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Volkswagen plans to reveal a Touareg-size, three-row, seven-seat electric SUV concept at the Shanghai auto show in April of next year, Autocar reports, previewing a production version expected to join the range in 2021. Planned to be based on the larger version of the automaker’s electric MEB platform, the model is being developed under the working name ID Lounge alongside two other SUVs expected to become a part of the ID range by 2022. They were previewed earlier in concept form by the ID Crozz concept.

Expected to be one of the top offerings in the ID range, in addition to the reborn (electric) Microbus, the ID Lounge concept is expected to be powered by two electric motors, one at each axle, and to offer a 111-kWh lithium-ion battery, which should give it a range of 372 miles on a full charge.

The smallest ID Crozz model in the range is expected to be more or less a Tiguan analog, Autocar notes, while the middle model due on sale in 2022 should feature a coupe-like profile. The biggest electric SUV in Volkswagen’s ID range, meanwhile, will be a production version of the ID Lounge.

All three are expected to be spaced far enough when it comes to size to appeal to EV shoppers with different needs and will also be differentiated from the more luxury-oriented Audi e-tron SUV that will occupy its own niche in the greater Volkswagen AG world of electric vehicles. It’s a world rounded out by Porsche models at the top of the price spectrum.

It remains to be seen whether this planned electric model will be closer in spirit to the new Atlas, offering a spacious interior and some moderate off-road skills, or whether it will be closer to the off-road-focused Touareg. Market considerations are likely to dictate the Atlas design and packaging direction, as the production version of the ID Lounge will compete with other luxury electric SUVs of its size by the time it debuts.

A new Porsche electric car prototype has achieved a new record charge rate of 400 kW at a new upgraded ‘ultra-high-power’ station as part of the “FastCharge” consortium.

We reported on the project last year when BMW announced that it is leading the ‘FastCharge’ consortium in partnership with other companies, like Porsche, Allego, Siemens and others.

The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure supports the project with a € 7.8 million grant, which is interestingly supervised by the National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Organization (NOW).

At the time, they said that the bulk of their research will focus on improving charging rates using the existing Combined Charging System (CCS), but at a voltage of 900 volts and an amplitude of 500 amperes for a charge rate of 450 kW.

Porsche is already pioneering a 350 kW charge rate that will be first available in the Taycan next year, but they announced today that they achieved a 400 kW charge on a test vehicle at the FastCharge’s test charging station with an output of up to 450 kW yesterday in Jettingen-Scheppach, located near the A8 motorway between Ulm and Augsburg.

BMW also brought an i3 to the charging station, but it wasn’t able to take that charge rate. They used it to demonstrate how the station can switch to 400v charging.

The BMW i3 test vehicle, which was apparently equipped with a 57 kWh battery pack, achieved a 10-80 % SOC in only 15 minutes.

Porsche wrote about the test FastCharge charging station in a new press release:

“The charging station prototypes presented use the charging plug from the tried-and-tested Combined Charging System (CCS) in the Type 2 variant that is standard for Europe. This charging standard has already proven itself in a wide range of electrified vehicles and is used in many parts of the world. The two Jettinger charging stations are currently available for use with all CCS-enabled vehicles, free of charge. Depending on the model of vehicle, the new ultra-fast charging station can be used for vehicles with 400-volt and those with 800-volt battery systems. In each case the charging capacity provided automatically adjusts to the vehicle’s maximum permitted charging capacity”

They didn’t reveal much about the “Porsche research vehicle” that they used to achieve the 400 kW charge rate, but they confirmed that it was equipped with a 90 kWh battery pack and it was able to add about 100 km of range in just 3 minutes.

The company wrote that “an innovative cooling system makes this possible, by ensuring even, gentle temperature control in the battery cells.”

A natural gas power plant that floats on water will be built in the Dominican Republic and equipped with a battery energy storage system supplied by Fluence.

Transcontinental Capital Corporation, an independent power producer (IPP) headquartered in Bermuda and a subsidiary of multinational conglomerate Seaboard, has ordered a barge-mounted power plant from German engineering firm Siemens and Singapore’s ST Engineering.

The floating solution has been selected as a consequence of available land being in short supply, while Siemens said that the project will come in at a lower cost than comparable facilities built on dry land, with the floating platform concept, Seafloat, having been proven in a demonstration and modelling project in a shipyard already according to the company.

Transcontinental already operates diesel-power stations on barges, but the newest, Estrella del Mar III, will run off a combined cycle natural gas power plant with 145MW capacity. Siemens will provide the machinery, while ST Engineering will perform EPC duties, integrate balance of plant equipment and execute the installation.

Within the gas plant, Siemens will integrate SIESTART, the company’s hybrid solutions suite that combines fossil fuel generators with battery energy storage systems (BESS). Technology provider Fluence, which is in fact a joint venture (JV) company created by Siemens with AES Corporation’s energy storage division, will deliver the battery system portion of the project.

Along with two Siemens gas turbines and one steam turbine, a 5MW / 10MWh battery system will be in operation, enabling it to perform frequency regulation applications and to operate the hybrid power plant system “at full capacity with highest fuel efficiency”, Siemens said.

“We’ve already seen both the flexibility and the resilience energy storage provided to the D.R. and its grid during last year’s hurricanes, when AES Dominicana’s storage assets helped prevent widespread outages,” Fluence’s managing director for Latin America, Ismario Gonzalez said.

“The SeaFloat installation adds a fresh innovation – the ability to site a hybrid thermal-storage project where land is scarce, and do so for less cost.”

The project, off the coast of the Dominican capital city of Santa Domingo, is expected to be completed and begin operation in spring 2021. Siemens said that the project and others like it could deliver a diverse range of applications. It could be used as a base load energy generator, provide backup power for disasters and emergencies, could power desalination plants to provide clean water.

The floating platform solution is mobile and designed to be as small as possible, can be built and assembled in shipyards and using equipment and processes that Siemens said have been standardised to reduce lead times for construction. Fluence’s Ismario Gonzalez also added that the batteries could enable both future applications and opportunities in the Dominican Republic.

“[Customer] Seaboard is also taking a long-range view on the project, procuring a two-hour duration energy storage system, which will not only provide frequency regulation services in the short term, but also open the door to delivering additional services as the regulatory environment changes.”

Meanwhile, within renewable energy, floating solar arrays have become something of a hot trend, with one of our publications, the quarterly journal PV Tech Power, making it the focus of its cover story in Vol.14 a few issues back. The hybridisation of fossil fuel plants with battery energy storage has also been reported by Energy-Storage.news and is being attempted in various configurations and to serve applications including increasing the efficiency of existing or new gas power plants

Managing climate change in part involves rapidly scaling-up wind and solar energy.

But as independent videographer Peter Sinclair’s “This is Not Cool” video explains, significant obstacles remain in executing that strategy. One of the biggest challenges?

“The wind doesn’t always blow, and the Sun doesn’t always shine,” says Mark Jacobson of Stanford University. That’s why renewables like wind and solar are referred to as intermittent sources of energy.

Reliable methods of storing energy could help solve the intermittency problem, enabling wind and solar energy to be deployed at larger scales in coming decades.

The video explains virtues of pumped storage. It works by pumping water from a lower to a higher place on windy or sunny days, then letting it fall and drive turbines when demand for energy increases.

“It scales very well, it allows long-term storage, it’s the lowest-cost solution that is currently on the market,” says James Klausner of Michigan State University. While places for pumped storage facilities are limited by terrain factors, the National Energy Renewable Laboratory’s Paul Denholm says there remain opportunities to expand existing pump storage facilities, repower them with new technologies, or potentially develop some new plants.

Batteries – such as those in a new Tesla lithium ion installation in South Australia – represent a “cutting edge,” and the video reports that this technology now is outcompeting traditional power plants.

Another emerging solution, as more and more electric vehicles hit the road, involves storing energy in vehicles’ parked EV batteries, says Dave Tuttle of the University of Texas. The stored energy then could be fed back to the grid in times of shortage or emergency.

Anna Stefanopoulou of the University of Michigan says that in addition to electric vehicle batteries, buildings are sources of thermal energy, and they can be enlisted to feed energy back into the grid when needed. “This is like distributed controllable loads rather than distributed energy sources,” she says.

Denholm says that engineers not long ago generally assumed there is a “wall” limiting how much energy renewables may be able to provide. With countries like Germany and states like Iowa deriving nearly 40 percent of electricity from renewables, those notions appear to be changing.

“Nobody really talks about a hard number anymore,” Denholm says. The current “mental model” anticipates getting 60 or 70 to 90 percent of energy needs from renewables he says. It may be only at that point that “challenges that we really don’t understand start to kick in.”

Monaco’s Venturi Automobiles has made a name for itself blazing electric-vehicle trails over hot salt, hot race track and hot sand, but it’s about to crank down the temperature. The company has revealed its finalized Antarctica polar exploration vehicle and is preparing to bring it down to the world’s loneliest continent. Designed to offer zero-emissions driving in delicate study areas, this orange beast crunches over ice and snow on battery-powered treads.

Venturi revealed the finalized version of the Antarctica at the Prince’s Palace in late November, and after a March 2019 test run in Canada, it will send the specialized vehicle to its namesake to support the work of scientists. Venturi says it’s capable of withstanding temperatures down to -50° C (-58° F).

The Antarctica project was initiated by Prince Albert II of Monaco through his foundation after a 2009 trip to the continent. It represents another in Venturi’s series of global challenges putting electric vehicles to the test in extreme environments.

Along with Venturi’s well-publicized electric land speed records, previous challenges have seen a fully electrified Citroën Berlingo make a 3,725-mile (6,000-km), six-country unassisted voyage across a sparsely gridded section of Southern Africa and that same van go for an all-out distance run, connecting Shanghai and Paris with a massive 9,250-mile (14,900-km) journey.

A converted Berlingo served well in the past, but the Antarctica mission has required some ground-up thinking, resulting in something unlike any other vehicle out there. The last time we looked in on the project in 2015, Venturi was testing out a rather rough open-top prototype in the Southern Alps. Since that time, it has developed a more advanced, finished version, bringing the latest battery technology over from its racing program to improve efficiency.

The 4,400-lb (2,000-kg) Antarctica’s wheel-mounted caterpillar tracks are powered by a dual 80-hp motor system. The vessel can carry three people, along with luggage and equipment. It offers up to 28 miles (45 km) of range and can travel at speeds up to around 12.5 mph (20 km/h).

Those performance specs won’t exactly send Antarctic crews zipping across the continent, but the extreme-weather machine will prove faster than the ski or foot travel scientists traditionally rely upon when accessing sensitive study areas that can’t be exposed to pollution from combustion engines.

“Until now, researchers had to get around on foot in some areas, in order to avoid polluting them,” explains Gildo Pastor, president of Venturi. “Now, with the Venturi Antarctica, they will have access to an efficient, very maneuverable vehicle with excellent traction. Scientists will be able to carry out their research under optimum conditions, without polluting these sites where analysis requires molecular precision.”

Before sending its electric contraption to Antarctica, the Venturi team will test it under real-world conditions in Canada. Billed “Back to Telegraph Creek,” the test mission will pay tribute to the 1934 Croisière Blanche, one of four Citroën rallies held during the early twentieth century.

Prince Albert, Venturi North America president Xavier Chevrin and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield will pilot the Antarctica over 26 miles (42 km) of rugged terrain in northwestern British Columbia. Venturi explains that the route between Dease Lake and Telegraph Creek was the final leg of the 1934 rally, never completed due to the harshness of the landscape and weather.

While the Antarctica was designed primarily as a zero-emissions support vehicle for polar scientists, Venturi may build additional variants in the future. “Venturi Automobiles is not ruling out the possibility of creating new versions of its vehicles for entirely novel uses,” the company teases.

The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) recently released a report on EV sales around the world. It’s a fascinating document with some intriguing insights. Were you aware that over one million electric passenger vehicles were sold around the world in 2017, that China led the way with over 579,000, and that most sales of such vehicles to date have taken place in China, Europe, Japan, and the United States?

Some of the cities with the highest passenger EV sales were Beijing, Shanghai, London, Paris, Tokyo and Kyoto, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Chongqing, and Shenzhen.
 The top 25 cities each had 20,000 EV sales or more in 2017.

Of these cities, the world leader was Shanghai with 162,000 electric vehicle sales since 2011. Beijing had 147,000 and Los Angeles 143,000, so Shanghai was far ahead of both. For 2017, Shanghai had nearly 66,000 passenger EV sales.

Over 1.3 million electric vehicle sales have taken place in the top 25 cities for EVs, which have also been called the electric vehicle “capitals” by the ICCT.

Forty percent of the world’s public charging capacity is located in these cities, according to the document. Beijing and Shanghai have the largest number of public EV chargers, with 39,000 and 35,000 respectively. It has been estimated that Beijing could have 435,000 by 2020 and Shanghai’s total could reach 210,000 by the same year.

American cities lag far behind. According to ChargeHub, Los Angeles has 1,200 to 1,300 and San Francisco has 790.

China also excels in electric bus use, with about 385,000 of them, or over 99% of the global inventory according to the report. The city of Shenzhen has 16,000 electric buses, which is its whole fleet.

Amsterdam has 100 articulated electric buses and wants to transition the entire fleet to 100% electricity. Shenzhen has 13,000 battery electric taxis and wants to replace the existing 7,500 gas taxis with electric ones by the end of 2018.

The ICCT document contains 15 pages of information, so there is much more than what is mentioned here, but these insights were some that jumped out immediately.