Saturday, 22 August 2026

Eleven carmakers have been drawn into recalls ordered by SAMR, China's market regulator, over mechanical emergency door unlocking systems, with more than four million vehicles covered, electrive reported.

The heaviest exposure sits with Tesla. Its Chinese recall reaches nearly 2.98 million cars, split between imported units and locally built ones, and spans four nameplates: Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X. That action begins 25 September.

Among domestic brands, the SU7 accounts for 390,435 recalled cars at Xiaomi, all from the 2024 model year. Leapmotor's tally reaches 371,200 vehicles from the C11 and C01 lines. Xpeng lists 264,842 cars drawn from three ranges, the G6, P7+ and X9.

Tesla filed a second Chinese recall as well, this one covering roughly 2.74 million Model 3 and Model Y cars over driver monitoring concerns, according to electrive. Adding that campaign to the other recalls disclosed the same day pushes the combined affected fleet past seven million vehicles.

The door hardware campaign arrives ahead of a regulatory shift dated to 2027, when China becomes the first country to largely ban concealed or retractable door handles in their current form on new vehicles, electrive reported.

The door-unlocking recall alone covers more than four million cars across eleven manufacturers. Tesla's share of that figure runs to nearly 2.98 million units, with Xiaomi, Leapmotor and Xpeng together adding more than a million.

The LNG carrier LNG Bayelsa is being converted into a floating storage unit renamed FSU LNG Cap Lopez, destined for deployment offshore Gabon, according to Offshore Magazine.

Lloyd's Register is overseeing the conversion work. The vessel will serve as a floating storage unit once installed off the Gabonese coast.

The project the unit supports is expected to add about 105 MMcf/d of gas production capacity, Offshore Magazine reported. The same development is expected to help reduce routine flaring.

Federal waters off American Samoa would host the nation's first commercial deep-sea mining lease sale under plans being advanced by the Marine Minerals Administration, a unit of the Department of the Interior, with polymetallic nodules the target resource, according to Offshore Magazine.

A tentative sale date of November 19, 2026 appears in a proposed leasing notice, which puts two blocks covering more than 31 million acres on the block, Offshore Magazine reported.

Bidders would face a floor of USD 3 million per block, according to Offshore Magazine. Awarded leases carry a 20-year term, and royalties start at 2% of mineral production value for five years before stepping up to 5%.

President Donald Trump's 2025 executive orders on expanding domestic critical minerals output sit behind the program, which began with an unsolicited lease request from California-based Impossible Metals, Offshore Magazine reported.

Mapping work preceded the notice. NOAA spent roughly USD 20 million on a hydrographic survey spanning more than 30,000 square nautical miles of the area, according to Offshore Magazine.

Earthjustice filed suit on August 18, 2026 in the US District Court for the District of Hawaii, acting for Fa'asao Amerika Samoa and the Conservation Council for Hawai'i, and challenging a National Marine Fisheries Service determination.

Heart Aerospace's X1 demonstrator flew for 27 minutes on August 12 from Plattsburgh International Airport, powered entirely by batteries, according to CleanTechnica.

The airframe is large by the standards of electric flight testing. CleanTechnica reported the X1 has a 106-foot wingspan and weighed more than 25,000 pounds at takeoff.

Peak electrical draw during the flight exceeded a megawatt, per CleanTechnica. That is the figure that separates the X1 from the light two- and four-seat testbeds that have dominated battery-powered flight to date, and it puts the propulsion load in the range of grid-scale equipment rather than automotive packs.

Heart Aerospace calls the X1 the largest battery-electric aircraft ever flown. The manufacturer's own characterization is the basis for that ranking.

The flight itself ran on batteries alone, with no combustion contribution during the 27 minutes aloft.

Engie Vianeo plans to build four new charging parks for heavy goods vehicles at motorway service areas in Germany, electrive reported.

One of the sites is the 24-Autohof Homberg (Efze) on the A7. According to electrive, Engie Vianeo plans to commission three 400-kilowatt charging points there along with one Megawatt Charging System (MCS) charger rated at 1,000 kW, in spring 2027.

The four parks sit inside a much larger German pipeline. Around 50 sites in the country are currently being developed by Engie Vianeo with charging infrastructure aimed specifically at commercial vehicles, electrive reported.

The operator's stated target is 25,000 charging points across Europe by 2030, of which 1,000 are earmarked for heavy electric commercial vehicles. The Homberg (Efze) configuration, mixing 400 kW points with a single megawatt-class charger, indicates how the truck-facing share of that build-out is being specified per location.

Separately, electrive reported that Hubject is supplying Berlin-based Localiser with point of interest data and real-world usage information for charging stations under a strategic data partnership.

Sales of petrol models in China dropped 44% in July, according to CleanTechnica.

Over the same month, plug-in vehicles took a record 65% of the Chinese market, CleanTechnica reported. Battery-electric vehicles alone accounted for 44% of the market, according to the same report.

The two shares mark the split within the plug-in segment: BEVs at 44% of all vehicles sold, with plug-in hybrids making up the remainder of the 65% total reported by CleanTechnica.

The petrol decline runs in the opposite direction at almost identical magnitude, with combustion-only models shedding 44% of sales in the month, per CleanTechnica.