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Electric vehicle start-up Fisker is exploring bankruptcy, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Fisker’s stock plunged this week as investors worry about the company’s ability to survive amid a cash crunch. The auto company also said it would slash 15% of its workforce. The Wall Street Journal reported: Electric-vehicle startup Fisker FSR -55.88%decrease; red down pointing triangle has hired restructuring advisers to assist with a possible bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter. Fisker, which recently warned that it risked running out of cash this year, hired financial adviser FTI Consulting and the law firm Davis Polk...

Automakers from Ford Motor and General Motors to Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.. consumer demand for EVs hasn’t shown up in the way executives had expected ... The buzz around electric vehicles is wearing off. For years, the automotive industry has been in a state of EV euphoria. Automakers trotted out optimistic sales forecasts for electric models and announced ambitious targets for EV growth. Wall Street boosted valuations for legacy automakers and startup entrants alike, based in part on their visions for an EV future. Now the hype...

Powering the nation’s long-haul trucks with electricity would require the same amount of electricity for more than 46 million homes every year. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In 2022, California adopted regulations that required all new cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the state to be zero emissions by 2035. Immediately, 17 states eyed the electric vehicle mandates and started considering their own. That was on top of the Biden administration’s own tailpipe standards, which many say function as a federal EV mandate. The vision of a forced electric vehicle transition hasn't quite gone as California and the Biden administration have hoped. But in...

Andrew Moseman goes into some detail in Friday's Atlantic magazine as to why electric vehicle sales have slowed down recently to the extent that he is now calling 2024 a lost year for EVs as reflected in the title, "America’s Lost Year for Electric Cars."Despite Moseman providing us with a myriad of obvious reasons why consumers appear to be rejecting EVs, he falls back on the easy all-purpose explanation for liberals to blame for whatever the woes: Trump's fault!

The gas-powered Dodge Charger isn't dead yet. While the V-8 may be gone, Dodge will continue to offer the Charger will an internal combustion engine alongside the two new electric variants revealed today. At the top of the internal combustion food chain sits the Dodge Charger Sixpack H.O. It's powered by Stellantis's 3.0-liter twin-turbo Hurricane straight-six engine, rated at 550 horsepower. There's also a Sixpack S.O. version rated at 420 horsepower. "The Hurricane engine-powered Dodge Charger Sixpack models will give the Brotherhood of Muscle a gas option that produces better horsepower and torque numbers than the outgoing 5.7 and 6.4-liter...

@RepThomasMassie My off-grid home runs on a wrecked Model S Tesla car battery that I repurposed. This is the display I created for it 6 years ago. The upper left graph is a 24 hour history of the net energy into the battery. Today was a great solar day in Kentucky!

Lithium-ion batteries used in E-bikes and other electronic mobility devices are now a leading cause of fires in New York City following their popularity surged during the pandemic’s delivery boom, FDNY officials say. FDNY Chief Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn told The Post that fires related to lithium-ion batteries have gone up nearly nine-fold since the pandemic, with more blazes related to the batteries happening in the last two months than in all of 2019. “It’s the prevalence of these e-devices on our streets, there’s way more of them now than ever before,” Flynn said.

The year 1957 is memorable for at least two historic launches. The launch by the Soviet Socialist Union of the Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, prompted the U.S. to create the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) the very next year.Eleven years later, Neil Armstrong stepped out of Apollo 11 and famously proclaimed, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”Barely three years later, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan announced the end of the manned space flight experiment: “We shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”Many believe that the Challenger launch failure in 1986,...

Key Points: Tesla stock is down 21% in 2024 so far, and it's down 52% from its all-time high. Growth in Tesla's electric vehicle deliveries is decelerating. Tesla has a plan to reignite growth, but there are no short-term fixes for this problem. The electric vehicle giant isn't growing like it used to. Tesla (TSLA 1.81%) was the world's largest electric vehicle (EV) company by sales until the fourth quarter of last year when China-based BYD outsold it for the first time. Tesla once had the EV market almost entirely to itself, but now, it's grappling with a tsunami of...

Since 2017, hospitalizations due to e-bike injuries have risen 43-fold, ... Over 45,000 Americans were injured as a result of e-bike injuries between 2017 and 2022, indicating a 30-fold rise in the number of injuries caused by the popular mode of transportation. Nearly one in 10 of those injuries required hospitalization. ... 2022, e-bikes accounted for 4 percent of the bike market in the United States, up from 0.06 percent in 2015. ... between 2017 and 2022, the number of injuries rose from 751 to 23,493—over a 108 percent annual increase. Men were those most often injured, receiving between 69...

After investing billions of taxpayer dollars in electric vehicles (EVs), the Biden administration is making a sharp dogleg on ambitious targets for implementation. In an effort to court United Auto Workers (UAW) ahead of the 2024 election, President Joe Biden is now seeking a bevy of delays in his climate change plans. From delaying planned EPA climate rules for tailpipe emissions to reevaluating planned dates for EV ownership levels. EV carmakers swallowing massive losses, autoworkers deprived of jobs, and consumers remaining unconvinced to drive electric cars despite incentives and climate marketing were, apparently, not part of the Biden plan. Economics...

Stanford University researchers found that the best way to extend the life of a lithium-metal EV battery is to drain it and let it rest for a few hours. The study, “Resting restores performance of discharged lithium-metal batteries,” published on February 7 in the journal Nature, found that this straightforward approach restored battery capacity and boosted overall performance. Study co-lead author Wenbo Zhang, a Stanford PhD student in materials science and engineering, said: We were looking for the easiest, cheapest, and fastest way to improve lithium metal cycling life. We discovered that by resting the battery in the discharged state,...

Yet another electric vehicle (EV) company has fallen on hard times. California-based Rivian Automotive Inc. has had a tough week after announcing plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce and lower production targets amid a significant decline in demand for such vehicles. The news also sent its stock plummeting by 25 percent on Thursday, marking the worst day of trading in the company's history.“Our business is not immune to existing economic and geopolitical uncertainties, most notably the impact of historically high interest rates, which has negatively impacted demand,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said on an earnings call on Wednesday....

General Motors once hoped to unseat Tesla as America’s EV leader. Sources tell us what went wrong with batteries, software and more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It wasn’t supposed to be like this. By early 2024, General Motors was to have had half a dozen electric vehicles selling in volume, all using the next-generation Ultium architecture it unveiled at “EV Day” in March 2020. That list includes the Chevrolet Silverado EV, Blazer EV, and Equinox EV; the Cadillac Lyriq; and the GMC Hummer EV in two versions. This expansive rollout of new EVs was to put GM on a course to, as The...

EV startup stocks Rivian (RIVN) and Lucid (LCID) sank Thursday after both companies reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue late Wednesday, and announced they are not ramping up production in 2024. Rivian reported Wednesday a loss of $1.36 per share in Q4 with sales doubling to $1.31 billion. Wall Street expected a loss of $1.35 and revenue totaling $1.28 billion. Looking to 2024, Rivian said it expects production of 57,000 vehicles, remaining flat compared with 2023. The EV startup also predicts consumer and commercial vehicle deliveries to grow by low single-digits in 2024. The company also announced that it predicts vehicle...

Goodbye free markets! Hello heavy-handed government cronyism. So, despite recent declines in energy prices, gasoline prices are still up 46.25% under “Green Joe” and the all important for shipping, diesel prices, are still up 55.6% under Brainless Joe. One would think that massive rises in gasoline and diesel prices would make everyone buy an electric vehicle (EV). But alas, the high cost and unreliability of EVs is turning off consumers. (I own a hybrid and wish I didn’t). Another one of the Biden administration’s “visions” for forcing people to own electric vehicles isn’t working out exactly as planned. Both Ford...

Maine’s Department of Education is reportedly urging school districts to stop using taxpayer-subsidized electric school buses that were purchased within the last year. The districts reported problems with the new buses, which were supplied by Canada-based Lion Electric Co., last fall ... The windshields on the buses would leak whenever it rained, as the glass didn’t appear to be securely in place. concerns about mixing electricity and water from the leaking windshields led them to stop driving some of the buses. The buses, which cost about $345,000 each, were also sold with misaligned or incorrect lettering on the sides, and...

Electric vehicle makers Rivian and Lucid both suffered plummeting share prices after disappointing fourth-quarter earnings reports revealed stagnant production numbers. CNBC reports that shares of electric vehicle makers Rivian and Lucid plunged on Thursday following disappointing fourth-quarter earnings reports released after markets closed on Wednesday. Rivian stock sank around 25 percent, while Lucid shares dropped nearly 17 percent. Both companies cited stagnant production numbers and “existing economic and geopolitical uncertainties” as factors impacting results. Rivian forecasts production of 57,000 vehicles in 2024 — about the same as the 57,232 vehicles manufactured in 2023. Meanwhile, Lucid predicts production of 9,000 vehicles...

FIRST ON FOX: A bicameral coalition of more than 130 Republican lawmakers penned a letter to the White House on Thursday, urging it to withdraw proposed tailpipe emissions regulations, forcing a transition to electric vehicles (EV). The Republicans — led by Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho — argued that the regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are a "de facto EV mandate" phaseout of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. They addressed the letter to President Biden and Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which is expected to soon finalize...

BMW is introducing a trial fleet of the BMW iX5 hydrogen car throughout the world, including South Africa. The company views hydrogen cars as an addition to battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), not as a rivalry between the two technologies. The iX5 Hydrogen pilot fleet is not meant for commercial use, but the German automaker has begun testing hydrogen-powered cars in South Africa. The hydrogen car trial was revealed during the regional meeting of the Hydrogen Council in Sandton, Johannesburg. BMW has revealed that it will begin testing in collaboration with Anglo-American Platinum and Sasol. The Sasol BMW Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle,...