Author: Green Car Online News

Audi plans to put old EV batteries to work in factory tugs

Audi factory tug uses recycled e-tron batteries
Factory tugs in Audi's Ingolstadt factory now sport the latest in second-hand lithium-ion batteries.

With automakers on the hook in jurisdictions around the world to take back and properly reuse or recycle all the batteries they install in electric cars, various automakers are experimenting with different ways to reuse the depleted batteries that come back from their old electric cars—from using them in new charging stations to selling them to wind farms, to installing them on the roofs of solar-powered apartment complexes.

Now Audi is installing them on fork lifts and the tugs it uses to move parts around its main factory in Ingolstadt, Germany.

MUST READ: As used electric-car batteries set to flood market, Automakers ramp up reuse efforts

The tugs, which resemble larger versions of those that pull baggage trains at airports, are normally equipped with heavy trays of lead-acid batteries, which workers have to remove from the vehicles using heavy equipment several times per day to install on charging stations.

Instead, Audi fits 24 of the e-tron's 36 battery modules into an identically sized tray to give the tugs and fork lifts up to perhaps between 30 and 50 kwh of battery capacity, depending on how much the cells degraded in their original cars.

With charging hardware like that in a car, the tugs and fork lifts can be driven to a charging station in the factory and plugged in, saving countless man-hours on the factory line and clearing out space that the large, old lead-acid battery chargers consumed.

READ MORE: Volvo reuses bus batteries for solar storage

The new batteries also improve the performance of the machines, allowing them to maintain a constant speed while climbing ramps in the factory, for example.

“Every lithium-ion battery represents high energy consumption and valuable resources that must be used in the best possible way,” said Peter Kössler, Audi board member for Production and Logistics, in a statement. “For us, a sustainable electric-mobility strategy also includes a sensible second-use concept for energy carriers.”

CHECK OUT: Formula E signs on to complete battery recycling

Overall, Audi estimates that reusing e-tron batteries in fork lifts and tugs throughout its 16 factories could save millions of dollars.

Of course, those factories churn out many more EV batteries than the number of such factory vehicles can absorb, so the company may still need to find more ways to reuse old EV batteries before they are recycled.

Dieselgate continued: SEC charges VW and its ex-boss with fraud

Volkswagen TDI diesel vehicles owned by Phil Grate and family, Seattle, Washington
Amazingly, the diesel emissions case against Volkswagen in the U.S. is still gaining steam.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged VW and its former CEO Martin Winterkorn on Thursday with defrauding investors, according to wire-service reports.

READ MORE: Gauging VW's progress on second diesel-settlement anniversary (Updated)

The charges are tied to bonds that VW sold to investors in the U.S. in 2014 and 2015, when the SEC alleges the company and its chief executive knew that more than half a million of the diesel cars and SUVs it sold in the U.S. didn't comply with emissions regulations and so should have known they could face a massive recall.

The lawsuit alleges that VW misled investors who bought $13 billion worth of those bonds about the quality of its cars.

CHECK OUT: Report: Former VW CEO Martin Winterkorn criminally charged over dieselgate

“Volkswagen hid its decade long emissions scheme while it was selling billions of dollars of its bonds to investors at inflated prices,” said Stephanie Avakian, the co-director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, in a release.

In a prepared statement, Volkswagen responded to the new charges by calling them “legally and factually” flawed, and said the SEC was “piling on.”

“The SEC has brought an unprecedented complaint over securities sold only to sophisticated investors who were not harmed and received all payments of interest and principal in full and on time,” VW's statement (via the Wall Street Journal) continued.

DON'T MISS: VW boosts electric car plans with more models, 22 million EVs in 10 years

The new charges follow ones that Volkswagen settled with the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department by recalling all those cars and buying back most of them. Criminal charges in the U.S. are still outstanding against Winterkorn and several other German VW executives, over the emissions cheating scandal. Since Germany does not extradite its citizens to the U.S., they have not faced the charges. Two VW executives have been convicted in the scandal and are now serving sentences in U.S. federal prisons.

The diesel emissions scandal is reported to have already cost VW more than $30 billion, and the company has since shifted its focus to developing electric cars, where the company has invested as much as $50 billion to make the transition to EVs as it attempts to put the diesel scandal in its rearview mirror. The first electric models from VW's resulting modular-platform mass-market push are slated to go on sale in the U.S. starting next year.

Mazda range-extended electric car may help the rotary live on

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Mazda RX-Vision Fast and Furious livery
The Wankel rotary, the peculiar pistonless internal combustion engine design that Mazda built so much of its heritage around, may see a resurgence after all.

Earlier reports and remarks from Mazda executives have suggested that while the rotary will make a comeback, it will be relegated to what’s essentially an emergency generator—a range extender for a plug-in electric vehicle that’s expected for the U.S., among other markets. But a report from last week puts the rotary potentially on a higher stage in some versions or vehicles.

DON'T MISS: Mazda announces electric lineup, rotary range extender

Ichiro Hirose, Mazda’s managing executive officer for powertrain development, recently told Australia’s Drive that the project is no longer a single powertrain layout for one vehicle but a flexible platform that could be used to configure various levels of electrification around the globe for the smaller automaker, which has limited development resources compared to other big global automakers.

“What we intend to do is that with this combination you can vary the amount of battery and also the amount of fuel tank supply,” Hirose told Drive. “What that allows us to do is, depending on the ratio between the two, is that we can have a derivative that can work more like a plug-in hybrid.”

CHECK OUT: Will EV Range Extenders Give Rise to a Rotary Renaissance?

The executive said that Mazda has made a breakthrough with its rotary engine that may allow it to be used as more than just a range extender in the future. That includes new ways to curb the emissions involved in this challenging engine design’s startup conditions, and there’s a hint that the strategy could involve spinning the rotary up ahead of time, perhaps only operating it in a certain rev range.

Rotary engine

Hirose used the term XEV to refer to some combination of the rotary range extender and electric drive system. With flexibility built into the platform, some versions could have only a series-hybrid setup, perhaps with the rotary used solely as the range extender, somewhat like the BMW i3 REx. Others, he hinted, could be more like the system used in Toyota hybrids, mixing in parallel-hybrid operation and making the motor supplemental to the internal-combustion engine at higher speeds.

READ MORE: Mazda rotary engine may find new life in self-driving Toyota e-Palette project

In either case, the U.S. is almost certain to get a vehicle that places perhaps more emphasis on its charging port than its fuel tank. Masashi Otsuka, Mazda’s North American VP of R&D and design, confirmed to Green Car Reports recently that a significant amount of research and development work has been done in the U.S. on what he termed a range-extended drive system with the rotary.

Otsuka said that we’re likely to see the technology in a prototype vehicle, positioned for the U.S., before the end of the year. So we may not have to wait long before we can hear a new rotary run again—if only once in a while.

VW boosts electric car plans with more models, 22 million EVs in 10 years

Left to right: Volkswagen ID, ID Buzz and ID Crozz concepts
VW has been busy putting logistics in place to build as many as 15 million examples of 50 new electric models (across its portfolio of brands) by 2028.

At its annual conference at its headquarters in Wolfsburg Tuesday, the company upped that commitment to 22 million cars among 70 new electric models in a second wave of models based on its new MEB electric-car architecture, which is designed to be affordable.

DON'T MISS: VW is planning to build 15 million electric vehicles (Updated)

The company projected that by 2040, 70 percent of new cars sold in Europe will be electric, and another 10 to 20 percent will consist of plug-in hybrids. The U.S. may be slightly lower, with 60 percent battery-electric cars by then, while China will be even higher with 85 percent battery electrics by 2040.

“Volkswagen will change radically,” said CEO Herbert Diess. “We are taking on responsibility with regard to the key trends of the future—particularly in connection with climate protection.”

The company has named four potential suppliers for batteries for its new cars, including LG Chem, CATL, Samsung, and SK Innovation. Farther out, VW is working toward developing solid-state batteries, which could be sourced in Europe.

READ MORE: Ahead of electric-car production, VW demands suppliers cut carbon emissions

At the meeting, VW also announced plans to become carbon neutral as a company, including its production, by 2050 by reducing its own consumption and waste, switching to renewable energy for its factories and buildings, and offsetting other emissions that it can't avoid. The company is working on drawing up a roadmap to do that, starting with how it acquires steel and aluminum to build cars.

It is converting its primary electric-car factory in Zwickau, where it will build the ID models on the MEB platform, from coal power to natural gas.

CHECK OUT: Ahead of electric-car production, VW demands suppliers cut carbon emissions

The company says it will install 400 Ionity fast-chargers along major highways in Europe by 2020, one every 75 miles, including 100 in Germany. It will also install 3,500 workplace chargers for employees at its facilities and for customers at its dealerships.

Volkswagen has also announced plans to develop a new product line called Elli to bring renewable energy services and smart chargers to its electric-car customers to help them reduce their carbon footprint as well.

VW plans to introduce the ID hatchback in Europe later this year, followed by the electric small SUV (based on the ID Crozz concept) in Europe and the U.S. next year and eventually the ID Buzz electric Microbus recreation in 2021. The company also announced plans at last week's Geneva auto show to license its MEB platform to other automakers.

Not just diesel: FCA recalling 860K cars for emissions failure

2014 Dodge Avenger
Fiat Chrysler has recalled 862,520 gas-powered vehicles after on-road testing showed they might not meet emissions standards.

The vehicles to be recalled, including the Dodge Avenger, Caliber, and Journey, and the Chrysler 200 (a twin of the Avenger) spanning from 2011 to 2016, met original EPA laboratory emissions tests, but failed in the kind of followup road tests implemented after emissions cheating was uncovered in millions of VW diesels.

DON'T MISS: No buybacks: FCA settlement for Ram pickup, Jeep Grand Cherokee EcoDiesel owners

Following the VW diesel scandal, the EPA and automakers began conducting the additional on-road testing, with mobile emissions-testing equipment strapped to the back of the cars. These are the tests that uncovered cheating on emissions tests in several modern diesels after 2009, which disabled some emissions equipment on the road and only turned it on when the car detected it was being tested in a lab.

There's been nothing suggested that this has anything to do with a defeat device. Chrysler said the non-compliant emissions were discovered in “routine in-use emissions testing, and reported to the EPA.”

“Today's EPA announcement reflects a new policy for announcing routine emissions recalls,” said FCA spokesman Eric Mayne. “This campaign has no safety implications. Nor are there any associated fines.”

The recall affects catalytic converters, and potentially other components, in front-wheel drive 2011-2016 Dodge Journey, 2011 and 2012 Dodge Caliber, 2011-2014 Avenger and Chrysler 200, as well as the 2011-2016 Jeep Compass and Patriot. The report did not specify which engines might be involved, but various versions of the four cars shared a 2.4-liter inline-4.

READ MORE: FCA can settle Jeep, Ram EcoDiesel emission case with fine, recall: Justice Department

Under the recall, catalytic converters will be refurbished or replaced. Mayne specified that the materials from the old catalytic converters will be recycled.

The EPA told Reuters that it will continue its investigation into other Fiat Chrysler models, which it says could also be non-compliant and may be subject to future recalls.

It's not the first time that Chrysler's engines have been found not to be compliant with emissions standards. Diesels in the company's Jeep Grand Cherokees and Ram diesel models were recalled in conjunction with the VW diesel lawsuit, and the Cummins diesel engines in the Ram Heavy Duty were also recalled a separate case.

Chrysler said it began contacting customers last month to have the recall work done.

Next Fiat 500 to arrive in 2020 only as electric car, executive confirms

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2013 Fiat 500e electric car, Los Angeles drive event, April 2013
Are you ready for a new generation of the Fiat 500e electric car?

At the pace of the auto industry, and its five or six year cycles, it’s overdue. And from a report released last week, it could arrive around this time next year.

Last week Fiat revealed an all-electric Concept Centoventi, which envisioned a future EV that would offer a lot more customization potential.

Fiat in the U.S. could not reveal any more information about the Centoventi or its production intent, saying it’s just a concept. But FCA chief marketing officer Olivier François told Top Gear something quite different: that it previews the strategy behind an all-new Fiat 500e due just a year from now—one that will be electric-only.

The current, front-wheel-drive Fiat 500e, which has already been around for seven model years, is built on a design that was introduced to Europe in 2007 (and then the U.S. in 2011), and hasn’t changed much at all along the way.

2013 Fiat 500e

Today the 500e offers 84 miles of EPA-rated range—actually 3 miles less than it did when it was introduced for the 2013 model year.

Since the beginning, though, we’ve noted that this model is generous on real-world range, and at a time when some of the other affordable electric vehicles were caught up in leaves and twigs and gamification, the 500e seemed to have been engineered by people who understood that EVs needed to put their best foot forward in driving dynamics, emphasizing the perky side of going electric.

That electric-only claim deserves a big asterisk. In could soon become a familiar theme, the Fiat 500 will have all-new underpinnings in electric form, while gasoline versions will continue indefinitely on the existing platform, with minor updates to come.

Porsche, for instance, is building the next generation of its Macan SUV only as a fully electric model. The current gasoline Porsche Macan will continue for an undisclosed time, although with shared production space at Leipzig it may only amount to a year or two.

2011 Fiat 500 launch event at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, November 2010

François also said that the finished, next-generation 500e will “be very true to the spirit of the original 500”—a nod that Top Gear took to mean Fiat is likely looking to move the 500e to rear-wheel drive, like the original.

The often-repeated (for good reason) reality check from the late CEO Sergio Marchionne—that the company loses about $10,000 on each 500e it makes—likely weighs heavily on the carmaker's decision. To aim for the premium price the executive suggested, the new production model will have something more like a 400-km (248-mile) range rather than a 200-km (124-mile) one, and perhaps not be as utilitarian as the concept.

With that, the lower price of batteries still falling quite rapidly, and a focus toward the performance side of the 500, perhaps Fiat can get out of the red and still win some more hearts for electric cars next year.

Nissan Leaf crosses 400,000 cumulative global sales

2019 Nissan Leaf
With Tesla looming in its rearview mirrors, the little Nissan Leaf is chuffing ahead in the global electric-car sales race.

The company that built the original modern electric car announced on Tuesday that it sold its 400,000th copy of the Leaf worldwide, just as the longer-range Leaf Plus version goes on sale to spar with Tesla's new Short Range Model 3. (The Leaf Plus is rated at 226 miles of range from its 62-kwh battery.)

MUST READ: Tesla Model 3 owns the EV market, outsells all other plug-ins combined in the fourth quarter race

Over its now seven-year lifespan, the Model S has sold more than 260,000 globally. (The Model X doesn't come close, at a little less than 90,000 sales since 2015.)

Although the Tesla Model 3 sells almost twice as many cars per month as the Leaf globally, it may take a long time for it to catch up with the Leaf's six-year head start.

Bloomberg estimates that Tesla has sold 215,000 Model 3s so far.

CHECK OUT: Was 2018 the peak for internal-combustion car sales?

It's a different story in the U.S., where Nissan sells only a small fraction of the number of Model 3s that Tesla sells every month. In the U.S., Tesla sold 77,000 Model 3s to the Leaf's 19,455. Even with the Leaf's head start, going on sale in 2011, Tesla sold more model 3s last year than the 129,000 plus Leafs that Nissan has sold in the U.S. since the car went on sale.

Regardless of who's winning the sales race, it's worth celebrating that so many people are buying efficient electric cars in a few short years.