Friday, 7 August 2026

Tesla has begun installing Superchargers at 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan, starting with an outlet in Kawasaki City, according to electrive. The site carries four stalls with a peak output of 250 kW each.

That opening was Tesla's 150th Supercharger location in Japan, electrive reported. Two further sites have since come online, taking the national count to 152 locations.

Tesla intends to widen the convenience-store tie-up to roughly ten 7-Eleven outlets in Japan by the end of March 2027, per electrive.

The retail pairing puts fast charging alongside a store format used for short stops. At 250 kW per stall, a four-stall site of the type electrive described can serve several drivers at once rather than concentrating throughput in a single connector.

Strabag ran eleven battery-powered construction machines through the overhaul of a soil processing plant at Oberhausen, cutting site energy costs by around 90 per cent against conventional operation, electrive reported.

A mobile battery unit rated at 153 kWh fed the machines on site, buffering the charging draw and trimming peak loads, according to electrive.

The plant crushes rubble from building demolitions into road-construction material. The upgrade lifts what it can take in a year from 120,000 tonnes to 350,000 tonnes, electrive reported.

The fleet was not all-electric. Strabag paired the battery machines with equipment burning HVO100, a hybrid setup the contractor settled on for Oberhausen.

Robert Kucza, Sustainability Expert at Strabag's North Rhine-Westphalia division, framed the job as proof that electric mobility already works in the construction industry, saying site experience beats "any theory," in remarks carried by electrive.

The 153 kWh unit was installed to hold the supply steady for the machines and shave the load spikes they create.

A new electric car must cover 4,400 miles a year to repay the carbon debt of its manufacture, and an electric truck 6,700 miles, according to research reported by Grist. Both thresholds sit under the 12,500 miles the average driver logs annually.

The study's author, Elliot Campbell, is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Grist reported. The break-even figures mean that for most drivers, scrapping a functioning gasoline car for an EV cuts emissions rather than adding to them.

How much it cuts depends on what fuels the local grid. In upstate New York, which generates a lot of hydroelectric power, Grist reported that driving an EV is equivalent to a gasoline car achieving 219 mpg. In the Rockies, where coal and natural gas dominate generation, an EV still outperforms any gasoline vehicle rated below 68 mpg.

Campbell and his co-author identified two exceptions. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which carry larger batteries and run farther on electric power before the internal combustion engine takes over, are one. The other is low-mileage use, such as a second car that sits unused much of the time.

Grist framed the policy precedent through the 2009 federal Car Allowance Rebate System, known as cash for clunkers, which paid $3,500 to $4,500 to drivers trading up to more efficient vehicles. That program exhausted its $3 billion budget in only a month.

New Zealand's electric vehicle sales collapsed after the country's new conservative government reversed the tax incentives for EVs and introduced a road user charge, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica describes the two policy moves as the direct cause of the drop, pairing the withdrawal of what it calls generous tax incentives with the new charge levied on road use.

The reversal cut short a trajectory that had drawn international comparisons. New Zealand was once touted as a possible "Norway of the Pacific" for its electric vehicle transition, CleanTechnica reported, before a change of government stopped that transition in its tracks.

Electric car sales rose 4% in the second quarter of 2026 while the wider car market shrank, according to the IEA's latest update on the electric car market, reported by Climate Home News.

Total car sales fell 5% globally in the first half of 2026, Climate Home News reported. That divergence lifted the electric share of the market even as absolute volumes across the industry declined.

The IEA expects the pace to pick up. Its forecast puts electric car sales 10% higher across 2026 than in 2025, according to Climate Home News.

On share, the IEA forecasts electric cars at 29% of total car sales over the full year, up from 24% in the first half. Reaching the full-year figure requires a stronger second half than the first.

The headline growth masks a sharp regional split. Electric car sales fell 16% in China, the world's biggest electric car-buying country, in the second quarter, according to Climate Home News. Global growth of 4% therefore came despite a contraction in the largest single market.

Infrastructure investor Meridiam has led a EUR 23 million investment in Chargepoly, according to electrive.

The money was routed through the Meridiam Green Impact Growth Fund, with existing shareholder Fideve Groupe participating in the round, electrive reported.

Chargepoly will use the proceeds to expand internationally and to roll out depot charging systems for electric truck and bus fleets, according to electrive.

The company says its installations support the electrification of more than one million kilometres of freight transport each month.

Kia's PV5 took 37% of the small C-segment electric van market in Europe and ranked as the best-seller in 12 countries, according to Electrek.

The van led its segment in the UK with 3,361 units and in Germany with 2,206 units, Electrek reported.

Its share climbs well past a third in northern Europe. Through the first half of 2026, the PV5 accounted for more than 50% of electric C-segment van sales in five countries: 63% in Denmark, 62% in Ireland, 59% in Sweden, 58% in Finland and 54% in the UK, per Electrek.

July was the first month in which Kia sold more than 1,000 electric vans in the UK, a total that included 784 PV5 Cargo units and 235 PV5 Passenger units, according to the same report.

"The customer response to the introduction of the PV5 in Europe has been overwhelming," said Sjoerd Knipping, Chief Operating Officer of Kia Europe.

On range, the PV5 Cargo Long Range set a Guinness World Record in October after covering 693.38 km on a single charge, Electrek reported.

Kia plans to sell 232,000 purpose-built vehicles by the end of the decade.

Ford rolled out a first look at a forthcoming lower-cost all-electric pickup truck on Thursday, according to Canary Media.

The reveal follows a weak commercial run for the automaker's earlier entry in the segment. Canary Media reported that Ford's first all-electric pickup truck did not sell strongly.

Canary Media framed the question around whether the cheaper model can find the buyers the first truck missed.