Electric vehicles (EVs)

In June 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted: “Trump doesn’t get the basics. He thinks his tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.” Fast-forward five years to May 2024, and President Biden has announced a hike in tariffs on a variety of Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff that would significantly increase the price of Chinese-made electric vehicles. For a nation committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, efforts by the U.S. to block low-cost EVs might seem counterproductive. At a price of around US$12,000, Chinese automaker BYD’s Seagull electric car could quickly expand EV sales if it landed at that price in the U.S., where the cheapest new electric cars cost nearly three times more. As an expert in global supply chains, however, I believe the Biden tariffs can succeed in giving the U.S. EV industry room to grow. Without the tariffs, U.S. auto sa...

The future of automobiles is electric, but many people worry about the safety of today’s electric vehicles. Public opinion about EV crash safety often hinges on a few high-profile fire incidents. Those safety concerns are arguably misplaced, and the actual safety of EVs is more nuanced. I’ve researched vehicle safety for more than two decades, focusing on the biomechanics of impact injuries in motor vehicle crashes. Here’s my take on how well the current crop of EVs protects people: The burning question EVs and internal combustion vehicles undergo the same crash-testing procedures to evaluate their crashworthiness and occupant protection. These tests are conducted by the National Highway Safety Administration’s New Car Assessment Program and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. These analyses use crash test dummies representing midsize male and small female occupants to evaluate the risk of injuries. The tests can evaluate fire hazard either ca...

Panasonic’s new US$4 billion battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, is designed to be a model of sustainability – it’s an all-electric factory with no need for a smokestack. When finished, it will cover the size of 48 football fields, employ 4,000 people and produce enough advanced batteries to supply half a million electric cars per year. But there’s a catch, and it’s a big one. While the factory will run on wind and solar power much of the time, renewables supplied only 34% of the local utility Evergy’s electricity in 2023. In much of the U.S., fossil fuels still play a key role in meeting power demand. In fact, Evergy has asked permission to extend the life of an old coal-fired power plant to meet growing demand, including from the battery factory. With my students at Wellesley College, I’ve been tracking the boom in investments in clean energy manufacturing and how those projects – including battery, solar panel and wind turbine...

Rechargeable batteries are great for storing energy and powering electronics from smartphones to electric vehicles. In cold environments, however, they can be more difficult to charge and may even catch on fire. I’m a mechanical engineering professor who’s been interested in batteries since college. I now lead a battery research group at Drexel University. In just this past decade, I have watched the price of lithium-ion batteries drop as the production market has grown much larger. Future projections predict the market could reach thousands of GWh per year by 2030, a significant increase. But, lithium-ion batteries aren’t perfect – this rise comes with risks, such as their tendency to slow down during cold weather and even catch on fire. Behind the Li-ion battery The electrochemical energy storage within batteries works by storing electricity in the form of ions. Ions are atoms that have a nonzero charge because they have either too many or not eno...

After nearly two decades of stagnation, U.S. electricity demand is surging, driven by growing numbers of electric cars, data centers and air conditioners in a warming climate. But traditional power plants that generate electricity from coal, natural gas or nuclear energy are retiring faster than new ones are being built in this country. Most new supply is coming from wind and solar farms, whose output varies with the weather. That’s left power companies seeking new ways to balance supply and demand. One option they’re turning to is virtual power plants. These aren’t massive facilities generating electricity at a single site. Rather, they are aggregations of electricity producers, consumers and storers – collectively known as distributed energy resources – that grid managers can call on as needed. Some of these sources, such as batteries, may deliver stored electric power. Others may be big electricity consumers, such as factories, whose owners ha...