VW Follows Tesla In Promising A European Compact EV
Škoda starts series production of all-electric Enyaq | VW Speeds Up Work on Small Electric Car | How the US plans to turn all its iconic school buses electric | VW's EV boss discusses the move to electrification | China's SAIC Motor Launches New Electric-Vehicle Project | Cornwall to rollout 150 new EV chargers with £2.9m funding | New Opel Corsa-e Rally is Ready to Go
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On today’s podcast:
- Škoda starts series production of all-electric Enyaq
- VW Speeds Up Work on Small Electric Car
- How the US plans to turn all its iconic school buses electric
- VW's EV boss discusses the move to electrification
- China's SAIC Motor Launches New Electric-Vehicle Project
- Cornwall to rollout 150 new EV chargers with £2.9m funding
- New Opel Corsa-e Rally is Ready to Go
Show #938
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Thursday 26th November. It’s Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story so you don't have to.
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Škoda starts series production of all-electric Enyaq
Škoda has started series production of its all-electric Enyaq iV model based on MEB. Up to 350 units of the e-SUV will eventually be produced daily at Škoda’s main plant in Mladá Boleslav on the same lines as the Octavia and Karoq model series containing combustion engines." according to electrive, writing about the potential for 120,000 of these a year from this plant: "The Enyaq iV is the first MEB-based electric car in the Volkswagen Group build outside of VW’s Zwickau plant in Germany. The ID.3 and ID.4 are currently being assembled there, with derivatives of the Audi Q4 e-tron and the Cupra el-Born to be added later. Other MEB plants in Europe are not scheduled to begin until 2022, such as Emden as the second plant for the ID.4, and the VW commercial vehicles plant in Hanover for the production version of the ID. Buzz."
In comparison at the VW plant in Germany already making the ID.3 and ID.4 they have production capacity of 750 a day, or 5,250 a week. Over a 48 week year (allowing for one week shutdown per quarter) that's 252,000 VW brand cars from just that one factory.
https://www.electrive.com/2020/11/26/skoda-starts-series-production-of-all-electric-enyaq/
VW Speeds Up Work on Small Electric Car
"Volkswagen AG is accelerating development of a compact electric car that will cost less than 30,000 euros ($35,800) as tightening emissions rules and generous subsidies bolster sales of battery-powered vehicles, according to people familiar with the matter. The VW-branded car may be introduced as early as 2022" writes Bloomberg today: "To free up funds for the industry’s biggest electric-car offensive, VW will take more steps to shrink its portfolio of combustion-engine cars after already culling models including the Beetle and the Scirocco. It will discontinue the mid-sized Passat sedan in the U.S. and sell only the station-wagon version in Europe, the people said. VW may also phase out the upscale Arteon coupe, they said."
How the US plans to turn all its iconic school buses electric
"The US school bus is a cultural icon. With its distinctive yellow livery, this design classic has inhabited the roads of North America in various forms since 1939, and the region is unique in having a fleet of dedicated buses for transporting school students. Most other areas use ordinary public-service buses for the school runs. On average 480,000 yellow buses carry upwards of 25 million children to school on a daily basis in the US." says Electric Hybrid Vehicle Technology website, the problem is, they're dirty diesel: "poor air quality has been proven to be responsible for high rates of asthma, cancer, and heart disease; and research by scientists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has shown that just a small increase in fine-particulate pollution, such as that from the diesel engines of school buses, results in a 15 percent increase in the death rate due to COVID-19. . President Elect Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan for creating a more resilient, sustainable economy proposes making all American-made buses zero-emission by 2030, starting with the school bus fleet, which would convert within five years."
The buses are currently made in Alabama, California, Georgia, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, and both North & South Carolina.
There is an unusual bias in the U.S., so far in 2020 there were 40,714 school buses registered and 5,402 city buses.
A problem is the price, 350k compared to 100k for diesel. TCO is not as powerful because they do so few miles.
VW's EV boss discusses the move to electrification
"Thomas Ulbrich, Volkswagen Group's e-mobility boss, has spent two years overseeing VW's move to electrification. Ulbrich discussed the challenges of refitting eight of the automaker's global plants to build full-electric cars"
On retooling for the ID.3: "We converted the plant virtually during ongoing operations. In one half of the plant, we were still building full numbers of combustion engines when we started with the electric vehicles in the other half. But in the end, everything worked despite the enormous challenges that the coronavirus pandemic demands of all of us"
On the MEB platform: " Even at the development stage, we designed the platform in such a way that we have far-reaching synergies through identical parts for different vehicles and different models. This time, we made sure that the concept of the bodies was identical across all brands, so that we had sufficiently differentiated vehicles in terms of design, but which we could still build on one assembly line."
On expansion: "The two plants in China, Anting and Foshan, will start up this year. The same applies to Skoda's production in Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic. Dresden in Germany will follow at the beginning of 2021, Emden and Hanover, aso in Germany, in 2022. In the second half of 2022, Chattanooga will also start up in the U.S."
On scale: "Our goal is to build 1 million EVs for the Volkswagen brand alone in 2023 and to achieve global output of 1.5 million by 2025. The MEB-based vehicles of the other group brands will then be added."
On how important the ID.4 is: "It is particularly important at the start of our electric offensive that we serve the volume segments. That's the best way to achieve economies of scale and make full use of our plants. And the ID4 will be our volume driver, which, with 500,000 units, will account for a third of our global EV sales in 2025."
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vws-ev-boss-discusses-move-electrification+
China's SAIC Motor Launches New Electric-Vehicle Project
"SAIC Motor Corp. has initiated a new project to produce high-end electric vehicles, the latest expansion move by Chinese car makers enticed by a rosy outlook for new-energy vehicles. SAIC, one of China's largest car makers by sales volume, said Thursday that it has teamed up with a Shanghai company and Alibaba Group Holding to run the project called Zhi Ji." according to MorningStar.com: "Zhi Ji will launch luxurious electric-vehicle models, SAIC said, without providing details on the timeline, pricing or sales target. Alibaba's role is more of a technology provider for the project, a company spokeswoman said. The high-end NEV market in China is set to get crowded next year, with both foreign and domestic makers expected to launch more premium models"
Cornwall to rollout 150 new EV chargers with £2.9m funding
"Cornwall Council has secured £2.9 million in funding from the European Regional Development Fund to continue its electric vehicle (EV) charging rollout." says Current News: "A further £725,000 has been committed by the council to cover the remaining cost of the 150 chargers, which will be installed in a range of locations including council car parks and offices as well as in communities where there is currently limited chargepoint availability."
https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/cornwall-to-rollout-150-new-ev-chargers-with-2-9m-funding
New Opel Corsa-e Rally is Ready to Go
The Opel Corsa-e Rally is the first all-electric rally car from a carmaker. The Blitz-badged electric vehicles will next year take part in their own one-make series – the ADAC Opel e-Rally Cup.
Two complete rounds of the German Rally Championship (DRM) were rehearsed during the three-day test programme – including special stages, road sections and servicing. The unique features of electro-mobility, such as times spent driving and charging, temperature management of the battery and fine-tuning the software, were tested for the first time in a rally environment. The all-electric cars also completed long runs to test the durability of the new components.
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