Green energy app lets your car charge when electricity is cheapest

Renewable energy supplier Bulb has created a specific off-peak tariff for electric cars and an app to simplify how people charge their vehicles Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269744-green-energy-app-lets-your-car-charge-when-electricity-is-cheapest/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Volvo To Go All Electric By 2030

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Volvo’s entire car lineup will be fully electric by 2030, the Chinese-owned company said on Tuesday, joining a growing number of automakers planning to phase out fossil-fuel engines by the end of this decade. “I am totally convinced there will be no customers who really want to stay with a petrol engine,” Volvo…

Cities Are Starting To Ban New Gas Stations

Petaluma, California, has voted to outlaw new gas stations, the first of what climate activists hope will be numerous cities and counties to do so. From a report: The movement aims to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles. “This is not a ban on the existing gas stations, which are providing all the gas currently needed,” Matt Krogh, U.S. oil and…

Biden Signs Executive Order To Address Chip Shortage Through a Review To Strengthen Supply Chains

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday meant to address a global chip shortage impacting industries ranging from medical supplies to electric vehicles. From a report: The order includes a 100-day review of key products including semiconductors and advanced batteries used in electric vehicles, followed by a broader, long-term review of six sectors of the economy. The long-term review will…

Verizon Leads 5G Airwave Bidding With Record $45 Billion Splurge

Verizon Communications committed $45 billion for 5G wireless airwaves in a government auction that attracted record bidding as the largest U.S. mobile carriers race to build faster networks. From a report: At $23 billion, AT&T was the second-highest bidder, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which ran the auction. Participants also included T-Mobile US Inc. and pay-TV providers such as Dish…

Mars rovers safe from lightning strikes, research finds

If experiments done in small bottles in a University of Oregon lab are accurate, the friction of colliding Martian dust particles are unlikely to generate big electrical storms or threaten the newly arrived exploration vehicles or, eventually, human visitors. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-mars-rovers-safe-lightning.html…

Biden To Order Review of US Reliance on Overseas Supply Chains For Semiconductors, Rare Earths

President Joe Biden will direct his administration to conduct a review of key U.S. supply chains including semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, medical supplies and rare earth metals. From a report: The assessment, which will be led by members of both Biden’s economic and national security teams, will analyze the “resiliency and capacity of the American manufacturing supply chains and defense industrial base…

Ford Plans for All Cars Sold in Europe To Be Electric by 2030

Ford has pledged that all of its cars on sale in Europe will be electric by 2030, in the latest move by the world’s biggest auto manufacturers to set out plans to move away from polluting internal combustion engines before looming bans on fossil-fuel vehicles across the world. From a report: The US car giant said on Wednesday that it was…

Volkswagen CEO Says He’s Not Scared of Apple

Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess isn’t intimidated by Apple, even though the tech company potentially has an electric car on the way. From a report: “The car industry is not a typical tech sector that you could take over at a single stroke,” Diess said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Apple will not manage that overnight.” For years,…

Biden Team Pledges Aggressive Steps To Address Chip Shortage

The Biden administration is working to address the global semiconductor shortage that has caused production halts in U.S. industries including autos, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. From a report: The administration is identifying choke points in supply chains and discussing an immediate path forward with businesses and trading partners, Psaki told reporters at the White House on Thursday. In…