Honda Urban EV: Honda is showing the Urban EV Concept at the Frankfurt auto show. Built on a new platform, the company says it’s the model for a future battery electric production vehicle. It will be 
introduced into the European market with no word yet on whether it will show up in the U.S. It will have an on-board advanced Honda Automated Network Assistant acts as a personal concierge, which learns from the driver by detecting emotions behind their judgments for future recommendations. Honda’s Power Manager Concept, also revealed in Frankfurt, can store and manage energy between the grid, the electric car, and homes. The Urban EV Concept will come out in the near future. “This is not some vision of the distant future; a production version of this car will be here in Europe in 2019,” Honda Motor Co. President and CEO, Takahiro Hachigo.
Seven new hydrogen stations: The California Energy Commission awarded a grant of $16,362,500 on Aug. 9 to Equilon Enterprises LLC, a subsidiary of Shell Oil Company, for the introduction of seven hydrogen refueling stations in Northern California. The hydrogen stations will be built in collaboration with Honda and Toyota, who will also offer financial support. All seven will be Shell-branded retail stations across Northern California: three in San Francisco, and one in each of Berkeley, Sacramento, Citrus Heights, and Walnut Creek. The Energy Commission awarded the grant through its Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program (ARFVTP), which invests up to $100 million every year to support innovations in transportation and fuel technologies that help California meet its energy, clean air, and climate change goals.
Jaguar racing special edition: Jaguar’s racing division will be launching an exclusive support 
race to the FIA Formula E Championship in season five at the end of 2018. The Jaguar I-PACE eTROPHY will be the support series for the Formula E series, taking place on the same weekends at the same city circuits, starting in late 2018. The company says it has created the world’s first production battery electric vehicle race series. It will also support the launch of the Jaguar I-Pace, the company first battery electric vehicle.
technology, announced in a speech Saturday that regulators are working on a timeline for phasing out the sales and production of the gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. Norway, France, and the UK, are already going in that direction. Almost 80 percent of the global auto market is heading toward an eventual phase-out of petroleum-powered cars through government incentives and mandates. It’s a big job – with about 695,000 of 84 million new vehicles sold last year being electric; and with about a billon vehicles out on roads across the world now.
Cars, only expect to see half the profit margins now for EV compared to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. That could break even, and EVs more price competitive, by 2025. Seeing battery prices come down will be a big part of it. More specifics were given on its electric fleet introductions – by 2022, there will be an electric version of every Mercedes model sold. It will be led by the new EQ electric brand, which Mercedes-Benz is overseeing. The Smart brand will stop selling vehicles with any internal combustion engines in 2020.
hybrid that’s expected to be competitive in the luxury utility segment. Photos went out unexpectedly ahead of time. Production will launch in 2018. BMW executives have said the X7 will go on sale in the U.S. market in early 2019. There’s also an i-Series model, that could be the long-anticipated i5 sedan, that will be revealed next week. It will be one of 12 all-electric vehicles launched by 2025, bringing the total to 25 electrified vehicles offered, BMW’s CEO said.
kWh battery and an 80-kilowatt electric motor. The Japanese automaker promised to release a faster, more powerful version with longer range in 2019. The new Leaf is not meeting the 200-mile electric vehicle standard that’s becoming the norm, but it is going about 40 miles further than the current Leaf and costs a bit less; and it can deliver 147 horsepower, 38% more than the previous version. It’s got a new sharp-edged aerodynamic look and a few tech features. That includes the ProPILOT advanced driver assistance system, ProPILOT Park, and the e-Pedal that allows for accelerating, decelerating and stopping the car by using the accelerator pedal alone.
conduct studies on the best ways to write and implement EV rebate legislation. The report won’t be due until Sept. 1, 2019. Language was also removed from AB 1184 that offered a formula for providing higher rebate amounts. The full legislature will consider the amended bill. The $3 billion originally in AB 1184 would have offered rebates until 2030. It would have been six times higher than the nearly $500 million spent on EV rebates so far in the state.
ike the Generation EQ Concept show last year in Paris; it could be an electric sedan but most likely will be a small crossover or hatchback. It’s not going to roll out until 2020 or later as a production vehicle, and Mercedes-Benz is expected to reveal a few other electric EQ concept vehicles by that time. The company will also be showing a small autonomous concept car in Frankfurt called the Smart Vision EQ.
ridesharing venue through 
Workers union with charges of unfair labor practices. The Fremont factory has been picking up production volume as the Tesla Model 3 is being delivered to first buyers, and with production volumes speeding up later this year. Tesla sees it as a campaign by UAW to unionize Tesla workers, which has failed to gain enough support so far to win a union election. Employees have voiced their own concerns about working conditions in the factory. A study released by Worksafe in May found injuries at the Fremont plant to be much higher than the industry average in recent years.
well lately, with an 8.3% increase over July. At 9,685 units sold in the U.S. so far in 2017, it’s up 22.3% over that same period last year. There’s been a lot of interest in the Leaf lately with the all-new version being launched in September. It will be longer range than the current Leaf and will feature a new set of tech features, including ePedal. Consumers are looking for more affordable electric cars and have a lot of interest in the new Leaf, along with the Tesla Model 3 and Chevy Bolt.
2013. Car Charging Group began operating thousands of Blink charging stations, and the software that manages, monitors, and tracks these stations and stores charging data. Blink Charging Co. also started a 1 for 50 reverse stock split, effective two days ago. After a period of 20 business days from then, the company’s stock symbol will be CCGID and will then revert to CCGI. The company’s website has switched over to www.BlinkCharging.com. “Changing the name of the Company to Blink Charging continues our integration efforts and corporate rebranding, which allows us to unify our identity and illustrates the company’s primary products and services,” stated Mike Calise, Blink Charging’s CEO. “The reverse split is also another step in the right direction towards achieving a listing on a national stock exchange and to build additional shareholder value.”
An upgraded smartphone app has helped, along with a new marketing campaign that’s helping Lyft grow from serving 160 more cities for a total of about 350. Lyft is an ideal situation, with its General Motors partnership and recent deals with other companies on autonomous vehicle test projects. Uber’s excessive market valuation and ability to raise about $14 billion in private equity since its inception is causing a huge shakeup as investors want to see transparent, professional management of the company. Uber this week hired Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to take the place of ousted and controversial founder Travis Kalanick. The new CEO is also known for being outspoken, and is expected to bring the company forward to an initial public offering within 18 to 36 months. Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer work on keeping the company simple and direct. They say they haven’t done beyond asking employees and drivers to make sure passengers are treated like guests at a fine hotel.
truck will have a 44,000-lb. maximum payload and about 100 miles of range. That beats Tesla’s announcement, which takes place next month and is expected to focus on a 200-300 mile range electric semi truck. Named AEOS after a four-winged horse-driven chariot from Greek mythology, the Cummins electric truck (built by Roush) follows an announcement in June that the company will bring out an electric bus by 2019. Cummins is looking for vehicle manufacturers to work with and large fleets interested in buying them. For now, the electric heavy-duty truck is in the concept phase. The company is well known by fleets for its natural gas truck engines.
tapping into the company’s CASE philosophy – 
by 2019 through eGT New Energy Automotive Co., Ltd., the new company. The three companies have been in alliance for years with a shared factory already in place. It will tie into CEO Carlos Ghohn strategy to maximize economies of scale and become more EV competitive, along with Donfeng’s mission to bring “light, electric, intelligent, interconnected and shared” vehicles to the new energy vehicle market. China is in the process of becoming stricter on subsidies and watching out for another cheating scandal. The government is expected to soon announce a zero emission vehicle mandate similar to California’s. Whatever the government requires, automakers are not backing off China’s booming EV market.
a pizza through a self-driving vehicle. Over the next few weeks, customers in Ann Arbor, Mich., will have the opportunity to receive their order from a Ford Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Research Vehicle. It will be manually-driven by a Ford safety engineer and staffed with researchers. Ford plans to begin producing self-driving vehicles in 2021 and will tap into the data from this test project.
ChargePoint, operator of one of the world’s largest charging station networks for electric cars, joins other players in the game including utilities, engineering groups, automakers, and startups seeking to establish strong footing. BMW, Daimler, and Siemens already have a strong presence in Europe as demand continues to increase – and they see ChargePoint as an option to expand their networks. The charging company has so far raised about $300 million in funds, with Daimler and Siemens joining up this year. BMW first supplied funds in 2012. The company also operates about 40,000 charging spots in the U.S. and Mexico.
leaving in June. Kalanick had been overseeing the company as it eventually reached $70 billion in estimated market valuation until a series of controversies took over this year – driving investors to shake up Uber management. Khosrowshahi has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, which was another heated issue for Uber earlier this year. His family had immigrated to the U.S. during the Iranian revolution. Expedia, along with Amazon, became one of two technology companies to contribute declarations to a lawsuit filed by Washington State’s attorney general objecting to the travel ban executive order. That had focused on seven predominantly Muslim countries. Other finalists for the Uber CEO position include Jeffrey Immelt, the former chief of General Electric, and Meg Whitman, the chief of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the sources said.