Norway is  one of those countries which took up E-mobility in a really enthusiastic manner.

The percentage of EV sales in Norway was already well above 60% of the total in 2020 itself and was steadily rising. And it could quite possibly hit almost 100% by April 2022.

According to the latest report of Norway’s Road Traffic Council, sales of cars without any form of electrification is below 10% of the total, as of now.

There are however, two things to be kept in mind:

A fair share of the EVs in Norway are hybrids, but it’s still better than pure ICEs.
A specific portion of vehicles in certain niche categories might still remain rather ICEVs as opposed to electric.

How did Norway achieve this?

Norway achieved their goals by providing incentives such as tax concessions, parking fee relaxation etc. However, these efforts were only required to kickstart the EV trend as the general public took up the challenge and Norway never had to look back.

In fact, Norway’s goal of phasing out EVs by 2025, might be achieved fairly earlier than expected. And even past the 2025 mark, Norway might not crack down on ICEs with a ban as the demand is approaching null anyways.

Norway and their policies leading up to successful results is a really important milestone for E-mobility around the globe, nonetheless.

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ePropelled, a Massachusetts based tech company has unveiled eDTS(ePropelled’s Dynamic Torque Switching™️) which finds immense use in EV propulsion systems. This latest piece of tech will be showcased at the Cenex-LCV in Millbrook, U.K.- an exhibition, during 22nd and 23rd of September.

The eDTS will help increase power efficiency in EVs by at least 15% according to ePropelled. Increased power efficiency would allow manufacturers to reduce battery size, which accounts for a huge chunk of an EV’s cost or increase range without dramatically increasing the battery size.

eDTS makes use of a software controlled ‘reconfigurable’ propulsion motor. This allows maintaining an almost consistent high efficiency throughout the operating time and seamless transition between different modes. During low speed operation, eDTS allows the motor to do so without high current consumption and during high speed, low torque conditions, without using field weakening.

ePropelled and the tech, will be present at the ARMD stand, #SP-20, and the Wales stand, #C3-117, for both days of the exhibition. The exhibition also features a Tata Tiago fitted with the eDTS, a result of the collaboration of ePropelled and Tata Motors with support from Embed Ltd.  

The most ambitious claim however, is that this technology scales well with almost any EVs despite their size; from scooters to trucks.

From day 1, EV manufacturers have strived to increase range and decrease price gap with their ICE counterparts. However, these two missions are almost mutually exclusive since lithium-ion cells are not cheap by any means. Even if their cost comes down dramatically, there is only so much battery we can fit into a vehicle and at some point, much needed innovation has to be introduced. This could very well be that innovation, which could have a wholesome impact on the electric vehicles.

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One of the frontrunners in EV charging infrastructure EVRE, has said that it will join hands with smart parking solutions provider Park+ to set up 10,000 EV charging hubs in India within the next two years.

Park+ is a company which provides different services, primarily pre booked parking. Logging into their website or app, anyone can book a parking spot for their vehicle so that they can skip the usual search for an empty spot.

Within this joint venture however, Park+ will primarily be dealing with the real estate side of things, while EVRE will be in charge of planning, design and setting up of the charging infrastructure.

The initial phase of the multiple phase project will see 300 stations installed in Delhi NCR by the end of the year, 100 each in Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune.

Their plans of setting up charging infrastructure in busy spots, which will also see a good deal of EV traffic, will be nothing less than helpful in easier adoption of EVs by the public.

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Lucid motors is not a household name in the auto arena. But it might as well be in the near future. The company which, itself defines it as ‘luxuar mobility’ company has announced the launching of their EV- the ‘Lucid Air Dream Edition’ and it flaunts a range of 520 miles or 836 km in a single charge. This number puts the Air Dream almost 100 miles or 161 km ahead of the rival Tesla Model-S in the ‘range wars’.

The company has also stated that their achievement was not owing to larger sized battery modules, but its innovative technologies including the 900V battery, BMS technology, miniaturized drive units and wunderbox technology.

The additional 100 miles comes at a sharp increase in cost as well. The Air is estimated to cost well over $169000 whereas the latest Model S costs around $90,000. There are however much cheaper models in the awakening, hopefully in the near future.

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Every year we hear about how worse the climate and air quality in Delhi is, during the winter. Blame games follow and later we get reports of how the burning of agricultural waste has contributed to some extent to the alarming deterioration. In the case of plastic, there is no particular season which results in cause for concern, since it's a concern every single day. But what if we could tackle both of these together? That would be an ideal example of two birds with one stone, right? Well, researchers from the Department of Material Engineering, IISc have done just that.

They have developed a technique to convert non-edible oil and cellulose extracted from agricultural waste and stubble to produce certain polymers. The polymer can be made into thin sheets and could be used to produce different types of products. After the successful development of the product, they have already started talks with various companies to ink down a potential deal for technology transfer.

Seldom do we hear about such innovations and most of those seldom times, we don’t hear much about it afterwards. However it could always change. It should change; fairly immediately.

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