Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
What were the biggest cleantech news stories and analyzes in recent weeks? Below are the groups that stood out to me, divided into a handful of core groups.
Solar energy in the US: California, by far the largest U.S. solar market, has done so threw the solar industry into chaos with Net Metering 3.0, but one result is that much more energy storage is being installed in the home. Nevertheless, the US solar market has now reached 5 million solar installations5 times more than in 2016.
Tesla: We'll start with the big dog. The biggest story recently was Tesla offers an annual interest rate of 0.99% for the Tesla Model Y, a move that could save buyers $5,000 or even $6,000 over five years. The remarkably low interest rates will certainly attract many buyers local Tesla sales reps told us the same thing.
We made full self-driving (guided) test drives every week. Our most recent included three interesting interventions and two impressive successes for a 45 minute drive.
We still have a little bit a behind-the-scenes look at the mass firing of the Tesla Supercharger.
EV sales: Recent EV sales reports discussed The Netherlands (47% of new cars are plug-in cars, 32% BEVs), China (44% of new cars are plug-in cars, 26% BEVs), and Brazil (not so good, but improving quickly).
Juan Diego Celemín Mojica also brought something else to the table — a study into when we will reach a peak vehicle fleet with ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles.
New electric cars: Paul Fosse wrote one some great articles about the potential for the Chevy Equinox EV (one before test driving and one after test driving), as well as his concerns. Steve Hanley reported on the very attractive and also accessible Kia EV3. David Waterworth shared a post owner review of the Cupra Born in. Australia.
Regression of electric cars: Following recent trends, a few more automakers decided they would scale back electric vehicle plans a bit. Those were German car manufacturers Mercedes Benz And Volkswagen.
Electric semi-trucks: Mike Barnard dug into the numbers and concluded electric semi-trucks are already lower carbon than rail transportation in much of North America. In the meantime, Toyota (yes, Toyota) launched a 100% battery-electric Class 8 truck for the American market.
Electric trikes and bicycles: Speaking of semi-trucks… how about an electric trike semi? Derek Markham writes: “It looks like a small semi-truck with a trailer, where the driver sits in an enclosed cab and pulls a spacious cargo trailer behind him, but instead of burning fossil fuels for energy, the Cityshuttle ePack pedals like a bike. This zero-emission light freight vehicle could be a key element of our low-carbon future, especially sustainable transport, and is described as the largest cargo bike in the world.” I love it!
Derek also reported on one new electric bike conversion product that costs only $349. Do you want to turn your regular bicycle into an e-bike? Consider this option. Also note that this system cost over $1,000 a few years ago!
Solving the climate crisis: I have two final stories to include. Do you want to improve your purchases to support more CO2 responsible companies? Watts of Carbon can help. If writes Scott Cooneyis “a climate technology software company focused on purchasing clean energy” that has launched a new marketplace to help with this. “It is the first platform on which customers can see the CO2 impact of their purchases, tracked down to hourly level. Moreover, it is also the first platform to include smaller-scale distributed energy sources (DER), such as rooftop solar, heat pumps and batteries.”
But when push comes to shove, we need strong climate leaders with political power. On that topic, Bill McKibben recently wrote about why he thinks climate change is the key to Joe Biden's re-election in November. Steve Hanley sums it up.
In addition to the above, these are the 20 most important press releases of the past few weeks:
- ChargePoint and Airbnb are working together to enable seamless EV charging
- 60 new electric buses are operating in Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn
- VinFast receives 27,649 pre-orders for VF 3 in Vietnam – 66 hours after accepting deposits
- Citroën wins contract for 1,000 ë-C3s in India
- Xpeng announces expansion into Australia; Appoints TrueEV as exclusive partner
- Zum Launches Nation's First School District with 100% Electric, Two-Way V2G School Bus Fleet in Oakland
- Orange Charger unveils next-generation electric vehicle charger for multi-family homes
- More than 4 million plug-in vehicles will be sold worldwide by 2024
- Volkswagen ID.7 achieves historic top score in ADAC vehicle test
- Volkswagen announces ID 2025. Buzz offer structure
- BYD launches its first pickup, BYD SHARK, in Mexico
- Largest virtual power plant in the US powers California's electric grid with 16,200 home solar-plus-storage systems
- The first ever American-built offshore wind service operations vessel
- Vestas signs agreement for offshore wind project with total capacity of more than 1 GW in Northern Europe
- Autonomous shuttles for Roland-Garros 2024: Renault Group launches an ambitious level 4 for public transport
- Daimler Truck unveils battery-electric autonomous Freightliner eCascadia technology demonstrator
- Berlin's oldest passenger ship enters a new green era, powered by Torqeedo
- DHL expands charging infrastructure for electric trucks in Germany, new EV center in Shanghai
- 90 ultra-fast solar chargers for Italy
- Rio Tinto and BHP are working together to test battery-electric transport trucks in the Pilbara
You can find many more cleantech press releases in our Newswire corner.
This is part of CleanTechnica's weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here!
Do you have a tip for CleanTechnica? Do you want to advertise? Would you like to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Videos
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policies here.