Charged Magazine

Aluminum rolling and recycling specialist Novelis plans to create a continuous annealing solution heat (CASH) treatment line in order to add 100 kilotons to its aluminum production capacity. This expansion of an existing facility is expected to begin in 2018 and be fully operational by 2020. The $180-million endeavor will …read more

The US is soon going to be seriously wired for electric driving, at least on the coasts. The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) has approved a portfolio of EV charging projects worth a cool $738 million for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Southern …read more

Bollinger Motors is not following the typical EV startup formula. Instead of building a luxury sedan, it’s building a rough and ready work truck. It has no strategy to evolve into a mass-market automaker, but intends to find a niche as a low-volume brand. As far as we know, the …read more

There seems to be an endless array of electric motor topologies, architectures, and configurations. Among the many design choices that engineers face is the shape of copper wire that is wound in the stator.
In a new paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, researchers compared using flat wire …read more

Littelfuse helps the auto industry navigate new electrical engineering challenges
When engineers design a battery pack, they tend to focus first on its core functionality and value proposition. For a high-end energy storage device, those core attributes are typically things like total pack energy density, cost minimization, packaging efficiency, peak power …read more

Plastic film capacitors relentlessly continue to take over many of the duties in EV power electronics that were once performed by the venerable aluminum electrolytic type, mainly because film capacitors exhibit much lower losses and have a much longer operational lifespan, especially at ambient temperatures in the 75-85° C range. …read more

As expected, a shareholder proposal to remove Elon Musk as Chairman was voted down at the company’s recent shareholders’ meeting, as was an attempt to get rid of three board members that some see as not sufficiently independent.
Elon himself made a lengthy speech in which he addressed many of the …read more

New York is getting serious about going electric. The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has launched a new $250-million initiative called Evolve NY that will seek to create private sector partnerships to accelerate EV adoption throughout the state.
Evolve NY is part of the Governor’s Charge NY 2.0 initiative, which has …read more

TDK has improved its DC link EPSCOS film capacitors, which can now handle a variety of worst-case-scenario environmental conditions.
Besides being a mouthful, the B3277*H series can operate at temperatures as high as 105° C with voltage ranges of 450 VDC-1,100 VDC and capacitance values of 1.5 µF-120 µF. These capacitors …read more

Nissan has received over 4,600 orders for its upgraded e-NV200 since sales began in January. The new electric van is now being shipped to customers in Europe and Hong Kong, with Japanese deliveries to follow.
Nissan has sold more than 18,000 units of the original e-NV200 since its introduction in 2014. …read more