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How a childhood hobby gave Reva founder Chetan Maini a vision for sustainable urban transportedit
The article starts off by giving readers an insight into how Chetan was influenced at an early age by modelling cars and reading his elder brother’s engineering textbooks, which later helped him take some very important decisions in life. The article moves on to talk about the Reva, why failed it to take off and what SUN Mobility does. In this context, Hari talks about Better Place, the Israeli company involved in battery swapping, which went bankrupt in 2013 after raising USD 850mn. Moving ahead, Hari talk about how the battery swap can be completed in 30 seconds followed by Chetan’s passion for model building. Hari shares how a 12 year old Chetan took a bus to ...
Industry
Bound to honour the Supreme Court verdict: SIAMedit
Auto industry body SIAM said Thursday it is bound to honour the Supreme Court verdict on sales and registration of BS-VI vehicles from April 1, 2020, onwards despite the order being a “huge challenge” for the industry as a whole. In a statement, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) President Rajan Wadhera said the government had provided a clear window of three months for registering the small number of fully built vehicles and six months for bus/truck chassis which may remain unsold with the dealer/manufacturer post April 1, 2020, after considering all aspects of the matter.
Ola thinktank to leverage “disruptive” potential of mobilityedit
India’s largest cab hailing platform Ola, which has spread its operations to the UK, Australia and New Zealand in recent years, has set up its own think tank, a global mobility institute based out of the US. The policy research and social innovation unit consists of researchers drawn from some of the top universities including the Oxford and Harvard.
India’s Rickshaw Revolution Leaves China in the Dustedit
An electric-vehicle revolution is gaining ground in India, and it has nothing to do with cars. The South Asian nation is home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three-wheeled rickshaws – a fleet bigger than the total number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011. But while the world’s largest auto market dangled significant subsidies to encourage purchases of battery-powered cars, India’s e-movement hardly got a hand from the state.
Soon, e-charging points at every corneredit
It will soon be mandatory for residential and commercial buildings to have electric vehicle charging stations if the amendments proposed by the Centre under the new building by-laws are approved. The objective is to cement the government’s mission to go fully electric on roads by 2020.
Ambitious e-car programme of Energy Efficiency Services has a slow startedit
Tata Motors MD & CEO Guenter Butschek (left) hands over a symbolic key of Tigor EV to EESL MD Saurabh Kumar in 2017 The ambitious e-car programme of Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) has had a slow start with less than one-tenth of the proposed 10,000 cars hitting the road so far. The firm, which is leasing these cars to government departments, said delays happened due to the time taken in various approvals on the ground.
International
Energy Adviser: Electric cars slowly, silently gainingedit
The idea of electric cars was born more than 100 years ago, but not until recently has it been accepted as a viable approach to transportation. On any given day, it’s commonplace to see electric vehicles silently cruising Clark County roads. And that trend will only grow as more and more auto manufacturers enter the EV space. Even Jaguar, once an EV holdout, is issuing its first all-electric car, the $65,000 I-Pace. SUVs are even getting in on the game. Currently only a few are offered, but automakers have more planned.
Shell starts rollout of ultrafast electric car chargers in Europeedit
Shell has stepped up its move into electric vehicle infrastructure with the installation of its first ultrafast charging points in western Europe – but they are so powerful that no car currently on sale today would be able to fully exploit them. The chargers at a motorway service station outside Paris are one of 80 European locations the Anglo-Dutch firm is planning for swift charging by 2020, including as many as eight in the UK.
Cleaner, greener and easier: Why aren’t we all driving electric cars?edit
Jude decided to get an electric car for environmental reasons, but she said there’s more to it than that. “There’s just so many advantages. So few moving parts compared to a petrol car, it’s so much cleaner, the instant torque is fantastic, much easier to maintain, much cheaper for fuel.”
Volvo Cars invests in Freewire to bolster EV charging infrastructureedit
Volvo Cars has acquired a stake in San Francisco based electric car charging company FreeWire technologies via the Volvo Cars Tech Fund. The investment in FreeWire reinforces its overall commitment to supporting a widespread transition to electric mobility together with other partners. The car manufacturer has also indicated that it does not intend to own the charging or service stations.
Apple files patent for connecting moving electric vehicles to reduce driving loadedit
Apple presented an electric vehicle feature via a patent application this week entitled “Peloton,” which outlines designs to connect the batteries of moving EVs to reduce energy usage via load sharing. In a patent filed Tuesday by Apple Inc. with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a set of designs for a method linking moving vehicles together for the benefit of all emerged. The document is titled, “Peloton,” a term for the main group of bikers in a race.
Spread of self-driving cars could cause more pollution – unless the electric grid transforms radicallyedit
Known as the “three revolutions,” a term coined by UC Davis transportation professor Daniel Sperling, the new trends are: electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and sharing-oriented business models (think Uber and Lyft). Optimistically, these revolutions could make our cities a dreamscape of walkable urbanism that will reduce accidents to near zero and make more space for bikes, trees, pedestrians and small businesses while emitting no carbon emissions.
EVs could put UK fuel duty system on the rocksedit
The UK government is forecast to collect £28.3 billion (Rs 267,091 crore) in fuel duty this financial year, and yet those who drive pure-electric vehicles will contribute precisely zero to that figure. So what will happen when we’re all humming about in electric vehicles? Such a future now looks inevitable, with impending bans on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles, cities plotting access restrictions for non-electrified vehicles and the EU rapidly imposing reductions on the fleet-average CO2 figures of manufacturers for new cars sold.