Growdy's Newsletter 2024-02-11

Let me state this plainly: electric vehicle sales grew globally in 2023. And not by a little, by more than 30% YoY. Yes, it is slightly lower growth than in 2022, but it was still more growth than we saw many years previous in the last decade. Rapid growth may have slowed last year, but growth in EV sales continues. financialpost.com

"We're just going from, we like to say, rosy to reality," says Stephanie Valdez-Streaty with Cox Automotive. npr.org

In the US alone, 1.2 million electric vehicles were added to the road, a new record. Add in PHEVs, and that number goes up to 1.5 million battery-based new energy vehicles. Meanwhile, electricity usage went down. cleantechnica.com

Nat Bullard from BloombergNEF published an exhaustive 200-slide deck, which helps make these numbers clear. Check out his full presentation “on the state of decarbonization told with climate, capital markets, technology, and sector data.” (I “borrowed” these fine graphs from Nat’s deck.) nathanielbullard.com

MotorTrend opened a vehicle marketplace. Their CEO quips about how interest in electric vehicles is high. “I think our top searches are for pure EVs, then it's SUVs, and then it's hybrids across all of our searches.“ finance.yahoo.com

I like hybrid vehicles. I drive a hybrid. But current generation hybrids are likely only a stop-gap on our way to other types of propulsion systems in cars.

Toyota is getting a lot of praise for focusing on hybrids, which currently benefits their bottom line. fortune.com, reuters.com

Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda believes EVs will reach 30% of market share at most, with the rest occupied by hybrids and other types of propulsion. autonews.com

That’s cool, but Akio fails to notice that his neighbour, China, the world's largest vehicle market where EVs already accounted for 26% of the country’s auto sales last year, is fully expecting to blow past that mark. cleantechnica.com

BloombergNEF suggests that EVs will account for 75% of new car sales globally and 44% of passenger vehicles on the road by 2040. bloomberg.com

February 2nd wasn’t just Groundhog Day. It was also the launch date for Apple’s OLED-on-silicon Vision Pro AR headset. And the YouTube community got excited.

Marques Brownlee did an excellent and thorough review of the Vision Pro. He describes it as “a glimpse into the future... with today's technology”. He also wore it for the entirety of the recording of his WVFRM (waveform) podcast. youtube.com, youtube.com

Marques references a video from Dave2D regarding how all AR/VR headsets look "dumb.” I agree. youtube.com

Marques teamed up with Cloe Abram to discuss how “huge” the Vision Pro could be as the software and experience evolve. youtube.com

Ryan Trahan wore a Vision Pro for 50 hours straight. youtube.com

iFixit did a teardown of the device in two parts. youtube.com, youtube.com

Casey Neistat wore a Vision Pro around New York City and freaked people out. Then he recommended that if you wanted to watch a review of the product, you should probably watch the aforementioned Marques Brownlee review. youtube.com

Some idiot wore their Vision Pro while they were driving. Apple and Pete Buttigieg urge people not to do that. The state of Massachusetts wants to shut that shit down. yahoo.com

Now that the Vision Pro has been released, you can see how the tech relates to some of Apple's patents and plans for their car, “Project Titan.” They have elaborate concepts for heads-up displays and infotainment options, which may or may not see the light of day. youtube.com

ICYMI: Apple did a whole whack of autonomous vehicle testing in 2023. wired.com

Battery swapping in electric vehicles isn’t new. During the first wave of electric vehicles in the early 1900s, battery swapping was common among electric carriages in New York City. theatlantic.com

Chinese manufacturer NIO has built an extensive and impressive network of battery-swapping stations for their EVs. While charging takes longer than filling with gas, battery swapping can happen in under 3 minutes. youtube.com

“Nio's battery-swapping strategy has picked up traction in the fiercely competitive Chinese EV market in recent months, with the company signing deals with fellow electric vehicle makers Geely, JAC, and Chery to jointly develop battery-swapping tech.” businessinsider.com

I find it hard not to love everything Christopher Walken does. BMW made the i5 fun with the double whammy of Walken and Usher in their new Super Bowl spot. See all the auto ads being shown today during the Super Bowl over at driving.ca.

BYD’s newly released U7 sedan has up to 800kms of range and more power than comparable Tesla or BMW nameplates. carscoops.com

BYD will provide EVs to European leasing company Arval to accelerate their European expansion. autonews.com

Keeping up with the Musks, Geely starts launching their own network of internet-bearing space satellites. fortune.com

XPeng has a “full self-driving” (FSD) software solution they call Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP), which they intend to make available to the rest of the world. “We look forward to enabling overseas users to access XPeng’s autonomous driving already available in China.” techcrunch.com

Biden is considering new restrictions on importing Chinese vehicles, parts, and software. reuters.com

Elon sold his larger homes and now lives here. Don’t worry about Elon; he keeps a katana on his coffee table, so he’ll be fine. yahoo.com

Tesla Model 3 and Model Y might have a steering problem. US U.S. safety regulators are investigating. reuters.com

Lots of rumours about Tesla layoffs. Including some leaked emails that point to internal employee reviews. electrek.co, finance.yahoo.com, reuters.com

SpaceX launched a satellite for NASA to monitor the oceans. space.com

A private company, Axiom Space's astronauts were brought back to Earth by SpaceX Dragon. "Thank you for flying SpaceX." space.com

StarLink is passing a lot of data between their satellites with lasers. hackaday.com

SpaceX and StarLink partner to test using drone ships for better internet coverage in the open seas. pcmag.com

Elon moves the incorporation of Neuralink from Delaware to Nevada. reuters.com

Canadian scientists are working on next-generation battery technology. “We need to electrify our society. But we don’t have a solution for that unless we can build more robust batteries.” theglobeandmail.com

And in Canada, we’re getting pretty serious about the business of making batteries autonews.com

CATL plans to build a giant wind farm to use renewable energy to power their battery manufacturing. electrek.co

Another wave energy company prepares their ocean floor-based solution for commercial deployments. newatlas.com

The world’s first semi-submersible floating offshore wind farm has been online for three years and continues to break its power output records. electrek.co

The godfathers of wind power in the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering. bbc.com

Two words: “Wind Trees” thecooldown.com

The things you can find when you clean out the garage might surprise you. “Honey, do you remember where I put that nuclear missile?” yahoo.com

A Chinese aerospace company is working on a winged rocket that will fly from New York to Beijing in about an hour. nypost.com

DARPA, the people who brought you the internet, GPS, night vision, touch screens, autonomous robots, and exoskeletons, are now looking to build a giant ground-effect cargo plane. newatlas.com

The price of car insurance has always sucked. And today, it sucks more. caranddriver.com

Why would anyone do this to a Porsche Taycan? carscoops.com

Paris voted to make parking your SUV on their streets more expensive. europe.autonews.com

Ferrari takes a Tesla S Plaid out for a few test drives. motor1.com

Volvo gets into minivans. electrek.co

GM Canada gives a behind-the-scenes look into Silverado assembly. youtube.com

Samsung tells us that no photos taken on phones are real. theverge.com

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