Wednesday, 19 August 2026

The City of Nuremberg is tearing down a former nursery building using only electric construction machines and electric trucks, according to electrive.

The requirement came before the contract. Nuremberg wrote emissions-free operation into the tender for the job, electrive reported.

The demolition contract went to Metzner Recycling, with support from Robert Aebi Nurnberg, electrive reported. The firm is working with a Volvo EC230 Electric crawler excavator, an ECR18 Electric compact excavator and an L20 Electric wheeled loader, and a Volvo FM Electric roll-off skip lorry is also available for haulage.

No dedicated charging equipment was set up on site. Machines and trucks draw from the site's regular construction electricity supply, according to electrive.

The project is not the first of its kind in the area. It follows a fully electric building demolition completed in 2025 at the Siemens Technology Campus in Erlangen, electrive reported.

GM will fit native NACS charging ports on its electric models for the 2027 model year, according to electrive.

Until now, only one GM vehicle has carried the connector directly. The Cadillac Optiq is the sole GM model with a directly integrated NACS charging port, electrive reported.

Other GM electric vehicles have reached Tesla's fast-charging hardware through an accessory instead. Since September 2024, GM customers have been able to use Tesla's Supercharger network with an adapter, according to electrive.

The switch covers the returning Chevy Bolt, which electrive said is set to arrive later this year as a 2027 model.

BYD has confirmed a pure electric range of 1,003 km (623 miles) on the CLTC cycle for its new Denza N8, Electrek reported. The vehicle uses a battery pack rated at 130.15 kWh.

China's industry ministry, MIIT, cleared the model for sale in its most recent new energy vehicle approval batch last week, according to Electrek.

The Denza N8 carries BYD's Flash Charging system, which the carmaker says moves the pack from 10% to 70% in five minutes. BYD itself calls the range figure "world-leading".

Three motors drive the vehicle, with combined output of 890 kW (1,193 hp).

The range figure rests on the CLTC test cycle rather than an independent measurement, and both it and the five-minute charging window come from BYD.

Amtrak will begin deploying 83 new Airo trainsets this fall, with the first eight assigned to the Pacific Northwest's Cascades route, according to Grist.

The fleet carries an USD 8 billion price tag, and Grist reported the investment is expected to cut trip times on multiple routes. The trainsets can reach speeds of up to 125 mph.

Capacity rises on the Cascades service. Each Airo set there will seat 317 passengers, significantly more than the rolling stock currently in service on the route, per Grist.

Siemens builds the trains domestically, according to Grist. They combine electric and diesel propulsion, which lets a single set run across both conventional and electrified track without a locomotive swap.

On emissions, Grist reported the Airo locomotives meet the Environmental Protection Agency's Tier 4 standards, cutting particulate matter and nitrogen oxide output significantly.

The Northeast Regional route is next in the sequence. Riders there will board Airo equipment in 2027, according to Grist.

Public money is backing part of the purchase. Grist reported the federal government announced USD 3 billion in funding for Amtrak in August, of which USD 2 billion is earmarked for buying trains.

IONITY has opened its first fast-charging hub in London at Greenwich Shopping Park, according to electrive, the first of several sites the operator plans for the English capital. The site carries 12 charging bays delivering up to 400kW of power, electrive reported.

The operator is marking the launch with a "Free Friday" on 21 August, billed as free charging for 24 hours, per electrive.

IONITY CEO Jeroen van Tilburg framed the site as a shift in where the network builds. "Our expansion goes beyond long-distance travel to enable reliable charging where demand is growing fastest: in urban areas," van Tilburg said.

That urban positioning is tied to commercial demand as much as private drivers. Under a partnership with Uber, IONITY is offering what electrive described as attractive charging rates to ride-hailing drivers. High-utilisation fleet duty cycles favour high-power hubs with multiple bays, since ride-hailing drivers charge mid-shift rather than overnight, and queueing carries a direct earnings cost.

Greenwich Shopping Park places the bays at a retail destination rather than a motorway corridor, the segment where IONITY built its original network. Van Tilburg's comment sets the network's long-distance origins against the new city focus.

Electrive said further London hubs are planned, without naming the sites.

A cabless electric truck measuring 15.6 metres in length is under development at Voltempo, electrive reported. The company calls the vehicle the Smart Trailer, rating it at 42 tonnes permissible gross weight on a five-axle configuration.

Dropping the cab, according to founder Michael Boxwell, should yield roughly 15 per cent more cargo volume than a conventional trailer, alongside five to seven tonnes of extra payload.

Voltempo puts the vehicle's own weight in a band of ten to twelve tonnes. A conventional electric articulated lorry comes in at around 19 tonnes on the company's comparison, electrive reported.

Completion of the prototype is targeted for September 2027. Testing would then move to a South Wales route designated for autonomous vehicles. Voltempo says production could start as early as late 2027, with deliveries by mid-2028.

Build work on the prototype sits with Berkeley Coachworks. Voltempo has not identified the major lorry manufacturer supplying the electric powertrain.

Einride, a provider specialising in electric and autonomous freight transport, has announced a partnership with Tesla to deploy 500 Tesla Semi trucks in the USA, according to electrive. The order will take the company's battery-electric truck fleet in the country to 750 vehicles.

Procurement of the 500 units begins in September 2026 and will be completed within two years, electrive reported.

The trucks will run on Einride's Saga AI platform and serve Amazon's logistics operations along with other customers, converting signed contracts into revenue-generating freight capacity, according to electrive.

Einride also plans new electric freight corridors in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, and Georgia.

BMW and E.ON claimed owners of an iX3 could earn up to EUR 720 per year by using the car as an energy storage unit, with E.ON paying EUR 0.24 for every hour the vehicle stays connected to a bidirectional wallbox, according to electrive.

The payment is time-based rather than volume-based: the utility pays per hour of connection, not per kWh discharged, per electrive's account of the offer.

Germany's metering base limits how far such offers can spread. The share of intelligent metering systems, digital electricity meters with an internet connection, stands at just 5.5% in Germany, according to the Bundesnetzagentur as cited by electrive.

Markus Hackmann, Managing Director at the P3 Group, a Stuttgart-based tech consultancy focused on e-mobility, told electrive that a major breakthrough in bidirectional charging is still missing.

Interoperability is the second constraint. "The bidirectional charging system cannot currently scale to benefit customers because we lack multiparty interoperability," Marco Piffaretti, Operating Agent at Task 53, told electrive.

Bidirectional charging requires the vehicle, the wallbox, the meter, and the electricity supplier to exchange data on common terms. Piffaretti's point identifies that chain, rather than vehicle hardware, as the bottleneck holding back customer-facing scale.

Children in London caught up with children in Luton on lung function within four years of the Ultra Low Emission Zone taking effect, according to a Queen Mary University of London study reported by Electrek.

The scheme's reach has widened well beyond its original boundary. Electrek reports that Khan expanded the zone in 2021 and 2023, and it now covers all of Greater London, where around 9 million people live.

Vehicle turnover moved with it. Between June 2023 and September 2024, London had 58% fewer non-compliant vehicles on the road, according to Electrek.

A scrappage scheme aimed at low income residents supported that shift. Electrek reports the GBP 200 million programme, worth USD 258 million, helped pay to take 15,232 old vehicles off the road.

A startup named El Rampeño is running garbage collection in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana with electric three-wheeled vehicles charged by solar power, Electrek reported.

The substitution matters because more than half of Havana's garbage truck fleet is out of service, a consequence of the fuel blockade, according to Electrek.

El Rampeño owns 30 tricycles and has 10 of them in service, company president Yasiel Hernández told Electrek.

The vehicles came from Vehiculos Electricos del Caribe, or VEDCA, a joint venture between the manufacturer Tianjin Dongxing Industrial and Commercial Group of China and Minerva, a Cuban state-owned electric micromobility company, per Electrek. That structure ties a municipal service in the Cuban capital to a Chinese manufacturing partner at a moment when diesel supply for conventional collection trucks has failed.

Solar charging removes the fuel input entirely from the collection cycle, which is the mechanism by which the trikes keep working while the diesel fleet sits idle.