Weekly-ish News - Episode 28 (September 28, 2021)

What's the Alternative?

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Electric Vehicles:

Ford is considering producing Mach-E's as dedicated police vehicles.

Ford is investing in battery recycling, specifically targeting closed-loop recycling.

• Part of this is through a $50m (USD) investment in Redwood Materials, which is a battery recycling company founded by J.B. Straubel of Tesla fame

Ford and SK Innovations are investing $11.4b for electric F-150 manufacturing and battery manufacturing in the U.S.

• There will be 3 battery plants and 1 F-150 Lightning plant.
• These plants will be in Stanton, Tennessee and Glendale, Kentucky and will create 11,000 jobs.
• This is Ford's largest single manufacturing investment in its history.
• Ford is investing $7b, and SK is investing the remaining $4.4b.
• Once fully operational, the battery plants will be able to produce enough batteries for 2.2m EVs!
• Ford also mentioned they will spend $525m over five years for technician training for the shift towards EVs.

GM is resuming battery production for the Bolt.

• There is also a software update for Bolt owners that will monitor the battery for issues to prioritize replacements in high-risk vehicles.

Michigan is hoping to pilot the country's first under-road inductive EV charging project.

• We talked about Indiana hopefully piloting a similar project in Episode 24.
• It will be a 1 mile (1.6km) stretch of road in Wayne, Oakland, or Macomb county.
• The request for proposals will be opened on September 28, 2021.
• The article makes it sound like they're pretty explicitly trying to beat Indiana to the punch.

An Australian mine, owned by Roy Hill, has purchased a battery-electric train from Wabtec.

• The purchase comes after a pilot project with the company that tested an earlier model of the train.
• The train will have 7MWh of battery storage.
• They will take delivery of the train in 2023.
• They expect it to save over 10% in carbon emissions as well as cost.

Oregon is getting some more electric transit buses in the Eugene-Springfield area!

• Lane Transit District has purchased 19 electric transit buses from New Flyer.
• This will complement their existing 11 electric buses.

California is deploying 100 new drayage and regional trucks!

• The project is called JETSI, the Joint Electric Truck Scaling Initiative and it will last 8 years.
• It's a partnership of more than 20 organizations, both companies and government entities.

Rivian is putting vehicles in people's hands! There are several reviews around:

• Green Car Reports
• JerryRigEverything video (with lots of offroading)

Michigan is investing in EV charging infrastructure with a new plan called the Lake Michigan Electric Vehicle Circuit.

• Michigan will spend up to $6.25m for the project.
• They will do a feasibility study first to determine the best strategy for deployment.

Energy:

We once again have loud opposition to offshore wind power that is rooted in a "not in my backyard" mentality around the aesthetics of offshore wind power (this time, in Georgia).

• Several Republican politicians are opposing offshore wind power in Georgia because it would "ruin their views".
• They also cite issues around wind power and bird populations, but that totally ignores that fossil fuel power is significantly worse for birds than wind power.
• For information about bird deaths per unit energy produced by different sources, see this paper.

Shell sold off a massive oil production in the Permian basin.

• It was a $9.5b deal with ConocoPhillips.