Toyota supersizes battery in fuel-cell semi, teases formula for pickups

Kenworth-Toyota hydrogen fuel-cell semi prototype. -  May 2024In its latest production-bound version of hydrogen fuel-cell semis, Toyota is adding much more of something that will help it go the distance consistently: batteries. Hydrogen fuel cell power is often seen as an alternative to batteries, but here the latter makes the former better. Toyota has opted to fit 200 kwh of lithium-ion NCA (nickel cobalt...

Report: Trump offered to nix EV incentives for $1B donation from Big Oil

President Donald Trump (Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)At a meeting with top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago club last month, Donald Trump offered to reverse Biden administration environmental policies in exchange for a $1 billion donation to his presidential re-election campaign, the Washington Post reports. The donation would be a "deal," Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation oil...

BP seeks stranded Tesla Supercharger sites in $1B EV charging buildout

Tesla Model 3 (Europe-market refresh) BP is eying Tesla Supercharger sites as part of a planned expansion of the oil giant's U.S. charging network, Bloomberg reports. The company said it "is aggressively looking to acquire real estate to scale our network, which is a heightened focus following the recent Tesla announcement." Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier this month fired most of the...

Test drive: 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 overshadows Model 3

2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6With more range, better functionality, actual style thanks to a better design, and competitive price, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 just makes better sense than the Tesla Model 3. But that style does come at a price for taller passengers; Tesla has upped its interior-material game; and the car that’s so forward-thinking still lacks some tech polish...

Car flame retardants might make us sick—and be unnecessary in EVs

2025 Land Rover DefenderOutdated federal standards for the flammability of vehicle interior materials—put in place before the rise of EVs—pose an unnecessary health hazard, argues Consumer Reports. In response to a study from the Green Science Policy Institute at Duke University, which found harmful chemicals from flame retardants can be present in the air of...

Here’s how California seeks to cut the cost of home EV charging

Lucid Connected Home Charging StationSpikes in electricity rates can raise the cost of charging an EV at home, but California has a solution. As explained in a recent post on The Equation, from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), California is considering adding a fixed charge on electricity bills from its largest utilities in exchange for a reduction in the per-unit price of...