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LG Chem looks for location for second US battery factory

With more automakers lining up to buy lots of batteries for electric cars, leading battery supplier LG Chem is planning to build a second battery factory in the U.S., according to a Reuters report citing three people familiar with the matter.

The company is considering sites in Kentucky and Tennessee among other locations.

LG Chem already operates a battery assembly facility in Holland, Michigan, which supplies batteries to GM for the Chevy Bolt EV. The new factory would supply Volvo, Fiat Chrysler, and potentially Hyundai and Volkswagen—plus additional batteries to GM.

LG already supplies batteries to Volkswagen in Europe and has been involved in disputes with the automaker over prices and supplies. Its Korean rival, SK Innovation, is building a new factory in Georgia to supply cells to Volkswagen, for locally produced MEB electric vehicles, and Mercedes-Benz, for its new EQC that is expected to go into production in Alabama next year.

SKI was sued by LG Chem in May, with LG alleging that SKI stole battery trade secrets by hiring several of its former employees, and seeking an injunction against SKI selling the batteries. The court has not yet ruled on the case.

Amid dramatic growth in electric-car production, automakers are starting to face supply shortages and price increases in EV batteries, and the U.S. has put raw materials for lithium batteries on the list of critical materials to develop more domestic production quickly.

Today, only one lithium mine is in operation in the U.S., in northern Nevada. Another has been granted exploratory permits in North Carolina.

On a trip to South Korea last month, President Trump applauded South Korean companies, including SKI, for investing in production in the U.S.

Tesla opens access to CHAdeMO chargers for Model 3 drivers

Tesla has been widely known for having the most convenient fast charging networks in the world of electric cars. It's been so successful that some have even referred to it as Tesla's “moat” against competition.

For Model 3 owners, however, who make up the bulk of Tesla drivers, it has been all they have access to.

This week, Tesla released a long-awaited adapter to allow Model 3 owners to plug their cars into CHAdeMO chargers on other networks, and Tesla fans—and especially Model 3 drivers—are celebrating.

Other charging networks have different business models, focusing on urban areas, for example, where most EV owners live, or on workplace charging. While Tesla Superchargers are widespread and focused on enabling owners to make long trips in their cars, they aren't always where some owners want them.

Some shopping malls, for example, may have EVgo, Blink, or ChargePoint chargers, but not Tesla Superchargers. New York state highway rest areas are contracted to install Greenlots chargers, but not all have Tesla Superchargers. Most of these other networks offer CHAdeMO as well as CCS Combo fast chargers.

Tesla Model 3 CHAdeMO adapter

While the CHAdeMO chargers aren't as fast as Tesla Superchargers, they can provide about 100 miles of charge to a Model 3 in a half hour. Chargers using the CHAdeMO standard, however, might never be able to charge as fast as some of the fastest chargers rolling out today, however, at up to 350 kilowatts, which use CCS Combo connectors.

Since most non-Tesla fast-charge stations now include cords for both CHAdeMO and CCS standards, having a CHAdeMO adapter will give Model 3 drivers access to most fast charging sites across the U.S.

Since Teslas were developed before most other automakers agreed on a standard for fast-charging, most Teslas use a unique, proprietary charge port. CHAdeMO is a standard developed earlier in Japan and shared by Nissan and Mitsubishi.

Since then, most U.S. and European automakers have agreed on the CCS Combo standard, and Model 3s sold in Europe come with a CCS charge port in place of the proprietary Tesla charge port.

The Tesla Model S and Model X, which use a different battery and on-board chargers, have long offered CHAdeMO adapters, but they don't work for the Model 3.

The new Model 3 CHAdeMO adapter is available on Tesla's website for $450.

No updates for Tesla Model S, Model X, says Musk

The Tesla Model S and Model X might never get the floating, center-mounted, horizontal instrument cluster from the newer Model 3, as had been widely reported based on patent and trademark drawings and insider reports.

On Monday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk quashed the rumors on Twitter, his usual venue, in response to a question from a follower asking when to expect a refreshed Model X.

“There is no 'refreshed' Model X or Model S coming, only a series of minor ongoing changes,” Musk wrote.

In response to a followup question from the same user specifically about whether the Model X will get a new interior, Musk simply replied: “No.”

Tesla watchers had expected the company's higher-end cars to get the new interior, perhaps as a cost-saving measure for the company to commonize the interiors across all its models. The Model S and Model X have separate instrument clusters in front of the steering wheel that the Model 3 lacks, and have a vertical center touch screen, both of which require engineers to program separate display outputs for every new feature the company introduces.

2017 Tesla Model S

The Model S has been on the market for seven years, and the Model X for nearly four. Most other car companies replace popular models after five years and give them a significant update in year three. The announcement that they won't be updated has led some to wonder how long the company plans to keep building the Model S and Model X, especially as it struggles to find factory space to build new models such as the upcoming Model Y SUV, the second-generation Roadster, and the Tesla pickup.

Sales of the luxury models, which some investors have credited for still providing a large share of Tesla's profits, have dropped almost in half since production of the more affordable Model 3 has ramped up, but the company has maintained sales of about 60,000 of the two models a year, a healthy rate considering their luxury-car cost.

Toyota covers Prius Prime with solar panels to test mileage

While Toyota has been skeptical of electric cars, the carmaker is expressing optimism about technology that can supplement plugging in: solar.

Along with its battery partners NIDO and Sharp, Toyota is experimenting with a new Prius Prime in Japan (called the Prius PHV there), equipped with 860 watts of solar panels on the roof, hood, and rear hatch.

The car uses photovoltaic solar cells from Sharp that Toyota says are 34 percent efficient “plus.” Altogether, the company says that on an ideal sunny day, the solar panels could give the Prius PHV up to 27.6 miles of electric power per day.

That's a big jump from the current solar roof that Toyota offers on the Prius PHV in Japan, which delivers 180 watts of power from panels that are 23 percent efficient and maxes out at about 3.8 miles a day. It can only charge the batteries while the car is parked, while the test array will charge even while the car is driving.

The Prius PHV still uses its 9-kilowatt-hour battery which can be charged from the wall to deliver another roughly 25 miles of electric driving a day.

Sono Sion solar assisted electric car

The car follows in the mode of two other solar-assisted plug in hybrids being developed by startup companies in Europe: The Sono Sion, which the company claims will have up to 21 miles of solar range per day, is scheduled to go into production at the former Saab factory in Sweden late next year. The Lightyear One, born out of an effort to compete in the World Solar Challenge, is a Dutch startup effort aiming for limited production in 2021 that will also use onboard solar panels to boost its electric range.

The Toyota project is sponsored by the Japanese New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, and Toyota plans to begin testing it on roads in Japan this month to gather data on efficiency and driving range. There are currently no production plans for the car.

Analysis finds hybrids make better use of scarce batteries than pure EVs

In the face of growing shortages of batteries and battery materials for electric cars, one respected analytics firm says those batteries would do more good for the environment put to use in more hybrid vehicles rather than fewer all-electric cars.

Per kilowatt-hour of battery capacity produced and installed in plug-in vehicles, hybrids deliver 14 times the benefit in emissions reductions that pure electric cars do, according to British analytics firm Emissions Analytics.

In European terms, the company measures the grams of carbon-dioxide saved per kilometer of driving, per kilowatt-hour of battery installed in the car.

The company considered 153 cars, including 59 conventional full hybrids, 7 mild hybrids, and 57 plug-in hybrids, and compared them to a theoretical electric car with a 60-kwh battery pack. It included vehicles in Europe and in the U.S., and showed even bigger benefits to drive on electricity in the U.S. than in Europe because gas cars in the U.S. are relatively less efficient than those in Europe.

The average mild hybrid across Europe and the U.S., with a battery pack of 400 watt-hours, saved almost 30 grams per kilometer of CO2 emissions, or about 74 g/km per kilowatt-hour of battery.

Full hybrids cut more CO2 emissions, but also had much bigger batteries averaging 1.3 kwh. Each kilowatt-hour of batteries installed accounted for a reduction of only about 51 grams per kilometer.

The metric is key in an era of scarce materials.

Emissions Analytics g/km/kwh chart

One of the biggest criticisms of plug-in hybrids is that they carry around a lot of extra weight (and use a lot of unnecessary materials in manufacturing) to include a gas engine and fuel tank that are seldom used.

The same argument can apply to the large batteries in long-range electric cars. The cars aren't driven any differently. On average, cars still get driven less than 30 miles a day. Allow some extra battery capacity for driving in cold weather, running the heater, and having some buffer left when a driver gets home, and they still normally use less than 30 or 40 kilowatt-hours a day. Yet many of today's electric cars have batteries twice that size or bigger to accommodate occasional trips.

Any bigger battery than that adds extra weight and accounts for extra material consumption that rarely gets used. Since manufacturers have been building internal combustion engines for more than 100 years, there's no shortage of supplies to make them. But there are increasing reports of shortages in the materials needed to make large lithium-ion batteries for cars.

The Emissions Analytics report shows that plug-in hybrids that rely mostly on batteries in their daily driving cycle—the Chevrolet Volt, for instance—saved the same amount of CO2 emissions as fully electric cars in their tests: 210 grams per kilometer. But they required much smaller batteries, just over one-sixth the size.

2018 Chevrolet Volt

The report comes just as several automakers, such as General Motors, Volkswagen, and BMW are reducing or eliminating their efforts to build plug-in hybrids and replacing them with more long-range battery-electric cars to compete with Tesla.

Given the urgency of the need to reduce CO2, to combat global warming, the report says, “paradoxically BEVs may not be the best way to achieve it. A major concern is that the push to pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs) will crowd out a more effective program of mass hybridization.”

BMW isn’t finished with internal combustion engines yet

Many automakers now see electric vehicles as the long-range future of the passenger vehicle.

What may actually say more though, in the language of corporate nuance, is that few companies have gone so far as to solidly declare that the end is nigh for internal combustion engines.

Among the examples that have been so bold: Volvo won’t develop a new generation of engines after its present one; and Volkswagen will develop its last generation of internal-combustion tech in 2026. Both brands might of course keep building the engines for a decade or more after freezing development.

Don’t count BMW in that group. BMW plans to keep investing in the engineering and development of internal combustion engines for a long time—with diesel engines expected to be part of the automaker’s global product line for at least 20 years and gasoline engines for at least 30 years.

2019 BMW M2 Competition

That reality check, from remarks made by Klaus Fröhlich, the company’s BMW Group board member in charge of development, to Automotive News, stands as a sharp reality check to what was otherwise the news from BMW’s NextGen event in Munich earlier this week: electricfication.
The event this week brought a series of sweeping electric-vehicle announcements that included a stepped-up plan to electrify its lineup and bring 25 new plug-in models by 2023.

BMW Concept iX3

Fröhlich, who called the shift to electrification “overhyped” and pointed to issues with battery raw materials, noted that even with the most optimistic assumption of electric vehicle adoption, at least 80 percent of its vehicles would still have an internal-combustion engine in 2025.

Beyond then, even, the lack of a charging infrastructure may slow the adoption of fully electric vehicles in Russia, the Middle East, and even Western China, Froelich said.

The continued development of IC engines by BMW runs counter to what many inside the industry have predicted. In 2017, for instance, Wolfgang Schaefer, the CFO of the supplier Continental, predicted that investment and engineering for engines would taper off between 2023 and 2025.

That said, there will be casualties as engine lineups get trimmed down. Some of BMW’s specialty diesel engines won’t be replaced. BMW’s gasoline V-12 used in Rolls-Royce products might not be around much longer either. And BMW is currently putting together a case to save something Americans hold near and dear: the V-8.

Lightyear aims to build solar-team expertise into an electric car

If the future is electric, the latest electric-car startup company looks more like the future than most.

Dutch startup company Lightyear is developing a futuristic-looking sedan with sleek aerodynamics, wheel-hub motors, and 53 square feet of solar panels on the roof and hood. That could amount to about 795 watts of solar power—about three-quarters as much as is claimed for Europe's upcoming Sono Sion solar-assisted electric car.

Lightyear says the panels are enough to add 7.5 miles of range per hour on a sunny day. But there are plenty of asterisks we should add to a claim like that—such that it's a rate you likely won't ever see unless you're out in an open field in the middle of summer, at noon, parked at a very specific angle.

Lightyear was born out of solar race team in the World Solar Challenge, Solar Team Eindhoven. is tied for the most wins in the race across Australia. The team, based out of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, has been looking to commercialize its technology since 2012.

The five-seat Lightyear One is all about efficiency, from its sleek aerodynamic shape to its unique wheel motors that eliminate the need for a transmission and allow space for a bigger battery. Lightyear claims it can drive 400 miles on a charge given sufficient sunlight to feed the solar panels. It has not specified the battery size but said that in a worst-case scenario the Lightyear One will have almost 250 miles of range.

Lightyear One

The car can also accept DC fast charging up to 60 kilowatts, likely using the CCS standard.

With no transmission, the wheel motors are capable of 0-62 mph acceleration in the 10-second range—more like a Prius than a Tesla.

The styling—somewhat reminiscent of a 1980s Citroën CX—was crafted by Italy's Granstudio and has among the best drag-coefficients of any production car, the company says, with an overall height of just 52 inches, a little taller than a Subaru BR-Z sports car.

At a price of more than $135,000, the Lightyear One is clearly aimed at a more luxury than mainstream market, and the company says it will build only 500 of them, starting in 2021. That could put it in competition with the Lucid Air and Tesla Model S.

Lightyear plans to follow up the model with more affordable, mainstream sedans and to build in some self-driving features in future models.

Cooling issue slowing some Electrify America fast chargers over holiday week (Updated)

This story has been updated to clarify Electrify America's steps to stabilize the affected charging units, and the as-yet-undetermined timeline to bring them back to full charging power.

Drivers of the Audi E-tron electric SUV aiming for a holiday-week road trip could be up for a longer wait at the charging station.

It's no fault of the vehicle, and it's not a widespread issue; but if you have an E-tron it would be cause for some advance planning. The charging network Electrify America today announced that it will temporarily reduce the power of 30 of its fastest (for current vehicles) 150-kw CCS DC stations due to concerns over a potential coolant leak.

150-kw Electrify America charger – The Cannery, Sacramento CA

The affected systems, from the charging-hardware provider Efacec, have a built-in safety mechanism that will shut them down automatically if the coolant issue arises. In the meantime, to make sure they keep running, Electrify America is helping rapidly deploy a software update that will limit the output power of the chargers. It is following that up within the next week, with a firmware update and physical adjustments that together will be done by a technician.

The affected models, the HV160 and HV350, are capable of providing power levels of up to 160 kw and 320 kw, respectively. It's a global issue, not one specific to Electrify America.

Electrify America stresses that the issue affects liquid-cooled CCS connectors; CHAdeMO connectors aren’t impacted. They also emphasize that most of their charging stations—and most of their higher-power stations—are operating at full capacity.

Electrify America mobile app

Stations with reduced power will be indicated within the EA app, as well as on PlugShare. Session fees will be waived during this time, and chargers will operate with the lowest per-minute rate.

At present, E-tron owners might be the only ones to notice the difference. A few other new electric vehicles from Hyundai and Kia using CCS can go beyond 50 kw but not past 100 kw. The Kia Niro EV, for instance, will hit a claimed 100 kw for a brief time; and the Hyundai Kona Electric will top out at around 70 kw.

While these stations will be running and a functional part of the network for the foreseeable future, the slowdown might not be resolved in time for peak road-trip season. Electrify America is dispatching maintenance technicians to the affected stations for the firmware and adjustments, but a followup visit will be required to retrofit the hardware to Efacec's specifications—details and timeline yet to be announced.

Volkswagen talks through Europe’s tough new emissions tests

From the U.S., we most often encounter European WLTP standards in the context of sizing up plug-in driving range for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that haven’t yet been rated by the EPA.

The Worldwide Harmonised Light-Vehicle Test Procedure, is however taking form as the most comprehensive emissions program in the world, replacing former New European Driving Cycle.

Given that context, for vehicles with tailpipes, Volkswagen deserves a hat tip for producing, last month, one of the easiest-to-understand video walk-throughs (featured at the bottom of this piece) of the WLTP program yet—especially when the new regulations and tests themselves were finalized in response to the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal.

Compared to the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) that it replaced, WLTP involves a more tightly defined test in all areas, and it’s brought downward adjustments for fuel efficiency and range of up to 20 percent, or about 16 percent on average.

Portable Emissions Measurement System (PEMS) (Photo by Millbrook Proving Ground)

What distinguishes the WLTP test, which was phased in starting in September 2018, is that in addition to dynamometer (machine-based) testing, vehicle compliance for nitrogen oxides and particulate matter (two of the offenders in the diesel scandal) is also measured in a real driving emissions (RDE) test.

More stringent evaporative emissions is another important part, especially for gasoline vehicles. At 95 degrees F, gas vehicles are kept in an enclosed container for twice as long as before with the same maximum for hydrocarbons.

WLTP and the new program makes compliance an ongoing process, rather than something that’s done at the start of production for a new model. VW says that during series production it will continue to test cars on the dynamometer for the WLTP cycle, “and will continue to do so throughout a model’s entire production time.”

The program includes follow-up emission checks on vehicles that are less than five years old, with the owner’s approval, as well as checks that the emissions still keep within the limits after about 62,000 miles (100,000 km). And from 2020 onwards, vehicles will have a lifelong fuel consumption monitor (FCM) that’s defined by the EU regulations and itself tested on the WLTP cycle.

The diesel scandal didn’t spur the same kind of stem-to-stern testing remake in the U.S. as it did in Europe. But the U.S. has stepped up supplementary tailpipe testing in response. On either continent, things will never be the same.

Nio recalls SUVs in China after battery fires

Chinese startup automaker Nio is recalling nearly 5,000 of the ES8 SUVs that it has sold in China following a spate of fires in their battery packs.

Nio says the pack assembly is the problem. A module in the pack can rub against a cable that samples voltage and eventually wear through the insulation—causing a short that leads to a fire. The company will replace the packs in affected cars over the next two months.

Nio has sold 17,000 ES8s in China since April 2018, but the recall only affects vehicles made through last October 19, because the company changed the pack design after that.

The automaker, which has been referred to as the Chinese Tesla, has faced a variety of challenges lately. Sales in the first quarter didn't live up to expectations, and the company put its planned third model, a sedan, on hold while it showed two new concept cars at the Shanghai auto show and ahead of it. The company is just rolling out its second model, a smaller SUV called the ES6.

In March, it abandoned plans to build its own factory in China and said it would continue to rely on fellow Chinese automaker JAC to produce its cars under contract.

The company also had to close one of its research offices outside San Francisco, even as it makes plans to expand outside China. Later in May, it teamed up with fellow Chinese automaker GAC to build cars in China and announced that it would postpone its planned U.S. launch.

Nio is one of the few Chinese automakers traded in the U.S., on the New York Stock Exchange.