Lifeboat Foundation

Senators John Thune and Gary Peters reach a bipartisan deal.

By Minda Zetlin

Continue reading “The Senate Is About to Approve Commercial Sale of Self-Driving Cars (But Not Trucks)” »

Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company, announced last week a $1 billion investment in electric car and battery production in the US.

As with any new EV investment from a legacy automaker, the media painted it as an “attack on Tesla”, but Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and largest shareholder, doesn’t seem too worried about it.

But it’s not coming to the US — yet.

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The company’s just invested $1 billion into electric car and battery production.

Gogoro, which wants to redefine urban transportation to make it more sustainable, announced today that it has raised a whopping $300 million to further its mission. New investors Temasek, Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, Sumitomo Corporation, and ENGIE joined existing investors Dr. Samuel Yin, founder of the Tang Prize and chairman of Ruentex Group; Panasonic; and others.

Based in Taipei, Taiwan, Gogoro developed a cloud-powered battery-swapping network called the Gogoro Energy Network. The aim, according to cofounder and CEO Horace Luke, is to build an infrastructure model to power electric mobility.

Continue reading “Gogoro raises $300 million for its battery-swapping technology” »

Electric vehicles would get a big boost if California bans internal combustion engines.

This is how you really get an industry to change its ways. Bloomberg reports that China’s government has announced that any automaker producing or importing more than 30,000 cars in China must ensure 10 percent of them are all-electric, plug-in hybrid, or hydrogen-powered by 2019. That number will rise to 12 percent in 2020.

In fact, the new regulations are actually more lenient than drafts of the rules had suggested: they scrap a 2018 introduction to give manufacturers more time to prepare, and will also excuse failure to meet the quota in the first year. So, really, the 12 percent target in 2020 is the first enforceable number.

That still doesn’t make it very easy, as the Wall Street Journal notes (paywall). Domestic automakers already make plenty of electric cars (largely at the government’s behest), which means that they should be able to meet the numbers, but Western firms will find it harder. In preparation, some have actually set up partnerships with Chinese companies to help them build electric vehicles in time.

Continue reading “China’s New Electric Car Rules Are Amazingly Aggressive” »

Both automakers are set to make future EVs off of Prius platform.