This Week in EV: Better Batteries
This week we kick off with BYD who seem to have a new announcement or rumour every week. This time it’s the next generation Blade battery that is the newsworthy. BYD’s blade battery is not only in BYD’s cars but everyone from Tesla to Ford uses them so a new version of the blade could have a big impact on the industry. At a recent financial meeting BYD’s CEO has given some details on the next version of the Blade battery, it’ll have an energy density of 190Wh/kg up from the current 150Wh/kg and could enable cars to have a range of over 600 miles. The next generation Blade battery is expected in August this year so we could see them in cars on the road as early as next year. Read more
We’ve seen a number of EV startups hit troubles in the last 18 months with Arrival and Fisker the most recent companies who have struggled to make the leap when it came to manufacturing as it takes a lot of money to produce EV’s. However it doesn’t help when you spend more on your CEO’s private plane than the revenue you actually earned which is the case for Canoo. Last year the company had revenue of just $886,000 which wasn’t even enough to cover the $1.7 million the CEO spent using the private jet that his family owned… Read more
Zeekrs 001 has gotten an update and as part of that comes an increase in charging speed that smashes through 500kw. In a charging test the car managed to charge it’s 95kWh battery from 10% to 80% in just 11 minutes and 28 seconds (for comparison the average time for an ICE car at a petrol forecourt is 8 minutes) with a peak charging speed of 546.4 kWs. Read more
Tesla has quietly released a new variant of the Model Y in Europe on its online configurator. Similar to what it did last year with the Model 3 you can now get a Long range rear wheel drive Model Y. The new variant has a longer range than the all wheel drive long range variant with 600km range compared to 533km and at a lower price. However the performance is unexpectedly slower with a 0-100 Kph of 5.9 seconds compared to 5.0 seconds for the all wheel drive. The new variant has a price of €39,900. Read more
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to This Week in EV to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.