Electric car owners are earning as much as $1,530 a year just by parking their vehicle and feeding excess power back into the grid.
Trials in Denmark carried out by Nissan Motor Co. and Italy’s biggest utility Enel SpA showed how batteries inside electric cars could help balance supply and demand at times and provide a new revenue stream for those who own the vehicles.
Technology linking vehicles to the grid marks another challenge for utilities already struggling to integrate wind and solar power into their distribution system. As the use of plug-in cars spreads, grid managers will have to pay closer attention to when motorists draw from the system and when they can smooth variable flows.
Arizona is welcoming a new wave of settlers.
No, not snowbirds escaping harsh northern winters. Techies, mostly from California—Silicon Valley, to be precise—coming to the desert to fulfill their quest to flood the roads with self-driving cars.
Mobileye is the latest arrival. The firm announced Wednesday that it will build a fleet of 100 autonomous vehicles and test the first of them on the public roads of the Copper State.
Global fleets will continue to be faced with a dizzying array of fuel choices for some time to come.
By Mark Boada, Senior Editor
Now that four countries -- Norway, India, France and the U.K. – have decided to ban the sales of gasoline or diesel fueled vehicles within the next two to three decades, it might seem that electricity has already won the contest to become the vehicular fuel of the future. But even if it comes to predominate, electricity may not be the universal solution for years to come, if ever.
Instead, global fleets may be forced to depend on an ever-changing variety and mix of fuels and powertrains, depending on the countries or regions in which they operate, their mix of light, medium and heavy duty vehicles, and the nature of the trips their drivers make. The reason: each of the alternatives is still struggling to overcome limitations, which include cost, range, refueling time, refueling infrastructure, and fuel availability.
Cars that drive for us some of the time could be lulling us into dangerous distraction, according to several auto industry experts.
Researchers at the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan have told MIT Technology Review in the past that semi-autonomous features, like adaptive cruise control or Tesla’s Autopilot, could increase the incidence of distracted driving. In fact, it's something researchers have been warning about for years.
Now, a Bloomberg report features a bunch of auto experts from across the industry all worrying about the fact that such systems are already having an impact on drivers' abilities.
Around the world, support is growing for electric cars.
Automakers are delivering more electric models with longer range and lower prices, such as the Chevrolet Bolt and the Tesla Model 3. China has set aggressive targets for electric vehicle sales to curb pollution; some European countries aim to be all-electric by 2040 or sooner.
Those lofty ambitions face numerous challenges, including one practical consideration for consumers: If they buy electric cars, where will they charge them?