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Motor wire is ‘green’

Tau has started shipping prototype environmentally friendly winding wire to the automotive industry. The wire combines minimised partial discharge, high fill factors and improved temperature resistance for high-voltage and frequency optimisation for electric motors.

Digest

Everrati Porsche 911

The consumer EVs sector is welcoming a constant tide of all-new electric cars, often designed from blank sheets. However, this approach neglects not only the many existing IC-engined cars on the road now, but the countless classic car designs that remain some of the automotive world’s proudest and most cherished examples.

New Products

Mercedes-Benz announces long-range EV

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled its Vision EQXX concept EV, which has a range of more than 1000 km on a single battery charge, equating to a consumption of less than 10 kWh of energy per 100 km.

New Products

EV makes tracks in Antarctica

The Venturi Antarctica exploration vehicle is now in service at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research station in East Antarctica. It is a world first for operating an EV with caterpillar tracks on the White Continent.

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Cotes cuts carbon footprint of running dry rooms

Drying rooms are critical to lithium-ion battery manufacture to ensure that the electrodes are prevented from absorbing moisture, which can lead to a reduction in lifespan and even catastrophic failure (writes Peter Donaldson). Running these dry rooms typically takes a lot of energy, mostly to provide hot air. However, Danish company Cotes has developed a much more efficient way it calls Exergic Technology to do this that significantly reduces the battery’s overall carbon footprint. Understanding humidity is key to getting rid of unwanted moisture from air, and warm air holds more water than cold air. Absolute humidity is the amount of water vapour in a given mass of air, and is typically expressed in grams per kilo. Relative humidity, meanwhile, is the amount of water in the air expressed as a percentage of the maximum it can hold at a given temperature. When that percentage exceeds 100, the water begins to condense out.

New Products

Volvo Penta in electric tractor tie-up with TICO

Volvo Penta has delivered and integrated its electric driveline into the first of a series of prototype fully electric terminal tractors for US customer TICO, who will be testing the prototypes with various fleet partners. The driveline is based on proven Volvo Group technology tailored to TICO’s application in terms of performance and energy needs. Volvo Penta’s approach of handling the development and installation of the complete electric driveline and its integration into the vehicle has allowed TICO to focus on improving the vehicle’s functionality. Ports and distribution hubs have highly organised fleets and operations with favourable environments for developing charging infrastructures, as they have well-defined duty cycles. Volvo Penta analysed customer operations and based its electric system on that data and simulations.

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Ricardo shows Steel E-Motive Level 5 concept EVs

Keen to show off what the latest generation of advanced high-strength steels can do, WorldAutoSteel, the automotive arm of the World Steel Association, has chosen Ricardo to design an EV family that could be offered in the nascent market for mobility as a service from around 2030 (writes Peter Donaldson). The first two designs created under this Steel E-Motive (SEM) initiative were revealed at the recent Battery Show Europe and Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology Expo in Stuttgart, where WorldAutoSteel’s technical director George Coates and Ricardo’s chief engineer for vehicle attributes Neil McGregor outlined the progress with them so far.

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Project tests electric truck for work in the Arctic

Operating EVs in extreme temperatures is a demanding exercise, as lithium-ion batteries generally work best between 15 and 35 C, so a four-week trial conducted throughout February 2021 above the Arctic Circle in Sweden was a severe test of a truck and its charging infrastructure (writes Peter Donaldson). In the test, the battery-powered truck carried loads of 14 t of iron ore sludge over a 280 km round trip in temperatures down to -32 C, says Adam Holmer of power-as-a-service provider Vattenfall. The trial was a cooperative effort between Vattenfall, Volvo Trucks and dealer Wist Last och Buss, charger manufacturer ABB and mining company Kaunis Iron.

New Products

Honda to start battery-sharing service for electric rickshaws

Honda has announced plans to begin a battery-sharing service for electric rickshaws in India in the first half of 2022, using the Honda Mobile Power Pack e: (MPP e:), its new portable and swappable battery. There are more than 8 million auto rickshaws in India, and they are an essential means of daily transportation for people. In urban areas, they are powered mainly by compressed natural gas and have been a key challenge for electrification.

Grid

Flat chassis chosen for axial motors

Saiettta has used its AFT140 axial motor for a flat chassis for urban vehicles (writes Nick Flaherty). Mounted on the corners of the chassis, the AFT 140 in-wheel electric motors provide a torque of up to 140 Nm for controllable power at low speeds in urban stop-start journeys. The chassis is a flexible platform that […]
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