Electric Vehicles | We had EVs in the 1920s, why aren’t ready for them now?
By Dave Moore. When the Minister of Transport recently uttered that New Zealand was “the most EV-ready country” recently, one wonders what kind of research was involved in making that statement. The fact that other countries have had supportive attitudes, subsidies and infrastructures in place for a decade already, and a lot longer than that […]
Mass-market electric cars will go 200 miles, but are still a long way from being profitable
By Steve LeVine. Several major automobile makers are racing to create electric cars within an upper-mass-market sweet spot—traveling 200 miles or more on a charge, and costing $30,000 to $40,000. But a new report adds to doubts that they will make money, especially at first. Electric cars are currently in a variation of the innovation […]
The auto tech reckoning has arrived
By Lauren Hepler. For all the talk about all the ways technology stands to revolutionize the experience of driving, most cars on the market today actually speak much louder about the challenge of turning the hype around auto tech into reality. Take the futuristic touchscreens now embedded in the dashboards of some car models. The […]
Elon Musk and the Future of Green Energy
By Brandon Engel. Although anyone can easily point to the failures of green energy investments over the past decades, such as Solyndra, the green energy industry is fortunately not listening. In the United States last year, 45 percent of new power production came from wind turbines and 34 percent from solar cells. Both of these […]
Geraldine High School gears up to defend title
By Natasha Thyne. Geraldine High School students are gearing up to defend their title in EVolocity, but they might have some other local competition to contend with. Last year a team of students from Geraldine High School came home with a swag of awards at the inaugural electric motorsport contest, EVolocity. The competition sparked the […]
Electric rubbish trucks on the cards for NZ
By Adrien Taylor. The Kiwi co-founder of Tesla says although the company has done wonders to change the public perception of electric cars, there are more gains in electrifying something a little less glamorous – rubbish trucks. It is not just for the environmental benefits, but the numbers stack up too. Wrightspeed, a company that […]
NZ Post tight-lipped on Postman Pat cars
By Lois Cairns. New Zealand Post is keeping quiet about when its electric delivery vehicles could be introduced into Christchurch, saying it does not want to create uncertainty for its workforce. The company fronted up to a meeting of the Christchurch City Council’s infrastructure, transport and environment committee on Thursday to ask for permission to […]
Council in NSW leads way
A council across the Tasman is pleased with the performance of electric vehicles (EVs) in its fleet. Chris Binns, manager of strategy and assets at the City of Sydney, was one of the keynote speakers at Drive Electric’s plug-in fleet day on April 30. He told Autofile Online the council made a commitment to support […]
Batteries included: Ambitious gambit by Tesla
By Juha Saarinen. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s latest house and business battery venture is an interesting but also very ambitious gambit. Most of the reporting has been on the Tesla Energy PowerWall 7 and 10 kilowatt-hour house batteries, but the business model, the 100 kWh PowerPacks are equally interesting. The PowerPacks are designed to supplement […]