EV Charging

A street in the City of Westminster in London has been dubbed Electric Avenue, W9 after Siemens and Ubitricity installed EV charging points in streetlamps, making it the first in the UK where all of its streetlamps have been given double duty.

A couple of years ago VW showed an all-in-one mobile robot concept that could autonomously charge EVs by bringing its integrated battery pack to the vehicle. Now there's an updated version that is able to tend to multiple vehicles at once.

Many people don't like the limited range of EVs. If their batteries could be recharged quicker, though, that range might not be so off-putting. That's where GBatteries' new tech comes in – it may one day be capable of recharging an EV within minutes.

Chevrolet has put some work into its little Bolt electric car, and is aiming for a big payoff as a result. To showcase this effort, the automaker asked us to drive it along America's Northwestern coast.

People will stop complaining about EV range the minute fast charging is a reality, and startup Piëch reckons it's got the goods to deliver an 80 percent charge on a 500-km-range battery in 4 minutes, 40 seconds, vastly quicker than anything else on the market. Why not just launch the battery, then?

This electric grand tourer will be a ton of fun to drive, with three motors combining for 450 kW (603 horsepower) and a lightweight body built for beautiful handling. But its biggest contribution could come from its high-capacity battery, which takes fast charging to new extremes.

​Despite the ever-increasing battery life of our mobile phones, many of us carry around a portable power bank just in case. In a similar vein, VW is developing a mobile quick charge station for electric vehicles, which can juice up as many as 15 EVs before its cells need charging.​

​Car makers in Europe have been working together for a while now to develop and roll out a network of fast chargers for electric vehicles. Now Porsche has announced that one of its research cars has received a 400+ kilowatt charge from a prototype charging station in Germany.​

​Chargers for electric vehicles could be getting much smaller and more energy-efficient, if technology developed by scientists at North Carolina State University reaches consumers. The system may also allow for considerably quicker charging times.

Momentum Dynamics has announced the first 200 kilowatt wireless charger in North America, which sees a BYD electric bus in Wenatchee, Washington, receive a cable-free top-up during routine transfer stops.​​

The Swedish Transport Administration has just opened a 2-km (1.2-mi) stretch of electrified road that works like slot cars. The project, dubbed eRoadArlanda, involves embedding electric rails into the road surface to power electric vehicles through a contact arm hanging down from under the car.

KYMCO launched the Ionex at the Tokyo Motorcycle Show as the spearhead of a new battery-charging strategy. The Taiwanese manufacturer proposes a power outlet network that combines typical charging stations with battery-swapping vending machines, all the while remaining open to other manufacturers.