This Week in EV: Overweight Ram
Tom Clarke
Strategy & Product Leader | EV Product Manager at Parkopedia | Founder, This Week in EV | Advisory Board Member | MBA, CMgr FCMI
The race for electric pick-up trucks is heating up, the Ford F150 Lightening has seen huge orders for Ford and Tesla’s Cybertruck has over 1 million pre orders. Not to be outdone Dodge have announced the Ram 1500 REV. It has some headline grabbing stats like a 800 volt system capable of 350 kW charging and bi-directional charging along with a 500 mile range. However how it achieves that range is through a simply ridiculous 229 kWh battery. In comparison the long range version of the F-150 Lightening achieves 320 miles off a 131 kWh battery, even the ludicrous Hummer EV has a small battery at 212 kWh. Transitioning to EV should help reduce our carbon footprints but with battery packs that size the environmental benefit becomes murkier.
EV sales are continuing their march upwards, in the UK March was the biggest ever month for EV sales with 46,626 BEV’s sold with 46,626 BEV's sold and PHEV's selling 17,933 sold. The best ever month for BEV's previously was March 2022 which had sales of 39,315. What's even more impressive is that unlike other countries there aren't subsidies for the purchase of a new car (no $7,500 tax credit for us in the UK). It was also a huge month for Tesla with the Model Y being the best-selling car and the model Y being the fourth best-selling car year to date. These figures put the UK on track to hit 1 million BEV's on UK roads by the end of the year.
It was an even bigger month for EV’s in Norway with BEV’s accounting for 84.5% of all new car sales in March and PHEV’s accounting for 5.4%. That means 9 out of 10 cars sold in Norway came with a plug! As with the UK the big winner is Tesla with the Model Y the best-selling car. Norway has the ban on new ICE cars coming into effect in 2025 but it could be as soon as the end of this year that we hit 100% electric being sold in the country.
Battery technology is advancing all the time with new chemistries whether it’s LFP or Sodium-ion the future is looking good for new batteries. We can add a new potential battery to the mix with researchers in the US having developed a lithium-air battery that utilises a solid electrolyte. Whilst still early days this battery has four times the energy density of the leading battery technologies going into cars today. That would mean the Tesla Model 3 which is one of the most efficient cars you can buy right not going from a circa 300-mile range to nearly 1200 miles. It would also open up the potential for electrification of transport where weight is an issue such as aviation.
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Toyota have been telling the lie that their cars are ‘self-charging’ but without petrol I think you’ll find they won’t go very far. However, we might just have our first actual self-charging vehicle in the form of a solar electric yacht, the AQUON One eco-catamaran. The yacht has 64 square-meters of solar panels that charge the onboard lithium-ion batteries that offer short terms energy storage for propulsion and onboard energy usage. Any excess solar power generated is used to convert sea water into hydrogen which is then compressed and stored. Fuel cells convert the hydrogen back to electricity whenever the energy is needed. Whilst this is going to be out of most people’s budget with a price tag of € 7.4 million it’s a cool use of hydrogen. Whilst hydrogen doesn’t have a place in car’s it does in other forms of transport and technologies like this will revolutionise marine transport.
The transition to electric looks different across the world and in Uganda the capital Kampala has made a big move in electrification by focusing on motorbike taxis. It’s announced plans to replace 140,000 motorbike taxis with electric vehicles. The plan comes from an agreement between the Ugandan government and e-mobility start-up Spiro and would account for almost 90% of the taxis in Kampala.
Kia has updated its EV strategy at its investor day this week. It’s increased its target to sell 1.6 million EV’s by 2030 which is up 400,000 from it’s previous target of 1.2 million. The company plans to have a full EV line of up of 15 models from 2027, increase energy density by 50% and install 3,500 ultra-fast chargers in it’s native South Korea by 2025. It’s great to see legacy OEM’s embrace electrification head on and Kia (along with Hyundai and Genesis) have some of the best EV’s out there so I can’t wait to see the new EV models they produce in the future