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The electric vehicle industry has taken a pummeling this year. The Trump administration, as expected, reversed a whole suite of federal policies that promoted or encouraged EVs. California's ability to require the sale of EVs: gone. Federal rules about emissions and fuel economy — being rewritten. Federal penalties for car companies that sell too many gas guzzlers: zeroed out. The $7,500 federal tax credit? Kaput. Meanwhile, automakers delayed or canceled a host of unprofitable EV plans. The all-electric Ram 1500 REV was canceled before a single one was built. The all-electric Ford Lightning was discontinued despite some glowing reviews. (Both...

Most of us have moved on from the global warming hoax — but not the moonbats running New York, unfortunately for kids. Via Fox Business: Parents in western New York are raising alarms over cold rides and breakdowns after officials mandated that all school bus purchases must be electric by 2027. Kids come home frozen in the Lake Shore Central School District. Already nearly half of its buses are electric. Running the heat drains their batteries. Several parents told the outlet that they heard of at least one instance of the buses breaking down, in addition to the heating issues....

The world’s largest battery reservoir can be found in Bolivia, with 23,000,000 tonnes of lithium having been found rather close to America. Below the salt flats is a resource that is central to the global energy transition. The reason that this has become all the more interesting and why all the attention has fallen on the Andes is due to the fact that the demand for electric vehicles has escalated. Salar de Uyuni is becoming a point of interest Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat that covers over 10,500 square kilometers, and hidden beneath the crust here is...

A Kentucky congressman responded to Andy Beshear Tuesday, days after Kentucky's governor blamed him for sweeping layoffs at an electric vehicle battery plant in his district. BlueOval SK said roughly 1,500 people at its Glendale plant would be laid off as Ford takes sole ownership of the facility after a partnership with a South Korean company fell through. Last week Beshear said U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Republican who represents Kentucky’s second congressional district, was partially to blame for any job losses due to his support for President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill." Beshear said Guthrie made no changes to...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- All 1,600 employees of the brand new electric vehicle battery plant in Kentucky will be laid off before Ford converts it to manufacture batteries for data centers and other utilities. Ford will turn the Glendale factory into a battery-storage business for customers such as utilities, wind- and solar-power developers, and massive data centers that train artificial intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. And Ford announced Monday it plans to begin shipping the battery energy storage systems from its Kentucky and Michigan plants in Late 2027, a shift to "higher-return opportunities." In total, the company said...

DETROIT (AP) — Sixteen states and the District of Columbia are suing the Trump administration for what they say is the unlawful withholding of over $2 billion in funding for two electric vehicle charging programs. A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Seattle is the latest legal battle that Democratic-led states are pursuing over funding for EV charging infrastructure that they say was obligated to them by Congress under former President Joe Biden, but that the Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration are “impounding.” “The Trump administration’s illegal attempt to stop funding for electric vehicle infrastructure must come to an...

The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker will make a series of changes to its line of vehicles and production facilities to focus on producing affordable vehicles that better align with customer desires ... The company will also scrap production of certain larger EVs—including the F-150 Lightning, which it will retool as an electric vehicle with a gas-powered generator—as well as redouble development of smaller, lower-cost cars, including a midsize pickup truck in 2027. ... “This is a customer-driven shift" ... Ford will redeploy one-third of that workforce to production on a gas and hybrid model of the F-150 ... As EV demand...

The car world is taking a long look at its EV offerings as major brands decide to kill off some of the very models that, just a few years ago, were touted as the way forward for automakers. With a new administration, slashed tax incentives for EVs, and wonky pricing, tariffs, and inflation, some surprising cuts are being made. Checking in on the state of EVs with Art Wheaton, automotive expert and director of labor studies at Cornell University ILR School in Buffalo, New York, he confirmed in a recent call, “It’s a brutal market. And the current administration isn’t...

Americans were already feeling uneasy about purchasing an electric vehicle. Then the generous tax subsidies ended. Sales of EVs plummeted by nearly one-third in October after President Trump and Republicans killed the $7,500 federal tax credit. The end of EV subsidies follows a trio of regulatory changes that eliminate mandates on automakers to produce electric vehicles and are poised to push the decline in EV sales even further. “The policy reversal on EVs that has occurred this year is a remarkable return to sanity after decades of government actions to force EV production,” said Brent Bennett, a policy director at...

*** On Wednesday, Swedish automaker Polestar announced plans for a reverse stock split in a bid to avoid being delisted from the exchange — a move that slashes the number of shares in circulation but boosts their per-share value. For example, a one-for-ten split would turn ten shares trading at $1 into a single share worth $10. Companies typically attempt these reverse splits when their stock has fallen so low that they risk losing their stock-market listing — it’s a cosmetic fix that can buy time, but rarely changes the underlying problems. Wall Street wasn't impressed. The stock plunged nearly...

Uber driver Rosie Ramirez’s electric vehicle can go some 260 miles at full charge, which should be plenty on Oahu. But that mileage is quickly eaten up as Ramirez ferries passengers around the island, and she’s learned the hard way that she can’t count on EV chargers to be available for a top off. Ramirez said she starts planning where to charge once the range is down to about half, and even then she has to be prepared for chargers to be out of commission or for other drivers to have beaten her there. “It’s very frustrating,” she said last...

Ford is considering scrapping the electric version of its F-150 pickup — once billed as the future of American trucks — after racking up billions in losses and watching demand collapse. Executives are in active talks about axing the money-losing F-150 Lightning altogether, sources told the Wall Street Journal, in what could become the first major casualty of America’s faltering electric vehicle revolution. The Lightning, launched with fanfare in 2021 and hailed by CEO Jim Farley as a ‘smartphone that can tow,’ was supposed to mark a new era for Ford. President Joe Biden even took one for a spin,...

In January, when the Trump Administration reduced electric vehicle subsidies, environmentalists confidently asserted that the rest of the world would reject such an approach. Now, nine months later, it seems everyone is following his lead. In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney paused an electric-vehicle sales mandate due to kick in next year.In Great Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has weakened his government’s timetable for the adoption of EVs.The European Union is on the verge of rolling back its 2035 target for eliminating carbon-dioxide emissions.“Automakers have been saying that consumers aren’t adopting EVs as quickly as expected, and government efforts to...

Schematic diagram of the first room temperature all-solid-state hydride ion battery. Credit: DICP ============================================================ Scientists have built the first rechargeable hydride ion battery. Hydride ions (H⁻) have drawn interest as potential charge carriers for future electrochemical devices because of their extremely low mass and high redox potential. Yet, progress has been limited since no electrolyte has been able to provide the combination of rapid ion movement, thermal stability, and compatibility with electrodes that such systems require. A recent study in Nature reports a breakthrough from Prof. Ping Chen and his team at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), part...

A new technique stabilizes a metastable form of sodium solid electrolyte, enabling all-solid-state sodium batteries to maintain performance even at subzero temperatures. All-solid-state batteries are considered a safe and powerful option for running electric vehicles, electronics, and even storing energy from the power grid. However, producing them relies heavily on lithium, a metal that is costly, difficult to source, and damaging to the environment when mined. Sodium offers a cheaper, more abundant, and less harmful alternative, but sodium-based all-solid-state batteries have struggled to operate efficiently at room temperature. “It’s not a matter of sodium versus lithium. We need both. When...

Trying to figure out how much battery storage, inverter size, type of charger and what have you to power my houseboat. My plan is to have enough battery storage to run everything using an inverter for AC power using batteries and by charging those batteries daily using a generator for a few hours. The biggest draw would be an occasional few minutes of a microwave to heat food, and also run a tv/monitor along with computer. everything else runs on DC current for short periods of time like fresh water pump. I do have a small a/c air conditioner that...

A groundbreaking study published in Nature has revealed that scientists at Tianjin University in China have developed a lithium metal battery (LMB) with an energy density that is twice as powerful as Tesla’s most advanced battery. The new battery can store over 600 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), a significant leap from Tesla’s top-tier battery at 300 Wh/kg. This breakthrough is expected to impact electric vehicles (EVs) and a range of applications, including drones, potentially reducing concerns about range limitations and making EVs lighter and more efficient. The development of this high-energy-density battery represents a huge advancement in the field of...

The hurdles to marrying clean tech and the defense industrial base are cultural more than technical.When Congress took an ax to clean energy incentives last month, support for battery production surprisingly emerged unscathed. The One Big Beautiful Bill left intact advanced manufacturing incentives born from the Inflation Reduction Act — along with hope for the bevy of resulting domestic battery factories still under construction.Those factories, however, were planning not only on supply-side incentives but also on demand that the new legislation reduced. With faster phaseouts of solar-farm and electric-vehicle incentives, two of the country’s largest battery consumers, our nascent battery...

I keep reading how big batteries are all it takes to make wind and solar reliable as the sole grid electricity source. The reality is that making wind and solar work at all requires a fantastic amount of battery backup, far more than is possible. Below is an example using the PJM grid. PJM is America’s biggest grid operator, with a territory covering the Mid-Atlantic and points west. Their territory includes the Washington, DC metro area, where all the federal bigwigs live, making it a good place to start. I also live there. We are quantifying a fantasy, so let’s...

The Chinese military affiliated battery manufacturer CATL appears to be in charge of hiring for roles at the Ford plant that executives said would be wholly owned and operated by the American company. AChinese company appears to be in charge of hiring workers for Ford’s new battery plant in Michigan, contradicting the company’s statements that it will be an American-owned and operated project, and amplifying concerns from locals about potential national security implications. The plant has generated significant controversy because of Ford’s partnership with China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited, known as CATL, which closely collaborates with the Chinese military and...