May 13, 2022
American electric carmaker Lucid Motors, opening its Munich Studio on Friday, is offering ‘a very limited number’ of Lucid Air Dream Editions to existing reservation holders in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland only. Eventually, this edition was reserved for the US, and 520 of them sold out in no time. First deliveries are expected […]
May 12, 2022
CMB-Tech, the tech daughter of Belgian shipping giant Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB), and another daughter, Dutch Windcat Workboats, have presented the ‘Hydrocat’, the world’s first hydrogen-powered crew transfer vessel (CTV) of this size. It’s 25 meters long, 7,3 m wide, and can cruise at a speed of 30 knots (55 km/h). The Hydrocat, with a […]
May 11, 2022
South Korean carmaker Hyundai is investing $20 million in a new design and development center for future robotic vehicles, like ‘walking cars’, located in Montana State University’s Innovation Campus at Bozeman (US). It will employ a team of some fifty highly specialized engineers-scientists. Hyundai’s New Horizons Studio (NHS), a unit focused on developing Ultimate Mobility […]
May 10, 2022
Californian premium EV maker Lucid Motors is landing in Europe on Friday, May 13th, with the opening of its first Studio outside the American continent in Munich, Germany. In an introduction video, the company announces that it will start delivering in Europe in June or July. Lucid also mentions a plan to set up its […]
May 09, 2022
We were allowed a sneak preview in a black box in Barcelona last week, but now it’s here for the whole world to see: Ford’s second all-electric van, the one-ton E-Transit Custom. Besides the exterior looks, there is still little specific information, except for the 380 km range of the EV and the ability to […]
May 06, 2022
It’s the world’s best-selling van for decades, so if you get the chance to drive some of the first all-new e-Transits coming from Ford’s Kocaeli (Turkey) factory, you grab it. Expect a totally new experience, so quietly and swift you might forget you’re on your way with a 3,5-ton vehicle. And that can be a […]
May 04, 2022
After contradicting that there won’t be enough charging infrastructure for all new electric cars to be built, the Brussels-based environmental NGO, Transport & Environment (T&E), wants to shatter another myth: the shortage of raw materials for batteries. A T&E study into the short-term availability of raw materials claims there is enough lithium and nickel for […]
May 01, 2022
When you’re invited as one of the few to test drive a pre-production model of a brand’s new flagship, it’s an offer you can’t refuse. Especially when it comes from one of Japan’s smaller but still independent carmakers, Mazda. Its CX-60 PHEV might look familiar from the outside, but it houses a lot of ‘Mazda […]
April 27, 2022
London’s typical ‘black cabs’ are crossing the Channel to Belgium in white and blue livery and as a battery-electric van with a range extender. The first two LEVC VN5 vans were delivered to logistics company Hazgo, a specialist in transporting medical samples, headquartered at BruCargo in Brussels. LEVC (London Electric Vehicle Company) has been making […]
April 26, 2022
British iconic sports carmaker Aston Martin Lagonda says it’s pushing the accelerator with its new ‘Racing.Green‘ strategy to become a ‘world-leading sustainable luxury brand’ with a fully electric line-up from 2030. It touts a ‘clear roadmap to electrification’ with the first hybrid electric car commencing deliveries in 2024, the first Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) targeted […]
April 25, 2022
One of the first helicopters in the world powered with a fuel cell on hydrogen might take off as soon as 2023; a lightweight CoAX2D from German EDM Aviation. The latter, the first ultralight helicopter with a German Type Certificate, would be empowered with an 80 kW fuel cell from California-based green energy start-up HyPoint. […]
April 22, 2022
Brussels-based NGO Transport & Environment states in a new analysis report that the charging infrastructure in Europe will keep pace with the uptake of electric vehicles by 2035, when the combustion engine would be banned. T&E forecasts 10,4 million public chargers for 131 million EVs in Europe by 2035. It counters the persistent warnings by […]
April 20, 2022
French carmaker Renault announced it would unveil its hydrogen concept car on May 19th at the ChangeNOW summit to be hosted between the Grand Palais Ephémère and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, expecting 400 delegations from 120 countries. It looks like Renault is carefully following the hydrogen path for the passenger car of Toyota, Hyundai, […]
April 19, 2022
Spain is gearing up its efforts in hydrogen as a sustainable alternative to oil in the northern part of the country, spanning from the Basque Country over Navarra and Aragon to Catalonia. Beginning of this month, it announced the creation of the ‘Ebro Hydrogen Corridor’, with a network of 20 hydrogen filling stations by 2025 […]
April 15, 2022
American electric carmaker Lucid Motors, the brainchild of ex-Tesla S Chief Engineer Peter Rawlinson, is warming up Europe for the brand crossing the Atlantic in 2022 with a direct approach to potential clients. People who have shown interest get a ‘personal advisor’ assigned who helps them online in a 3D-car configurator called Lucid Studio Live […]
April 14, 2022
In the first quarter of 2022, Porsche loses some of the elan it showed the year before, delivering 68 426 cars to customers worldwide or 5% less than in the same period in 2021. Best-sellers remain the SUVs Cayenne (19 029 delivered) and Macan (18 329), but also the fully electric Taycan (9 470), which […]
April 13, 2022
“Welcome to the future,” you’ll find on social media. A video showing San Francisco police officers trying to pull over a Cruise autonomous car with nobody inside is going viral on Instagram and Twitter. The vehicle was driving at night without its headlights on, and the police wanted to stop the driver… but there was […]
April 12, 2022
Vietnamese Vinfast has filed for IPO in the United States, targeted at the second half of 2022, to raise money to finance the building of its American factory in Chatham County, North Carolina. Details are not given, but sources close to the manufacturer told Reuters the target would be around two billion dollars, the estimated […]
April 11, 2022
Belgian oil tanker giant Euronav and its Norwegian peer, Frontline, want to merge into what’s to become the world’s biggest oil tanker company. The new fleet will consist of 115 tankers, 69 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), 57 Suezmax tankers, and 20 smaller Aframax ships. But after the news of negotiations starting broke last week, […]
April 08, 2022
Figures for the first quarter of 2022 show that German premium carmakers are gaining momentum in sales of fully electric cars, with BMW doubling and Mercedes tripling the numbers. In absolute numbers, the 35 289 BMW BEVs (+149,2%) and 21 900 Mercedes BEVs (+210%) are being dwarfed by Tesla’s 310 048 deliveries in Q1. Still, […]
April 07, 2022
Chinese electric carmaker NIO has upgraded its car rental service in several Chinese cities by offering a decremental fee for the monthly subscription and adding four free battery swaps. It’s an attempt to breathe new life into the subscription model that isn’t very popular with the Chinese, who rather want to buy a car as […]
April 07, 2022
German ‘green’ energy supplier RWE Renewables intends to build Europe’s biggest grid backup battery with a 200 megawatts capacity in Rotem (Dilsen-Stokkem) in Belgium. To compare: Belgium’s largest backup battery so far is the Terhills ‘Virtual Power Plant’ (VPP) in Eisden, delivering 18,2 MW with 140 big Tesla batteries. RWE initially was going to build […]
April 06, 2022
Shrinking supply, inflation, and lack of consumer confidence due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have forced up prices of second-hand cars by 15% in the last six months in Belgium. Like figures for new car registrations, these for pre-owned vehicles are plummeting by -16,2% in March compared to the same period last […]
April 05, 2022
On March 31st, Dutch bicycle giant Royal Gazelle has opened its first e-bike test center in Belgium, on the Mechelsesteenweg in Rumst between Antwerp and Mechelen. Potential clients can test all e-bikes of the Dutch manufacturer on an indoor and outdoor track before being ordered in a local bike store. Gazelle, owned by Pon Holdings, […]
April 04, 2022
Car rental giant Herz is buying 65 000 fully electric Polestars in the next five years and will start offering them in Spring 2022 in Europe and end this year in America and Australia. It’s a massive deal for Polestar, as the latter reached its global sales target of 29 000 vehicles in 2021 and […]
April 04, 2022
Taiwan’s biggest motorbike, scooter, and quad manufacturer Kymco has launched a concept to offer cities a backup power solution for the most crucial traffic lights and street lights in case of grid power failure: integrated scooter battery swapping stations. By incorporating an Ionex swap station into urban street lights and traffic lights, eventually charged by […]
April 04, 2022
China’s second-biggest independent automaker next to Geely, BYD or Build Your Dream in English, announced on Sunday that it had stopped ultimately making cars with only an internal combustion engine (ICE). BYD will only continue to produce smaller ICE engines for its plug-in hybrids, next to battery-electric models, the sole focus left. On Twitter, BYD […]
April 01, 2022
D’Ieteren is buying itself into the profitable B2B bicycle leasing market through its Lab Box daughter, investing one million euros to gain a majority part in Belgian Joule. This Ghent-based start-up, founded in 2018, offers full bicycle fleet leasing for companies and governments with a portfolio of some 20 different brands. In that arena, D’Ieteren […]
March 31, 2022
Audi Netherlands announced on Thursday it will stop selling from April 2022 all TDI diesel models to focus on plug-in hybrids, fully battery-electric, and TFSI turbo gasoline models. The Dutch never were diesel addicts, and the demand for it in the premium segment shrank to a mere one percent last year. Audi Netherlands sees no […]
March 30, 2022
A new study in six major European markets by Transport and Environment (T&E) shows that today’s electric vans are, on average, 25% cheaper per km to operate than diesel vans. That is €0,15/km for the e-van versus €0,20/km for the diesel van. In another study published simultaneously, most fleet owners show to be prepared to […]
March 29, 2022
Dutch fast-charging provider Fastned managed to double its revenue related to EV charging in 2021 to €12,4 million, +98% compared to the year before. But that doesn’t mean profitability yet. The net loss was still €24,6 million. The yearly report shows that the focus is still on expanding rapidly throughout Europe. Last year, Fastned opened […]
March 28, 2022
South Korean carmaker SsangYong Motor, still in survival mode, is ditching fellow-countryman Edison, that was prepared to take over the company but didn’t manage to find the money needed by March 25th. SsangYong believes it’s now in a far stronger position than when the take-over by Edison was decided and is looking for a new […]
March 25, 2022
Flanders wants to force a new ‘peak capacity tariff’ to calculate the part of every household’s electricity invoice for grid maintenance and managing by July 1st, 2022. But from several quarters in the energy sector and politics, pressure rises to ask the Flemish energy regulator VREG to postpone this by one year due to soaring […]
March 23, 2022
The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR) has developed a ‘groundbreaking’ new concept of a lightweight plug-in fuel cell vehicle combining a 48 kWh rechargeable battery and a 45 kW fuel cell to offer a 1 000 km range. New letter words to learn: PFCV, PFCEV, PHFCEV? The Interurban Vehicle (IUV) […]
March 22, 2022
On Tuesday, Tesla’s brand-new German gigafactory officially opened in Grünheide in the rural state of Brandenburg, near Berlin. Something Elon Musk didn’t want to miss, as he was welcoming Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the site, along with Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Brandenburg state Premier Dietmar Woidke. Musk himself handed over the first thirty Germany-produced […]
March 22, 2022
Last week, Norwegian-Swedish, shipping and car handling company Wallenius Wilhelmsen, has received the first shipment of 3 000 Polestar EVs at its new expanded marine terminal, Bastenaken West, at the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium. The company accelerated the planned 50-hectare expansion project of the marine terminal to cope with the increasing demand for EVs […]
March 21, 2022
Lydia Peeters (Open Vld), Flemish Minister for Mobility, has finished the promised mapping of new potential semi-public charging points for Flanders. Local governments can now consult the map that shows in hexagonal areas of approximately 200 meters the best locations for installing those public chargers. Today, with some 640 added this year until March, Flanders’ […]
March 18, 2022
Ford is opening up its ‘secret’ Lommel Proving Ground facilities and its team of highly skilled trainers to the general public, offering basic safety up to specialist sporty driving skills courses. At €249 per person, everyone can learn to control a vehicle on a slippery surface in all kinds of conditions or how to avoid […]
March 16, 2022
Hyvia, the joint venture of Renault with American fuel cell manufacturer Plug Power, has started serial production of fuel cells in its factory in Flins, Yvelines in France. The Flins factory near Paris will produce some 1 000 fuel cell systems annually. With the 50/50 joint venture, Renault and Plug Power want to capture a […]
March 16, 2022
Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt announces a second giga-battery factory to be built in Germany, in the northern part, in Heide (Schleswig-Holstein). Volkswagen has a deal with the Swedish for building ‘Northvolt Zwei, in Salzgitter, so this plant is baptized ‘Northvolt Drei’ (Northvolt Three). The new battery factory should have an annual potential capacity of 60 […]
March 15, 2022
Finally, the Belgian Federal Government has reached an agreement on Monday evening to lower the excise on fuel and bring the VAT on gas back to six percent, like decided earlier for electricity. This will cost the government at least 1,3 billion euros. It comes on top of the 1,1 billion euros foreseen for the […]
March 15, 2022
The European Union is envisioning a total ban on exporting to Russia premium and luxury cars from brands like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Ferrari, Bentley, Lamborghini, and Porsche, among others, as part of its fourth package of sanctions. According to Bloomberg news agency, it would apply to all models above €50 000. It also would include […]
March 10, 2022
Generally, BMW is very cautious about admitting hydrogen could become a viable alternative for the electric passenger car. But meanwhile, it proves at its test center in Arjeplog, Sweden, on the Arctic Circle, that its iX5 Hydrogen is better suited for extreme winter conditions than any BEV. No range loss and refueled in 3-4 minutes […]
March 09, 2022
D’Ieteren Automotive, the importer of the Volkswagen brands in Belgium, is showcasing at its distribution center in Kortenberg there is more than selling cars these days. It invites fleet owners to get to know – besides the newest models – a number of mobility services that grew out of its think tank Lab Box, going […]
March 07, 2022
After Airbus in Europe took the lead on developing airplanes burning hydrogen instead of kerosene, American aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney is also looking into hydrogen-fueled propulsion technology for commercial aviation. End of February, it got a $3,8 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DoE) to develop these engines. The HySIITE project will […]
March 04, 2022
Chinese electric car manufacturer Aiways has kicked off its European roadshow with the U6ion Concept on location at the Scheldt river borders in Antwerp on Thursday. The U6ion shows what the second model of the carmaker after the U5 – the first Chinese EV sold in Europe – will look like. The car will be […]
March 03, 2022
After a number of its four-cylinder diesel engines getting an XTL (X-to-liquid) sticker on their fuel hatch in 2021, Audi has certified its V6 diesel engines up to 210 kW (286 pk) for using sustainable HVO fuel. But actually, nothing has changed technically, as most modern diesel engines can run this renewable fuel. HVO stands […]
March 02, 2022
The car carrier Felicity Ace, catching fire nearly two week ago passing by the Azores with some 4 000 vehicles aboard, has sunk on Tuesday to a depth of more than 3.000 meters on the ocean floor. Several EVs on board kept on burning for days, but apparently, the massive smoke was no longer seen. […]
March 02, 2022
With the symbolic presentation of the first fully electric Jeep to hit the markets next year, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has paved the way for the group to sell only 100% electric passenger cars in Europe by 2030. We may expect a fleet of 75 different BEV models, and he hopes to sell five million […]
March 01, 2022
Daimler Trucks has delivered its first seral-produced eActros trucks to clients in Germany. DB Schenker, a division of German rail operator Deutsche Bahn that focuses on logistics, got the first one in Leipzig. Logistics service provider Dachser in Stuttgart also got the keys to an eActros 300. Both were part of the initial test program. […]
February 28, 2022
The EU Commission has granted 10 million euros to the European Battery Alliance (EBA) Academy to come up to speed. The latter, part of the renewable energy agency EIT InnoEnergy, intends to supply support for the industry to train, upskill and reskill some 800 000 workers needed by 2025 to meet demand in the battery […]
February 24, 2022
The Hyoffwind consortium with Colruyt’s Virya Energy and grid manager Fluxys expects its green hydrogen project in Zeebrugge, Belgium’s first 25 MW hydrogen electrolyzer plant, to get its building permit by the middle of 2022. It should be operational by the end of 2023. The consortium has granted the building contract of the factory to […]
February 23, 2022
Former Opel CEO Michael Lohscheller is changing seats again. A few months after being appointed CEO of Vietnamese VinFast, he joins American electric truck builder Nikola Motors as President. After four months in Vietnam, he stepped down in December to return to Europe for personal reasons. According to the Nikola press release, he will be […]
February 22, 2022
Six days after a fire broke out on car carrier Felicity Ace, some 90 nautical miles SSW of the Azores, the abandoned ship is still burning. Apparently, the electric vehicles (EVs) onboard – all from the Volkswagen Group – keep the fire raging. It’s not clear yet whether an EV caused the fire initially. The […]
February 21, 2022
One of America’s most iconic cars, the gull-winged Delorean DMC-12, whose career was short-lived, but gained immortality with Micheal J. Fox in Back to the Future, is coming back as a fully electric car. A group of Texas entrepreneurs around Stephen Wynne who acquired the rights to the brand in the nineties is ready to […]
February 18, 2022
At the Kyndryl data center – a spin-off of IBM’s data infrastructure branch – in Bastogne, the ‘largest active battery’ of the Benelux has delivered already 16 000 megawatt-hours of backup energy since the startup in December to Belgian high voltage grid manager Elia. Grid managers like Elia continuously monitor the grid to keep supply […]
February 17, 2022
Chinese carmaker MG’s fourth electrified model, named MG5 Electric, makes its debut on all Europan markets in March-April. It’s a fully electric station wagon with a choice of two battery sizes, offering a range of 400 or 320 km (WLTP) starting at €33 985 and €36 985. MG Cars Europe managed to triple its sales […]
February 16, 2022
After a pilot that started with ten Dutch stations in November last year, Tesla is opening up all of its Superchargers in the Netherlands to non-Tesla EV drivers with a CCS connector. It also starts gradually opening charging for third parties in Norway and France. Tesla announced the latter on its Twitter channel. But you […]
February 15, 2022
Ahead of the Superbowl, AB InBev’s daughter Anheuser-Busch has set up a showcase of delivering its first-ever zero-carb Bud beer to pubs and restaurants in Los Angeles with a zero-emission Nikola Tre fuel cell semi and BYD electric trucks. The Nikola truck powered by hydrogen picked up a load of beer from the Van Nuys’ […]
February 15, 2022
France is willing to subsidize the purchase of an electric or hydrogen truck, bus, or coach up to 65% of the difference with its diesel sibling. For trucks, up to 26 tons, and buses, this can be as high as 100 000 euros, heavy-weight e-trucks even 150.000. It also applies to converting ICE vehicles to […]
