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Model S Achieves Euro NCAP 5-Star Safety Rating

November 5, 2014 in Electric Vehicles, Model S, Tesla

Image courtesy of Tesla Model S Achieves Euro NCAP 5-Star Safety Rating

Image courtesy of Tesla
Model S Achieves Euro NCAP 5-Star Safety Rating

By The Tesla Motors Team

We’re pleased to announce that the Tesla Model S has received a maximum-possible 5-star safety rating from the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP).

Model S is one of just a few cars to have ever achieved a 5-star safety rating from both Euro NCAP and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Additionally, Model S is the only car this year to have achieved both a 5-star Euro NCAP rating and 5 stars in every NHTSA subcategory, including frontal impact, side impact, and rollover. Only two other cars have earned the same recognition since 2011 (when NHTSA introduced its latest rating scheme).

The reason so few models achieve 5-star ratings in both Europe and the U.S. is that each program places emphasis on different safety aspects in the assessment process. NHTSA emphasizes structural and restraint safety, with a deep focus on how well the vehicle can withstand and absorb the energy of an impact while protecting its occupants. It is also primarily concerned with adult occupants. On the other hand, Euro NCAP assesses a wider range of scenarios, including tests for child and pedestrian safety. Unlike for NHTSA, active safety is also an important part of Euro NCAP’s 5-star requirement. Every year, the European organization raises the standard for a 5-star rating to account for technological advances in the industry.

The dual 5-star ratings for Model S validate our holistic approach to safety. We have been engineering passive and active safety systems in parallel, so the car is structurally sound and is also designed to intelligently anticipate and react to potentially dangerous situations.

Structurally, Model S has advantages not seen in conventional cars. It has a low center of gravity because its battery pack, the largest mass in the car, is positioned underneath the passenger compartment, making rollover extremely unlikely. It also has a large front crumple zone because of the lack of an engine, meaning it can absorb more energy from a frontal impact, the most common type of crash resulting in fatalities. Its body is reinforced with aluminum extrusions at strategic locations around the car, and the roof can withstand at least 4 g’s. It was for these reasons that Model S achieved 5 stars in every subcategory when tested by NHTSA in 2013.

This quarter, we started implementing the Model S active safety system in conjunction with the introduction of new Autopilot hardware, consisting of 12 ultrasonic sensors that sense up to 16 feet around the car, a forward-looking camera, a forward radar, and a digitally controlled, high-precision electric brake boost. We specifically selected this hardware to accommodate the progressive introduction of new safety features via software updates over the course of the next several months.

While the features already pushed to the Model S fleet – Lane Departure Warning and Speed Limit Warning – have proven sufficient to merit a 5-star NCAP rating, we will go much further with active safety systems. Features coming soon include Forward and Side Collision Warning and Avoidance, Blind Spot Warning, and Automatic Emergency Braking.

Safety has always been Tesla’s top priority, and we remain committed to continuously improving Model S to ensure that adults, children, and pedestrians alike receive the best possible protection from the car and its technology. In the meantime, Model S owners can be secure in the knowledge that this recognition from Euro NCAP reaffirms their car’s outstanding safety qualities.

This article is an EV News Report repost, credit: Tesla Motors.

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California ISO, PacifiCorp launch first western energy market

November 4, 2014 in Environment, EV News, Solar, Wind

Image courtesy of CalISO California ISO, PacifiCorp launch first western energy market

Image courtesy of CalISO
California ISO, PacifiCorp launch first western energy market

The six-state wholesale electricity market will generate millions in cost savings for consumers

FOLSOM, Calif. – The California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO) and Portland- based PacifiCorp announced today that the Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) went live on November 1. The real-time market is the first of its kind in the West.

“Consumers across the West win one today as the Energy Imbalance Market is live, performing well and working to reduce costs to consumers,” said Steve Berberich, ISO President and CEO. “When combined with EIM’s inherent ability to enhance reliability by improving responsiveness and visibility, the western grid will drive the use of clean resources, such as solar and wind, to power our modern, high-tech society well into the future.”

“Better coordination in the way we manage energy in the West is crucial to reduce costs for customers and more effectively integrate renewable energy sources,” said Pat Reiten, President and CEO of Pacific Power, a unit of PacifiCorp. “We’re confident the EIM will grow and the benefits of coordination will increase further.”

The real-time market that covers six western states – California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming – culminates work that began in fall 2012 when the Western Interstate Energy Board’s PUC-EIM Group (composed of utility commissioners from 12 states) asked interested western entities to provide a proposal for a real-time imbalance market. In February 2013, the ISO and PacifiCorp announced plans to jointly develop an EIM using the ISO’s proven state-of-the-art technology and market platform. After running EIM for a month under non-binding conditions, the market became financially binding on November 1.

“Over the past 22 months, technology and market experts from PacifiCorp and ISO spent thousands of hours bringing EIM online,” said Petar Ristanovic, ISO Vice President, Technology. “The innovation and ability to merge highly sophisticated systems is an amazing feat. I am very proud of what we have jointly accomplished in launching the EIM.”

The ISO and PacifiCorp would also like to acknowledge the extensive collaboration with Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which is the transmission provider for PacifiCorp’s rights across the BPA system, in support of EIM’s launch while ensuring efficient and reliable delivery of power.

Although the overall EIM launch was successful, there were some challenges leading to price volatility, primarily in the first 11 hours. The volatility in prices was seen mostly in the PacifiCorp service territory and due to a number of data and software factors during the initial transition from systems in the parallel environment to actual production mode. The ISO has initiated price corrections for the first 11 full hours after launch and is assessing other price results, as part of its normal process.

“The overall launch was successful when considering the magnitude of creating a new real-time energy market over six states,” said Mark Rothleder, ISO’s Vice President of Market Quality & Renewable Integration. “Also, this time of year presents challenges on its own, with lower load levels and reduced resource availability. Given we are in the first days of operations and the underlying system conditions, we are more than satisfied with the initial results and will continue to refine our processes to more easily add future market participants.”

A major benefit EIM brings to the West is cost savings. An Energy+Environmental Economics (E3) study released in March 2013, PacifiCorp-CAISO Energy Imbalance Market Benefits, identified savings to consumers of EIM market participants of $21 million to $129 million per year with minimal annual costs to participants. And as the market is using the ISO’s sophisticated system to automatically balance demand in the West every five minutes with the lowest cost energy available, savings are expected to increase as other energy entities in the West join. Other benefits include reducing the amount of costly energy reserves utilities have to carry because they can draw upon resources from across the West to fill their demand needs that are not available without the EIM.

EIM also greatly improves the efficiency of dispatching resources by employing systems that analyze the needs of the grid every five minutes then automatically finds the lowest cost generation to meet demand. Without an EIM, utilities have to meet demand with resources in their own service areas which often means using higher priced generation or even more expensive energy reserves.

Renewable integration is another significant benefit of EIM. Wind and solar power generated in one state can now be scheduled to meet consumer demand in another. Regional coordination can unlock more efficiency in dispatching renewable resources, can help reduce potential overgeneration of mid-day solar production, and assist states in meeting their renewable energy goals.

The EIM also translates into less risk for participants and their consumers. Rather than building an EIM from scratch that could cost tens of millions of dollars, utilities and their service area resources can tap into the ISO’s advanced platform for only a modest per use fee.

In less than a year, the next EIM participant is expected to enter the market. Las Vegas-based NV Energy, which is the major energy supplier in Nevada, recently received the greenlight from the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada to participate in the EIM starting in October 2015.

The ISO and PacifiCorp will be monitoring the effectiveness of the EIM and reporting its benefits through a quarterly report beginning early next year.

This article (11-3-14) is an EV News Report repost, credit: CalISO.

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Sustainability: In Norway the present is already electric

November 4, 2014 in Electric Vehicles, EV News, Politics

The US Minister of Energy Ernest Moniz and the Norwegian Minister Petroleum and Energy Tord Lien are interviewed by NRKs Gro Holm  Photo credit: Ole Berthelsen / MPE (7-11-13) Sustainability: In Norway the present is already electric

The US Minister of Energy Ernest Moniz and the Norwegian Minister Petroleum and Energy Tord Lien are interviewed by NRKs Gro Holm
Photo credit: Ole Berthelsen / MPE (7-11-13)
Sustainability: In Norway the present is already electric

By Formula E, Sustainability

Though the demand for electric cars keeps growing, electric vehicles remain a niche market in pretty much every industrialised nation in the world.

Except in Norway, where plug-in cars now account for more than 15% of the new car marketplace and owning an electric vehicle is as normal as heading out for a summer hike or winter cross-country ski.

The take-off occurred thanks to the Norwegian Government through incentives designed to encourage electric car adoption, utilising the nation’s 98% domestically-generated renewable energy. The nation’s original goal to achieve at least 50,000 electric cars on the road by 2017 should be reachable in 2015!

With its electric vehicle target on track to being met two years early, Norway is now trying to decide if it should end all of its electric car incentives or moderate them, but whatever the outcome, its experiment cannot be called anything but a resounding success.

There’s only one question left: how long before electric cars become mainstream in other parts of the world?

This article is an EV News Report repost, credit: Formula E.

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The 2014 Auckland Electric Vehicle Expo

November 4, 2014 in Electric Vehicles, EV Campaigns, EV enthusiast, EV News

The 2014 Auckland Electric Vehicle Expo Image courtesy of CIA

The 2014 Auckland Electric Vehicle Expo
Image courtesy of CIA

EV Builders Presents… In collaboration with APEV (Association for the Promotion of Electric Vehicles) and MOTAT

The 2014 Auckland Electric Vehicle Expo

Saturday 8th November 2014
MOTAT, 805 Great North Road, Western Springs, Auckland
…An exhibition and forum for all things relating to electric vehicles…

This Expo was first launched three years ago with the birth of the self-funded “EV Builders” documentary series; following the conversion of the 1990 Toyota Sera into an electrically powered vehicle by a couple of self-proclaimed “average blokes”.

Following on from the success of the last three Expos, and with the conversion of the Toyota Sera now complete; we bring you the 2014 Auckland Electric Vehicle Expo, in collaboration with APEV (Association for the Promotion of Electric Vehicles – www.apev.org.nz). This year the event will be appropriately hosted at MOTAT, the heart of historical Auckland transport and technology achievements.

This year the Expo will have even more EVs on display, including the famous 100% electric Tesla Roadster and the new Mitsubishi Outlander Plug In Hybrid, the first hybrid SUV. The day’s programme will be packed with displays and give you plenty of opportunities to talk with EV drivers and builders.

The aim of both the documentary project and this years’ Expo is to explore and investigate the work of local individuals and organisations that have been working in this field, see what progress has been made, and create a support network with experienced and knowledgeable mentors.

The Auckland Electric Vehicle Expo aims to build awareness of the ‘EV’ industry within New Zealand, in order to enable us as a country to live up to our ‘clean, green image’. It also provides a fantastic opportunity to meet those involved in the ‘EV’ industry and get your questions answered, as well as keep up with the progression made in the industry to date.

Want to see what it’s all about first? Watch the documentary series here – http://vimeo.com/channels/evbuilders

Tickets: Door Sales Only
Adults $16, Children (5 – 16 yrs) & Students (with ID) $8, Family Pass $40, Children under 5 & SuperGold Card Holders FREE!

Find more information online at www.evbuilders.com

This article is an EV News Report repost, credit: Association for the Promotion of Electric Vehicles.

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ZAP and Jonway Auto Exhibits EV Product Line at China International Industry Fair This Week

November 4, 2014 in China, Electric Vehicles, EV News

ZAP and Jonway Auto Exhibits EV Product Line at China International Industry Fair This Week  Photo courtesy of ZAP

ZAP and Jonway Auto Exhibits EV Product Line at China International Industry Fair This Week
Photo courtesy of ZAP

SANTA ROSA, Calif. – ZAP (ZAAP), an Electric Vehicle (EV) automotive company incorporated in California Bay Area, and Jonway Auto exhibits its EV product line at the China International Industry Fair November 4th to November 8th this week in Shanghai at the Shanghai New International Expo Center.

Its exhibition is in the N4 Pavilion (the EV Exhibition Hall) where the major EV auto manufacturers exhibited their EV products. ZAP and Jonway Auto’s EV SUV, EV Minivan and EV URBEE are being exhibited next to Tesla’s EV, together with EVs from Shanghai Auto (SAIC), Chery, Daimler Denza (BYD), and DONGFENG. ZAP and Jonway Auto’s EV SUV remains the first and ONLY EV SUV type approved for China and the only EV SUV shown at the exhibition.  Jonway Auto’s EV minivan is uniquely positioned to address the EV fleet market, targeting city delivery vans for transportation.

About ZAP and Jonway Auto

ZAP and Jonway Auto designs and manufactures quality, affordable new energy and electric vehicles (EVs). Jonway Automobile has ISO 9000 manufacturing facilities, certified for EV manufacturing, and engineering, sales and customer services facilities in China. Jonway has production capacity of up to 50,000 vehicles per year, over 1 million square feet of factory space, and over 65 acres of land and established sales distribution network in China. ZAP, an early pioneer of EVs, brings to both companies a broad range of EV product technologies. ZAP is headquartered in Santa Rosa, California and Jonway Auto is located in Zhejiang Province of the People’s Republic of China. Additional information about ZAP Jonway is available at http://www.zapworld.com.

This article is an EV News Report repost, credit: ZAP.