Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday. While this blog's primary focus is the BMW i3, I occasionally sprinkle in some featured EV products and discuss topics not necessarily i3-centric, but are instead just general electric vehicle information. In light of the recent revelations that Volkswagen has been deliberately cheating on emissions testing for many years now, I wrote the following article for Green Car Reports . So far, no other automaker has been caught as VW has - with proof that they purposely installed a "defeat device" on the vehicles so the cars would curb their emissions only during actual emission testing. However it's fair game to speculate if other OEMs may also be exposed as cheaters now that the EPA knows what they have to look for, and how to expose it. It will certainly be interesting to watch this all unfold. In any event, Volkswagen is going to face huge fines for intentionally violating Federal emission standards and I wanted to...
The heart of any electric vehicle is its battery. This BMW i3 cutaway shows the battery removed from drive module. When it comes to electric cars, it’s all about the battery. Well, it’s not quite that simple, but given how important the battery is to the cost, range and performance of the vehicle, it’s pretty close. When someone is considering purchasing their first electric car, they will certainly have a lot of questions. The one question that seems to be on nearly everyone’s list is: “How long will the battery last?” The problem is, it’s been very hard to answer that question authoritatively because we just haven’t had enough data. That’s because modern electric cars that are powered by high-voltage lithium ion battery packs have been on sale for less than ten years, and long term testing results simply weren’t available. In fact, the Nissan LEAF was the first high-volume all-electric car brought to market, and that model has only been on ...
My i3 charging from the HSC-40p. You can see my older ClipperCreek CS-40 all the way on the left. When it comes to electric vehicle charging equipment, there’s certainly no shortage of choices. Even though it’s a relatively new market, there are dozens of manufacturers selling products that allow owners to safely and conveniently charge their electric cars. Although this equipment is commonly referred to as a "charger" or "wallbox", the proper term is actually EVSE, which stands for Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. These devices don't actually charge the car; they provide the electricity to do so. That's because the actual charging equipment is built into the car. The EVSE's purpose is to safely deliver the correct amount of electricity to the onboard charging equipment. Now that electric cars are beginning to gain momentum in the marketplace, there are a lot of companies jockeying to get a market share of the EVSE business. The vast majority of thes...
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