Weekly-ish News - Episode 3 (February 7, 2021)

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to find me on Twitter @archduketyler

Headlines from this episode:

Lucid Motors designed their plant to produce 400k vehicles per year, are considering building a plant in China.

Sandy Munro gets an interview with Elon Musk and it's not terrible.

Tesla gives in to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and recalls Model S/X vehicles afflicted with their console issues.

Rumors about Kia building the new Apple EV are false.

European Commission invests 2.9b Euro in battery value chain with 42 industry partners.

Karma is considering using methanol fuel cells (instead of hydrogen) to reduce infrastructure needs.

Lordstown Motors still plans to sell vehicles in 2021 and announced a van for production in 2022:.

Merchants Fleet, a national fleet management company, plans to procure 12,600 EVs from GM's BrightDrop program starting in 2023 (when the vehicle is available).

Ford invests $29b in electrification and automation, but also loses $2.8b in Q4 of 2020.

Atlis has, ahem, ambitious goals for their largely crowdfunded EV truck.

bonus The Clean Cities Coalition I'm Co-Coordinator of did a webinar about the future of megawatt EV charging, which is relevant considering Atlis's plan to have a 1.5MW charging network.

Study published models potential roadmaps for decarbonizing the United States, I highly recommend reading through the study (plain-language summary is at the bottom of show notes).

NOT MENTIONED IN PODCAST:

Study suggests cities are underestimating their emissions ~20% on average.

Louisiana State University publishes a study about carbon capture.

Washington state bans internal combustion vehicles starting 2030 with their "Clean Cars 2030".

Full text of Plain Language Summary from the Decarbonization study:
"We created multiple blueprints for the United States to reach zero or negative CO2 emissions from the energy system by 2050 to avoid the most damaging impacts of climate change. By methodically increasing energy efficiency, switching to electric technologies, utilizing clean electricity (especially wind and solar power), and deploying a small amount of carbon capture technology, the United States can reach zero emissions without requiring changes to behavior. Cost is about $1 per person per day, not counting climate benefits; this is significantly less than estimates from a few years ago because of recent technology progress. Models with more detail than used in the past revealed unexpected synergies, counterintuitive results, and tradeoffs. The lowest‐cost electricity systems get >80% of energy from wind and solar power but need other resources to provide reliable service. Eliminating fossil fuel use altogether is possible but higher cost. Restricting biomass use and land for renewables is possible but could require nuclear power to compensate. All blueprints for the United States agree on the key tasks for the 2020s: increasing the capacity of wind and solar power by 3.5 times, retiring coal plants, and increasing electric vehicle and electric heat pump sales to >50% of market share."