Author: Green Car Online News

Byton M-Byte electric SUV: More interior photos, US timeline confirmed

While the upstart electric vehicle maker Byton hasn’t yet said much about how its $45,000 M-Byte electric SUV will be sold or serviced in the U.S. it’s confirmed that this vehicle, due next summer, will come with a standout feature atop its dash: a wider screen than you might have in your living room.

The huge 48-inch Shared Experience Display spans the width of its M-Byte’s dashboard and incorporates gesture controls plus individual zones for the driver and passenger, a companion touchscreen tablet built into the steering wheel, and facial recognition and directional microphones to help cater functions to each occupant.

Although that might sound more like the pipe-dream domain of concept cars, the interface will be included even in the base M-Byte costing around $45k. And last week, with the official opening of its Shanghai Design Studio, the company released a few more up-close images that confirm a series of standout details making it into the production version.

Byton concept, 2018 Consumer Electronics Show

Some of the pragmatic concessions—like climate control vents and some hard buttons―that Byton added to its prototype version of the M-Byte for its most recent showing, this January, carry through to the production version.

Byton notes that the front seats, which can rotate inward up to 12 degrees, have made it from the M-Byte Concept all the way through to the production model—although we would assume the rotation is for when you’re parked. In all, Byton claims that 90 percent of the concept car’s design was retained.

The pictures confirm that although climate controls are in a smaller screen at the front of the center console, physical buttons for the front and rear defroster/defogger are higher up in the middle of the dash, as are the shift buttons.

Headquarters of Byton electric-car company, Santa Clara, California

Byton has its headquarters in Nanjing, China, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. It retains an R&D center in Silicon Valley and its primary design and concept center in Munich, Germany.

When the Nanjing, China–built M-Byte shows up in the U.S., in mid-2020, according to the company, with a sales-and-service plan yet unannounced, it could slot into a compelling niche, costing tens of thousands less than alternatives from Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Jaguar but a whole size larger than the Tesla Model Y.

Byton M-Byte concept

Byton told Green Car Reports last week that “the current tariff situation has not impacted Byton’s production and delivery timeline.” In addition to the North American rollout in 2020, it plans to sell the M-Byte in China starting late this year and in Europe in late 2020, and a full reveal is likely this fall.

Oslo plans to recharge electric taxis on the fly

If ever there were an argument for wireless charging, taxis may be it. And as with most things in electric cars, if there's a way to demonstrate the technology in action, Norway may find it.

That's the impetus behind the country's latest effort to equip all of Oslo's taxi stands with wireless chargers. The city announced the plan in March, according to a Reuters report. The chargers will be installed by Finnish utility Fortum.

As long as taxis are sitting, waiting for passengers, they might as well be charging, and they'll start as soon as the cabbie pulls up, with no action needed from the driver.

Wireless charging technology for cars has been somewhat controversial, with many EV advocates dismissing the technology as less efficient than plugging in, because cars have to park precisely for maximum efficiency, and because of cost.

Some have said wireless charging won't make sense until wireless chargers can be run down long stretches of highway to replace the need for fast chargers that require cars to stop and drivers to plug in—and which, generally, can only accommodate one car at a time.

Taxis, however, could be the perfect (sorry) outlet for wireless chargers. While most private cars seldom travel more than 40 miles a day (and even fewer more than 80), taxi drivers often cover several hundred miles a day, have less control over their routes, and can't afford to sit for 45 minutes and wait for a charge.

They need to charge every chance they get. And while cabbies can't afford to stop for 45 minutes to charge, they often stop at airports or outside hotels to wait their turn for passengers.

In November, Oak Ridge National Laboratory demonstrated a 120-kilowatt wireless charger that could give an Oslo taxi a significant 90 miles of range in a 15-minute wait. With wireless chargers at all the taxi stands, drivers wouldn't need to charge up completely, but pick up a few additional miles every few runs.

Norway has announced plans to require all new cars to be electric by 2025, and for all taxis to be to be electric by 2023. That could be a lot more feasible with wireless chargers where they need to stop.

Climate change: GM mulls an electric Hummer revival

The idea of bringing back the Hummer brand is on the table at General Motors.

Yes, that’s the brand that was much maligned by environmentalists in the ‘00s, for becoming a plus-sized piece of hypocrisy on wheels, a fashion statement of American excess riffing off the Humvee, a vehicle that helped fight the war (in part) to secure the flow of foreign oil.

“I love Hummer,” said GM president Mark Reuss to reporters on June 12, when asked specifically about the brand. “I’m not sure. We’re looking at everything.”

A Hummer EV could potentially be built on GM’s upcoming BEV3 dedicated electric vehicle platform—a platform that GM has already confirmed could also (at least in part) be the foundation for an electric pickup.

To look at it another way, GM may have a hard time justifying bringing the Hummer brand back in any way other than as an all-electric brand—especially in light of CEO Mary Barra's stated goal to transition GM toward an all-electric future. Hummer met its demise in 2010, at a time of greater awareness of efficiency, the recession, and a different, reformed company.

The Hummer H2, which is the one that was most maligned over time, shared some of its building blocks with GM’s full-size trucks but was built to a higher weight class—such that it didn’t require an EPA mileage rating (it was single-digit mpg, by all accounts). There was a smaller Hummer, the H3, but even that more efficient model got an EPA-rated 9 mpg city in its popular V-8 H3T form.

1999 AM General Hummer

If Hummer were to come back that way, it would land somewhere between two brands that have seen a fair amount of buzz over the past couple of years: Rivian and Bollinger. With its military heritage and more of an off-road focus, an electric Hummer could be a more rugged counterpoint to Rivian, as well as a somewhat more practical alternative to the specialized, high-end Class 3 truck Bollinger intends to build.

Hummer sales reached their peak in 2006, with 71,524 sold that year, according to Automotive News. While that was definitely still niche territory, it was enough for Hummers to be quite a common sight on American streets.

A revived Hummer could also give Jeep a serious run. The Jeep brand has been slow to electrify, especially in the U.S., although a plug-in hybrid version of the Wrangler is due in 2020.

Such a model would also, of course, have to be light and modestly sized. Anything else might make it a different kind of “guzzler”—at charging stations, instead.

Obstacles include a dealer network that still remembers being burned by GM, when it had them build unique, expensive showrooms, demonstration courses, and facilities and then abandoned the brand.

Although the idea might seem paradoxical, going electric could be quite the statement. Hummers were a valuable tool in the fight over oil resources. What better symbol for energy independence and going tailpipe-free than that?

ChargePoint and Electrify America simplify charging access with roaming agreement

While public charging sessions are few and far between for most electric car owners, who typically charge at home the vast majority of the time, they can present a disproportionately high level of frustration.

The mess of multiple apps, fobs, and RFID cards may soon be a thing of the past. So, too, will the late-night calls to tech support to process credit card numbers, or to enroll as members in a different network in order to just use one of its chargers once.

Electrify America DC fast chargers

Although some of the charging and utility sector wants to term this “interoperability,” the word “roaming” is appropriate because the users who most need to understand it—people new to electric cars—can think of it like cellphone coverage. Simply put, you use the app for the charging network you most use, and occasional sessions on other networks will just work—and be billed via your usual network.

The new partnership agreement was announced Tuesday, and should prove especially useful from a consumer standpoint as those using an existing account from one of the networks won’t incur additional fees on the other.

“This roaming agreement further accelerates the seamless integration of individual EV fueling networks and brings us even closer to the day when the movement of all goods and people will be powered by electricity,” said ChargePoint president and CEO Pasquale Romano. “Partnerships like this make transitioning to electric drive easier than continuing to use fossil fuels.”

2018 Kia Niro Plug-In Hybrid charging at ChargePoint station, Santa Cruz, California, Dec 2017

In all, there will be more than 30,000 individual charge points connected by the two networks, including Level 2 AC and DC fast charging (CCS or CHAdeMO). ChargePoint claims to be the largest electric vehicle charging network in the world, while Electrify America, created by the Volkswagen diesel emissions settlement, is committed to having 2,000 charge ports at 484 locations by July 1.

Both Electrify America and ChargePoint have already made such partnerships with Greenlots. Electrify America also has allied with EV Connect and SemaConnect, while ChargePoint has roaming agreements with EVBox and FLO.

Former Ford CEO suggests electric-car “reckoning” as US adoption lags

Many major automakers, including Ford Motor Company, have changed their tune on electric cars, and stepped up targets for EVs and electrified vehicles over the past several years.

But not everyone is so rosy about rapid growth of the electric vehicle market—including, apparently, former Ford CEO Mark Fields.

Appearing at the EcoMotion mobility conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, as reported by Automotive News, Fields said that the industry is going to be “under a reckoning over the next 2 to 3 years.”

2020 Ford electric SUV teaser

“My view is that yes, electrification is going to grow over the years, but it's not going to grow to the extent all the experts are telling you,” said Fields, who pointed to China’s industrial policy and noted that the adoption rate of electrified vehicles in the U.S. is going to lag that in other countries.

It’s possible Fields has an axe to grind. In the couple of years since the former CEO was shown the door, it has emerged that some in the company saw him as towing too conservative of a line with respect to electrification—even though he announced a $4.5 billion push toward those technologies during his tenure.

Under the leadership of CEO Jim Hackett, Ford has since gone bigger on plans for electric and hybrid vehicles, while pulling back on some of its autonomous-vehicle push that Fields had started. It’s in the midst of an $11 billion investment plan toward 40 electrified vehicles (and including several fully electric models) by 2022. Ford’s Lincoln luxury brand will have at least one of those fully electric models, and it will get electrified versions of all its models by 2022.

2020 Lincoln Aviator plug-in hybrid

Fields’ successor also led Ford’s slow exit from traditional sedans, toward future vehicles that would be more activity-based and configured around varying levels of electrification. “We’re all in on this and we’re taking our mainstream vehicles, our most iconic vehicles, and we’re electrifying them,” chairman Bill Ford said in January 2018. “If we want to be successful with electrification, we have to do it with vehicles that are already popular.”

The company has announced that it will be partnering with Volkswagen for vans and trucks outside of North America, and has an ongoing memorandum of understanding extending the conversation to other vehicle types and business areas. So it’s still within the realm of possibility that Ford could decide to step its targets and timelines up once again—regardless of what former executives might think.

Toyota Mirai gets deepest discount yet—amid hydrogen shortage

Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles aren’t exactly cheap to own or run—if you take them at face value.

The two modest fuel-cell models you can currently purchase (versus lease) both carry luxury-vehicle prices: a base $59,430 for the 2019 Toyota Mirai and a base $59,345 for the eco-focused Hyundai Nexo Blue. Trade-in or resale value remains an unknown. And at the last time we filled with hydrogen, last October, it cost $17.49 per kilogram—potentially up to a $75 fill for the 312-mile Mirai or a $110 fill for the 380-mile Nexo Blue.

However, today’s fuel-cell vehicles live in a world that turns a blind eye on face value. Highly subsidized leases factor in at $349 and $399 per month for the Mirai and Nexo, respectively, or $379 for the other lease-only alternative, the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell. And all three include a big bank of subsidized hydrogen that will help ease at least the cost concern of refueling.

It follows that Toyota, which has been offering its Mirai for sale for several years, leases 95 to 99 percent of its fuel-cell vehicles. But now with multiple discounts, Toyota may be seeing if it can get any more takers on the idea of buying a Mirai.

As our partners at CarsDirect pointed out late last week, Toyota is offering a mammoth new dealer cash incentive of $15,000 on the Mirai.

Toyota Mirai emissions-scrubbing billboard

The deep discount is, from what we can tell, exclusive to the Bay Area—where, oddly, there’s currently a severe hydrogen shortage. And the discount appears to stack with the existing Trailblazer cash-back offer of $7,500.

That gets a whopping $22,500 potentially off the price of the Mirai. There’s also a $5,000 California Clean Vehicle Rebate―provided buyers stay under income caps of $150,000 for single filers, $204,000 for head-of-household, or $300,000 for joint filers. Clean Air Vehicle decals are another precious perk for vehicles that qualify for that rebate, even if the household makes too much money to claim it.

But hold on; the new $15,000 discount is what’s termed a “manufacturer-to-dealer incentive”—a kind of incentive that dealerships aren’t required to pass along to buyers.

CarsDirect crunched the numbers and found that for the savings (for a narrow subset of shoppers, admittedly) could add up to more than $42,000.

2019 Toyota Mirai

That includes the value of the hydrogen itself that Toyota wraps in, at up to $15,000. But even if your dealership doesn’t give you the full $27,000 discount they’ve tallied so far, you’re likely to end up with a vehicle that costs less than $40,000, with free fuel.

Don’t be led to believe that there’s any federal tax credit on fuel-cell vehicle purchase, though; that arm, called the Fuel Cell Motor Vehicle Tax Credit, formerly ranged up to #8,000 but expired at the end of 2017.

Green Car Reports has reached out to Toyota about whether the purchase-offer timing, which is good through July 8, is coincidental or intentional. Toyota remarked to CarsDirect that its incentive programs “are regional and flexible, allowing our regional sales offices to tailor incentives to their specific markets.”

Sometimes it’s funny the way timing works out for such offers. But perhaps in the middle of what’s been a rather sour, disruptive situation for some households, Toyota can make lemonade.

Audi E-tron recalled for battery seal, potential “thermal event”

Audi confirmed Monday that it is recalling 1,644 E-tron electric SUVs, including 544 vehicles that have been delivered to customers, due to an issue with the battery pack’s seal that it says could lead to “a short circuit or thermal event.”

Audi is not aware of any such shorts or thermal events, it says, insisting that the move to recall its first electric car was made “out of an abundance of caution.” According to Audi, there have only been five cases globally of the battery warning light illuminating that are related to this potential pack-seal issue.

The cause isn’t related to the cells or modules themselves in the Audi E-tron battery pack. Specifically, a defective grommet could leave a portion of the battery’s seal vulnerable to a breach, where moisture could enter the pack.

2019 Audi e-tron battery pack

Moisture entering the pack could lead to corrosion, and the increased chance of a short over time. It could also lead to the increased chances of a fire during a thermal runaway issue within the pack—the most likely after a severe collision.

Provided the yellow battery warning light on the instrument panel hasn’t signaled an issue, the vehicle is safe to continue driving until Audi is ready with a remedy for the affected vehicles—expected to arrive in August.

The warning light is something to take very seriously, however: “Should a yellow battery warning light appear, appropriate actions should be taken to stop and park the vehicle in the open, do not charge and contact roadside assistance to make arrangements to have the vehicle towed to the dealer for inspection/service without delay,” instructs Audi.

2019 Audi E-tron

Audi says that E-tron vehicles that are unaffected by the recall remain available for delivery, and their reservation system remains open. As of the time this was published, recall documents hadn't yet been posted by the federal government.

The company has been proactively reaching out to customers over the past week. If customers do see the warning light, or if they choose not to drive their vehicle affected by the recall, Audi will pick up their vehicle at a place of their choice and replace it with an unaffected E-tron whenever possible. Otherwise it will substitute in an ICE vehicle as well as an $800 cash card to help cover the higher fuel expenses and any additional expenses the owner may incur.

The “abundance of caution” statement speaks volumes about the approach for battery packs being taken by Audi, and by Volkswagen and the entire VW Group. While Audi may have already encountered issues with LG Chem in cell supply, it’s treating the battery pack, its energy and power management, and its cooling to be an entirely proprietary component designed and engineered in-house—a choice that’s likely given Audi an advantage in troubleshooting and fixing issues like this when they arise.

Tesla opens first 250-kw charging stations at Fremont factory

With Tesla's Supercharger fast charging network, Tesla vehicles can now be charged faster than any other currently available electric car.

That status comes courtesy of eight new Version 3 Superchargers that the company opened at its Fremont, California, factory, which can charge a Model 3 at up to 250 kilowatts. That can give the car, which is rated at 3.86 miles per kilowatt-hour (or 130 mpg equivalent, for a typical Long Range Model 3,) up to 180 miles of charge in as little as 15 minutes.

Of course, it comes with a few caveats, primarily that it only works for the Model 3, and only for drivers who are within range of those eight Superchargers in Fremont. The company opened the Superchargers to some Tesla drivers in its Early Access test program in March, but as of Friday it has enabled any Tesla driver to use them.

Tesla plans to begin rolling out the fast Version 3 Superchargers across the country.

Other Tesla models still get a faster charge on the new Version 3 Superchargers, just not as fast. With both lower charging speeds and lower efficiency ratings (fewer miles from the same number of kilowatt-hours), the Model S can refill about 130 miles in 15 minutes, and the Model X about 115. That's still faster than cars can recharge at standard (V2) Supercharger stations.

Tesla's goal, the company said in a blog post, is to reduce wait times at existing Supercharger stations by charging each car more quickly. (The company has also instituted new idle-time fees for cars that remain parked and plugged in at Superchargers once their batteries are full.)

Other networks include even faster chargers, such as Electrify America and EVgo, both of which have installed several 350-kw DC fast chargers on their networks. However, no other cars today are designed to accept such a fast charge. The fastest, so far, is the Audi E-tron quattro, which can charge at a maximum of 150 kilowatts.

The first new electric car that will be able to take advantage of the new 350-kilowatt speed will likely be the Porsche Taycan, which is due out at the end of the year. In the meantime, Model 3 owners can rejoice that their cars can charge faster than any other car on the road—as long as they're in Fremont.

Rivian CEO confirms auxiliary batteries, truck-to-truck charging

The U.S.-based startup electric automaker Rivian is already showing plenty of signs that it's doing things differently than Tesla. While Tesla CEO Elon Musk discusses potential features of the company's new cars on Twitter, Rivian has held back on boasting about some of its most innovative ideas.

The latest, according to a wide-ranging new interview with Rivian founder RJ Scaringe, published last week in The Drive is the ability for Rivian trucks to charge each other.

Scaringe said the company's models would have the “capability you'd have in a Land Rover, with a lot of off-road capability….” Deep in the wilderness off-road, however, there are few gas stations, much less electric-car fast chargers. Off-roaders often carry extra gas cans, and often have to buddy up to help each other out.

In the Drive interview, Scaringe confirmed that Rivian trucks will be able to do that.

Scaringe confirmed earlier reports based on patent filings that the Rivian R1T pickup will be designed to accept accessory battery packs that fit into the bed like a toolbox or a false bed floor. The company still hasn't specified how big those accessory packs might be, but they will come on top of the truck's largest 180-kilowatt-hour, 400-mile battery pack. The R1T is will also be available with smaller internal battery options including 135 kwh and 105 kwh, though the company has not released range estimates for those battery packs. Adding the accessory battery packs would allow the truck to venture farther into the wilderness off the beaten path.

Rivian auxiliary battery
Rivian auxiliary flat battery for R1T

The CEO also announced that Rivian models will be able to share a charge, with one truck charging another on a peer-to-peer basis. If one truck runs out of range off-road, and another has the accessory batteries and enough juice to get home, the second driver could directly lend the first a charge, for example, like siphoning gas from one car to another or lending a gas can. That would be a first for electric vehicles.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, Scaringe also threw a little shade at other electric automakers announcing plans for ever faster charge rates. “There's a lot of misinformation on this, unfortunately,” he said. “The speed at which you charge has a huge impact on the life of the batteries. Regardless of what they're telling you, everyone is working with very similar sets in chemistry…. In the next five years, you’ll see a lot of demonstrations where things are charged in 15 minutes, but if you do that 30 times, the battery is shot. Those demos are not realistic or repeatable and we'll start to see those get replaced with real world charging speeds and rates.”

GM executive: Electric pickup will be built on EV-specific platform

General Motors president Mark Reuss confirmed Thursday that the company has an all-electric pickup in development and says it will be based on the company's BEV3 platform, expected to debut in a new Cadillac SUV sometime after 2023.

That chassis will be similar to the “skateboard” chassis that GM developed for its Autonomy concept car back in 2002, which included batteries and electric motors on a platform chassis that could accept a variety of car body styles.

Reuss made the comments at the UBS Global Industrials and Transportation Conference on Thursday, according to a report in WardsAuto. “We will have a complete electric lineup, including a pickup truck that’s in development,” he said.

“We can build everything on this (platform) from just three drive units: front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive or e-all-wheel drive. This architecture is the canvas on which we will paint a profitable EV program,” he said.

Also Reuss stopped short of saying whether the pickup itself would be built using the same skateboard platform in a traditional sense (of body, and frame, and suspension), the statements confirm that the company is seeking to use the same battery technology and power units across its range.

GM is scrambling to keep up with the likes of startup automaker Rivian—which has revealed an all-electric pickup it is developing to go on sale in 2021 with 400 miles of range and potentially more with optional range-extending auxiliary batteries—and with cross-town rival Ford, which announced a few months earlier that it also developing an all-electric F-150, and which bought a $500 million stake in Rivian after a potential deal for GM to invest in the startup fell through. Ford has said its electric F-150 will be separate from the Rivian program.

Reuss expressed optimism about electric cars, saying the cost of building them will reach parity with internal combustion cars sooner than most people expect. “We’re going to reach parity a lot sooner than people think. (Internal combustion engine) compliance will become expensive. All these things and more will lead to greater consumer acceptance of EVs,” he said. “Plus, they are going to be great cars.”

At the Detroit auto show in January, Reuss announced that GM will shift the focus of its electric car efforts from Chevrolet to its luxury Cadillac brand with the BEV3 platform. The company's hope is to be able to charge more for electric cars to make them profitable. With Cadillac the focus of GM's electric car sales starting around 2023, it's not clear how long after that an electric pickup might follow, since it would likely be badged a GMC or a Chevrolet. At the earliest, it seems GM's electric pickup might appear in 2024.

In the meantime, GM is developing a new SUV based on the current Chevy Bolt EV, on GM's BEV2 platform, which will see it through at least 2022.