no moving parts, needs no external cooling, is half the size, and is twice as powerful as Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors commonly used in European EVs today, the […]
November 14, 2022
MyWay, the second-hand car sales chain of Belgian Volkswagen brand importer D’Ieteren Automotive, extends its offer beyond the ‘house brands’ Audi, Seat, Škoda, and Volkswagen and goes fully ‘multi-brand’. Some 3 000 ‘certified’ cars are available in 200 dealerships and on the MyWay website. This year the group also launched ‘My Way Buy’, a service […]
November 10, 2022
American electric car start-up Lucid announced it would open up preordering for its second model, a seven-seater SUV today, known as the ‘Gravity Project’, beginning of 2023, a year before production starts. Lucid promised to provide more details on Gravity next week on November 15, with the launch of the Lucid Air Pure basic model. […]
November 09, 2022
The new Swedish government has scrapped EV and PHEV bonuses quasi overnight, excluding all cars bought after November 8th, 2022. “The cost of owning and driving a climate bonus car is starting to be comparable to the cost of owning and driving a petrol or diesel car. Therefore, the climate bonus is abolished,” the government’s site […]
November 09, 2022
Wallonia might consider for its regional low-emission zone (LEZ) postponing the ban on Euro 0 and Euro I cars for two years until 2025, Minister for Environment Céline Tellier (Écolo) has said on the news channel LN24. “In crisis times, it would be unthinkable to force people to buy a new car,” she added. The […]
November 08, 2022
It’s getting colorful but complicated. We already know grey hydrogen, the least environmentally friendly form, as it still generates CO2 when produced from gas, and blue hydrogen, where the CO2 is captured and stored. There is ‘green’ hydrogen, generated mainly by electrolysis using renewable electricity from solar or wind energy. But why not consider ‘turquoise’ […]
November 08, 2022
The Porsche factory in Zuffenhausen (Germany) has rounded the cape of 100.000th Taycan rolling off production lines on Tuesday, 8 November. The ‘jubilee car’ is a Neptune blue Taycan 4S for a customer in the UK. And since production started in 2019, all these Taycans are built ‘CO2 neutral’, the company claims. A hundred thousand […]
November 07, 2022
Einride, the Swedish autonomous electric truck or ‘pod’ with the looks of a Star Wars Storm Trooper, has a second-generation, larger sibling: the ‘Gen 2’. It’s missing a driver’s cabin because it can handle most things on the road on its own, and a safety driver is sitting elsewhere behind computer screens overlooking the fleet, […]
November 04, 2022
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman announced on Thursday the launch of Ceer, a new electric car brand to be designed, developed, and built locally with the help of Foxconn and using some components licensed by BMW. According to the state news agency SPA, the first cars to be built- a range of sedans […]
November 03, 2022
Swedish carmaker Volvo Cars has sold 483 304 cars, in the first ten months of 2022, down 16,9 percent, compared to the same period last year. Volvo didn’t release specific figures on how its ICE models are performing, but it looks like next to these, its PHEVs see the most declining sales figures worldwide (-16,8%). […]
November 03, 2022
Zeekr, Geely’s premium brand, has launched its second model in China, the 009. It’s a luxury MPV with a dual-motor drive system providing 400 kW of peak motor power and 686 Nm of torque and the first to be fed by CATL’s new Qilin Battery. This 140 kWh battery pack boosts the van’s range to […]
November 02, 2022
The world’s biggest battery manufacturer, Chinese CATL, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Vietnamese VinFast to expand global collaboration in areas like battery technology but also include a complete integrated EV skateboard chassis. And that is an interesting evolution. The CATL Integrated Intelligent Chassis (CIIC) places cells directly into an electric vehicle’s frame […]
October 28, 2022
Thursday evening, the negotiators of the European Parliament and the Member States have reached an agreement to have all new cars and vans sold beyond 2035 to be zero-emission. It’s the ultimate step to have the ban on gasoline and diesel cars, including (plugin-) hybrids, written in stone before final ratification. “This extremely far-reaching decision […]
October 27, 2022
It looks like a reincarnation of the Smart Fortwo with its 2,5 length. Still, it is a genuine Italian-made fully battery-electric city car with a range of 150 km and an innovative battery-swapping system in a drawer-like system behind the rear license plate: the XEV YOYO. And it will be available in Belgium through VJB […]
October 27, 2022
Swedish truck builder Volvo Trucks started series production of the fully electric range of its popular heavy trucks, the Volvo FH, Volvo FM, and Volvo FMX, in the Tuve factory in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is prepping its Ghent (Belgium) factory to follow next year. Ghent will play a significant role in the group’s electrification, including […]
October 26, 2022
French hydrogen car startup Hopium, showing its Hopium Māchina prototype for the first time to the general public at the Paris Motor Show last week, has signed a provisional order for 10 000 cars with Crédit Agricole Group’s subsidiary Agilauto. The bank’s specialist in sales and financing of cars will offer hydrogen-powered premium cars to […]
October 25, 2022
Last week Chinese premium electric carmaker NIO has delivered in the Netherlands its first ET7 sedan with the new subscription model for Europe. Like Lynk & Co does with its 01 PHEV, this fully electric EV with a 100 kWh battery can be ‘subscribed to’ on a flexible monthly basis. Eventually, NIO wanted to offer […]
October 24, 2022
Several major European cities and NGOs have urged the EU Commission in a letter to push through sales of zero-emission city buses only no later than 2027. They fear without action from the EU, there will not be enough incentive for the bus industry to ramp up production and supply to keep pace with demand. […]
October 21, 2022
Mercedes-Benz just finalized a supply agreement with Canadian-German-start-up Rock Tech Lithium Inc. to secure high-quality lithium supply used in battery production as part of a direct sourcing approach. An average of 10 000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide will be refined per year at a converter based in Guben, Brandenburg, Germany, and delivered to the […]
October 21, 2022
At the TRANSfarm, a site near Leuven meant for up-scaling technologies developed at the Louvain University, the Belgian SolHyd research project is readying a 350 m2 production space for its hydrogen panel. The project was presented to the general public on Wednesday, as the province of Vlaams-Brabant provides a subsidy of €146 000 to help […]
October 19, 2022
After turning the Qashqai into an electric car with a permanently running generator on gasoline, Nissan did the same trick with another success number, the X-Trail. But this time, with more muscle and 4WD, adding a second 94 kW motor on the rear axle. We got the chance to try out what Nissan likes to […]
October 17, 2022
Ahead of the Paris Motor Show opening, and after letting seep through several details in the weeks before, Mercedes-Benz has put its new EQE SUV, the ‘multi-purpose variant of the EQE executive saloon’ in the full spotlight. It is more compact than the latter, and at 3030 millimeters, it has a wheelbase that is nine […]
October 17, 2022
BMW is moving the production of the MINI electric hatchback and a small sport utility version of it from Oxford (UK) to China through its partnership with Great Wall Motor. It’s a blow for the historic plant in Cowley, southeast Oxford, British media say after becoming home to Europe’s first mass-produced electric car in 2019. […]
October 13, 2022
A new study by the Dutch technical research institute TNO about the possible uptake of zero–emission trucks to replace diesel in the coming years shows the battery-electric truck (BET) is the most cost effective (only) option from 2030. Fuel cell trucks will play a marginal role due to higher costs. By 2035, 99,8% of the […]
October 11, 2022
One of China’s major car manufacturers, SAIC Motor, known in Europe for its EVs under the former British MG brand and the Maxus vans, is stepping into the booming battery-swapping business with battery giant CATL and two giant oil companies. A new joint venture is set up with as its core business the lease of […]
October 10, 2022
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the UN body created in 1944 to regulate, among others, safety, efficiency, and environmental protection in global aviation, has agreed to the common goal to make the whole sector climate-neutral by 2050. Of the 193 member states of the 41st Assembly in Montreal, the organization’s sovereign body that meets […]
October 07, 2022
China’s second-largest car manufacturer BYD (Build Your Dream) and the world’s leader in EV sales numbers, opened its first Belgian showroom on Thursday at the Leuvensesteenweg 319 in Zaventem by Brussels. In the spotlights are the three fully electric models destined for Europe: the large SUV Tang, the HAN sedan, and the Atto 3, a […]
October 06, 2022
It’s no breaking news Volvo has the intention to offer bidirectional charging with its next-generation electric cars, starting with the upcoming EX90. But in the build-up to its world premiere on November 9th, details trickle out of a complete vehicle-to-home (V2H) system. With a special wallbox, a home management system connected to the Cloud, and […]
October 06, 2022
D’Ieteren is bringing the heavy cannons to bear to broach the French market with its daughter Lizy, a specialist in leasing second-hand cars in Belgium today. It raised another €8,5 million from an investment group led by Belgian entrepreneur and millionaire Marc Coucke’s Alychlo and got bank funding of another 32 million. The Belgian used-car […]
October 05, 2022
Battery electric trucks (BET) are expected to outperform classic diesel trucks with an internal combustion engine (ICE) from 2025 onward in the total cost of ownership (TCO). Fuel cell trucks (FCT) are to reach that point in 2030, while the cost advantage for the battery-electric truck will be 26 to 34%, a new study by […]
October 04, 2022
Australian hydrogen vehicle start-up H2X Global is testing its fuel-cell pickup truck ‘Warrego’ in the Netherlands for European vehicle compliance validation and verification. H2X wants to go global with Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) for the professional market with trucks, buses, vans, and taxis, and H2 fuel cell generators. The Warrego is built on the […]
October 03, 2022
The ZEDU-1 prototype of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the German engineering firm and racing team HWA is called the world’s first truly nearly ‘zero-emission’ car as it even prevents fine particles from brakes and tires in the air. It was presented last week in Stuttgart. Zero Emission Drive Unit – Generation 1 (ZEDU-1) […]
September 30, 2022
Alice, the fully electric propeller airplane from American aircraft builder Eviation under development, has made its maiden flight this week at Grant County International Airport (MWH), flying for 8 minutes at an altitude of 3 500 feet (1 066 m). Alice is targeted at commuter and cargo markets and will typically operate flights ranging from […]
September 30, 2022
American global power technology provider Cummins, known for decades for its diesel and gas engines, is quadrupling the capacity of its Belgian hydrogen electrolyzer plant in Oevel, Hydrogenics Europe, which it acquired in 2019. Production halls were doubled, and capacity will be quadrupled from 250 megawatts to 1 gigawatts with 150 people more to be […]
September 29, 2022
The Dutch aren’t diesel-lovers; they never were with one of the smallest diesel fleets in Europe today, except for the transport sector. Those who drive diesel vehicles are refueling more and more with alternative biodiesel, the so-called Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). According to mobility service provider MultiTankCard, the Netherlands saw a rise of 42% in […]
September 28, 2022
After Renault proposed its 42 000 employees in its home country a ‘purchasing power’ premium of up to 1 000 euros, Stellantis will pay its French employees €1 400 extra in October. The entire premium will only apply to those, part-time employees included, who earn less than two times the official minimum wage or 60% […]
September 28, 2022
Premium carmaker BMW is partnering with German ‘historic’ combustion engine manufacturer Deutz AG in a ‘real-life operation’ project to test the feasibility of using heavy trucks with a six-cylinder combustion engine burning hydrogen instead of diesel in its logistics chain. The project is called HyCET (Hydrogen Combustion Engine Trucks) and is led by the BMW […]
September 27, 2022
Japanese motorbike manufacturer Kawasaki Motor is joining forces with Toyota to pool resources and develop hydrogen-powered internal combustion engines (ICE) for motorbikes and other vehicles, like its 4-wheel outdoor vehicles. Earlier this month, Toyota President Akio Toyoda drove a hydrogen-powered off-road 4-wheel vehicle based on Kawasaki’s Teryx sport side-by-side lineup at the Mobility Resort Motegi […]
September 27, 2022
Belgian CMB.Tech and Dutch-British based Windcat Workboats, both daughters of bulk shipping giant Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB), announce they will build six extra hydrogen ships to transport personnel to and maintain offshore wind farms. The catamarans will be delivered in 2022, 2023, and 2024 to be used by joint venture partners Thomas Services Maritime (TSM) […]
September 27, 2022
Infrabel, the infrastructure branch of Belgian Rail, has ordered three battery electric measuring trains from Italian supplier Mermec. These so-called hybrid-electric trains can use a catenary system like regular trains but also access railway lines without it, pure on battery energy. The trains, totaling €42 million, will be delivered in 2024, 2026, and 2027. Measuring […]
September 26, 2022
Belgian high-voltage net manager Elia has joined forces with German carmaker Volkswagen to work on integrating EVs into the electricity grid. Through their daughters, re.alto and Elli, they will focus on ways to have EV-owners charge when green electricity is available in abundance at one time and use the battery as a backup to stabilize […]
September 23, 2022
On Friday, Volkswagen is showing for the first time its Gen.Travel design study at the Chantilly Arts & Elegance in France. Imagine a fully level-5 self-driving prototype with a modular interior as an alternative for short-haul flights where you can sleep, hold your business meetings or watch movies while the car drives, alone or platooning […]
September 23, 2022
French carmaker Renault is proposing its 42 000 employees in its home country a ‘purchasing power’ premium of up to 1 000 euros, after negotiating with the unions for months about a wage raise. The company declared that the bonus would apply to all working in France, including part-time workers, and won’t replace future salary […]
September 22, 2022
The European Commission has given 13 member states the green light to boost hydrogen projects with up to €5,2 billion in state funding, an exception to the standard policy because considered an ‘Important Project of Common European Interest’ (IPCEI). The Hy2Use state funding project was jointly prepared and notified by thirteen Member States: Austria, Belgium, […]
September 22, 2022
Five industry giants, IKEA, Unilever, JSW Steel Limited, A.P. Moller – Maersk, and GeoPost/DPDgroup, commit themselves to have their heavy truck fleet (+7,5 tons) converted to zero-emission by 2040 in OECD markets, China and India. “Medium- and heavy-duty trucks, representing 4% of all vehicles on the road globally, account for 40% of all road transport […]
September 21, 2022
Energy consumption and car use are the first two domains where Belgians are adapting their behavior today to cope with uncertain times. Sixty-nine percent say to change how they use energy drastically (23%) or in a limited way (46%). Car use comes second (57%), before food (53%), travel (52%), and clothing (50%). On its first […]
September 20, 2022
Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath calls upon his colleague carmakers to wake up and act now and not wait for policy changes to make the promises a reality that were ‘set in stone’ at COP26 last year. That was to have 100% zero-emission new car and van sales in leading markets by 2035 or earlier. To […]
September 19, 2022
In the chaotic public charging market in Europe, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees, but one constant is beyond doubt: prices are shooting up at a worrying pace, both in slow AC as in ultra-fast DC charging, up to almost 25% in two months. Allego and Shell Recharge announced a new price […]
