This Week in EV: Electric Rails
We kick this week with an EV that runs on a track, yes thats right we’re talking trains. Great Western Railway has been trailing a fast charge battery. The trial demonstrated the train could travel 86 miles on battery power alone without recharging. GWR believe the train could have travelled more than 120 miles on a single charge. Battery electric trains are an important part in removing the need for diesel trains where the line isn’t electrified. The technology will be trailed in the real world this spring from West Ealing. Read More
If you’re looking for an estate and want an EV there aren’t many choices but VW are adding an estate EV to their ID line up. The ID 7 Tourer has been unveiled with presales kicking off this quarter the car will have a range of upto 685 km and like all good estates it has lots of luggage space with 1714 litres of it. The top tier battery will charge at upto 200 kW so drivers will benefit from the faster ultra rapid chargers out there. Read More
Vehicle to grid holds huge potential in adding capacity to the girds around the world and the technology is particularly beneficial for grids with a large amount of renewables but so far the technology has only been run in small tests but Octopus has announced the first vehicle to grid tariff in the UK. Whilst only available to owners of Nissan Leaf’s, e-NV200 and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV’s who also have a Wallbox Waser 1 V2G charger it's a great first step in rolling out the technology to consumers. Read More
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has called $48,000 as the sweet spot for car buyers in the US as the company teases its upcoming R2 which will be a direct competitor to the Tesla Model Y. The R2 will be coming to Europe with the full details of the car expected to be announced in March with an expected starting price of $45,000. Read More
However Rivian is still going through challenges with the company announcing they were laying off 10% of their salaried workforce. The company also announced their full year earnings where they said they planned to produce 57,000 vehicles this year which is broadly the same as 2023. Read More
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