Light & Medium Duty Commercial Vehicles
Hyundai and IVECO partner to launch Hyundai's eLCV platform as IVECO’s eMoovy vehicle in Europe. (link) The vehicle runs on the 800V platform and can travel 320 km (200 mi) on one charge.
BYD launched its first e-van for Europe at IAA, the E-Vali, in 3.5-tonne and 4.25-tonne versions. (link) A single-motor 150kW RWD and AWD with 150kW+100kW motor versions will be available, runs on an 80.6kWh LFP battery, and has 220-250km (155mi) range WLTP. What I like is that they also offer a 22kW AC charging option (great for fleets), and 188kW peak charging. This one also offers V2L with 3kW.
The seventh generation of the VW Transporter also finally features a fully electric version, the e-Transporter, and VW launched also the VW e-Caravelle (link). These are actually built on the Ford e-Transit platform, produced in Turkey. These come with 100kW, 160kW, and 210kW versions, and a 64kWh battery.
Heavy-Duty Trucks
DHL tests Tesla Semi trucks in two weeks and over 3,000 miles. They wrote that the trial vehicle averaged 1.72 kWh/mile operating at speeds exceeding 50 mph (80 km/h) on average for over half its time on the road and wrote: “Our verdict: The Tesla Semi is ready for prime time! Trial ends, planning begins. Following the successful trial phase, DHL Supply Chain USA is now carefully planning how we could best integrate these electric trucks into our network as Tesla gears up for large-scale production of the Semi in 2026." (link)
MAN handed over its very first Class 8 electric truck, the eTGX, a hundred years after the first diesel truck presentation. (link) It will be used by the haulage company Elflein to transport batteries from the Leipzig battery plant of the supplier Dräxlmaier to the Porsche plant for the electric Macan. MAN says it has 2,500 orders and order inquiries for the electric truck family.
Daimler Truck delivers 20 new Freightliner eCascadia Class 8 trucks to the Reyes Beverage Group in California with 9 more to be delivered by the end of the year. (link)
J.B Hunt added 20 Nikola Tre fuel cell trucks to its fleet, mainly to be used for port and drayage transport in California. (link)
J.B. Hunt also added a Freightliner eCascadia to a 100-mile Daimler Truck North America aftermarket parts supply route in Arizona. (link)
North America’s first 100% electric tow truck, from Lion Electric, is launched in Quebec, Canada for the CAA-Quebec service. (link)
Volvo Trucks North America has delivered 70 VNR electric trucks to several fleets in Southern California, as part of the “SWITCH-ON” project. Volvo Trucks has delivered over 570 Volvo VNR Electric trucks in 31 US states and Canadian provinces. (link)
Reading tip: Behind the scenes of Amazon’s hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles pilot in Germany, by Amazon (link).
The Netherlands: Simon Loos will expand its fleet of 60 electric trucks with 75 Mercedes-Benz eActros 600. (link)
In Germany, Duvenbeck becomes the first logistics company in Europe to integrate Farizon Homtruck (Geely’s subsidiary) into its service, starting with 50 electric trucks next year. (link)
Poland has received approval from the EIB for subsidy programs totaling 6 billion zlotys ($1.51B). The funds are to be used to build fast-charging infrastructure and to support the purchase of heavy-duty electric vehicles. (link)
Fortescue and Liebherr signed a $2.8B deal for 360 autonomous T264 electric trucks, 55 electric excavators, and 60 electric dozers for Fortescue’s mining operations in Western Australia. Fortescue also developed a 6MW charging system for these trucks. (link)
Nikola Motor laid off 135 employees, 15% of its overall workforce. (link) Nikola wholesaled 88 Class 8 hydrogen fuel-cell trucks in the third quarter, bringing the total to 235 since it started sales in Q4 last year.
Here is an overview from BloombergNEF on the medium- and heavy-duty electric and fuel-cell truck sales: (link)
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Notable Updates
EVBox, the Dutch charger manufacturer with both European and US operations, is being shut down by the French parent company Engie which acquired it back in 2017.
Per the latest EVbox statement (link), it is now in the process of selling the DC business arm, to be continued by EVTronic, which will take over the site in Bordeaux, France, and all its employees (100 in Bordeaux and 34 from other EVBox entities).
On the AC charging & Everon side, "EVBox would continue to meet its contractual warranty and after-sales service obligations for its product portfolio."
We can also assume its Libertyville, Illinois factory will shut down (or be acquired by another maker that wants to get the subsidies for local production? Remains to be seen).
This is no small news — founded in 2010, the company has sold 500,000 charging points worldwide, from AC to up to 480kW in most recent deployments, and has “more than 20,000 business customers”.
We’ve seen the consolidation — also through (or due to?) the inevitable commoditization of the charging hardware — coming for a while in this maturing industry, and we’ve witnessed quite a few of the early players go under this year. Tritium, Freewire Technologies, EnerCharge, and Enel X Way (Juicebox maker), to name some.
Here’s a comment from Robert van de Vegte, the co-founder of EVBox (link):
“As one of the co-founders of EVBOX, this is extremely sad news for me to hear. But it also makes me proud that we managed to grow the company from the “kitchen table” to one of the leading companies in the charging industry already back in 2012. I remember well our internal discussions at EVBOX back in 2014 when we made the decision to explore the opportunities for EVBOX in the US market. Time flies and hopefully, EVBOX will not be forgotten as one of the true pioneers of this industry.”
Enel X Way shut down the US & Canada arms on October 11th. Apps are closed, Juicebox home chargers are left without smart features (now only work as ‘dumb’ chargers), and commercial infrastructure will essentially be bricked as Enel discontinues all software. (link to statement)
If you are a commercial operator of any, I’ve seen other platforms like Wevo Energy, Chargelab, and Blink Charging offer free migration of these ‘orphaned chargers’ to their platform. Blink Charging advertises itself as: “When you sign up for a revenue share program, Blink covers the cost of your EV charging equipment, along with warranty and maintenance.”
Chargelab describes the situation a little better as well. (link) Note, that the company started as eMotorWerks, which was acquired by Enel in 2017.
Tesla installed a milestone 60,000th charger globally, in Japan. Next to it is the 600th Supercharger in Japan, and also the first V4 deployment in the country. (link) Tesla also installed its first Supercharger in South America, in Chile. (link)
Those 60,000 Superchargers have made Tesla by far the largest fast and ultra-fast CPO in Europe and US. Here’s the top 10 for both regions: (link). Perhaps a surprising find on the European side is that the Lidl retail store chain has risen to become the 7th largest charging network in Europe.
Meanwhile, Tesla Giga Berlin built a 5,000m2 solar canopy with 2,639 solar panels (~1MW) on top of the part of its parking lot that houses chargers. Free for all EV drivers to use. (video)
Washington D.C. Council unanimously passed the “Comprehensive Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Access, Readiness, and Sustainability Amendment Act of 2023”, which – if signed by the Mayor – would require all new or substantially improved" commercial and multi-unit buildings to include setups for EV chargers in parking garages or lots, if they have them, and provide dedicated EV parking spaces there (link).
The bill also establishes an Electric Vehicle Charging Incentive Program for property owners. Also, any new or substantially renovated gas station in the District projected to sell more than one million gallons of gasoline per year will now have to add one 150 kW DC fast-charging station with two plugs from October 2025 onward.
Siemens plans to carve out its eMobility business, combining it with Heliox (which it acquired earlier this year) into a dedicated legal structure to “increase agility, focus, and growth in the EV charging infrastructure market.” (link)
Watch tip: Kyle from Out of Spec shares a 1h video on them installing their new XCharge NZS 200kWh battery integrated DC charger — they only have a 19kW grid connection.
Alpitronic opens its US HQ, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Here’s the State of Charge video from the spot.
An evpoint charger in the UK, supplied by BYD, is found not only showing BYD ads on the screens but also blasting the video sound from added speakers (video). CPOs, please do not make this our future.
Watch tip(s): Here are all the keynote presentations, both slides and videos, of the intercharge network conference that took place in September in Berlin. (link)
A study on the UK’s charging infrastructure got an update, Green Finance Institute maps out utilization data based on ZapMap, for the different power ratings (9-page pdf)
Chinese companies have registered 62,655 EV charging technology patents; Japan has 5,568 applications; USA has 4,306; Germany has 3,973 and South Korea has 3,942. (link)
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