Electric vehicles

In a letter to the editor, Professor Emeritus Donald R. Sadoway writes to The New York Times about the importance of developing new batteries that utilize readily available materials. “We need to attack it the old-fashioned American way: Invent our way out,” writes Sadoway. “This means devise a new battery chemistry that requires no cobalt, no nickel, no manganese and no lithium, but instead is made of substances that are earth-abundant and readily available here in North America.”

Prof. Jessika Trancik says that the tax incentive in the Inflation Reduction Act may help encourage the transition to electric vehicles due to the income cap for people to qualify, reports Lily Jamali for Marketplace. “I think it’s really important to structure them in such a way that the benefits are equitably distributed across the population,” says Trancik.

Sloan Lecturer Bill Fischer writes for Forbes about the disruption possibilities in new and alternative dairy products, non-prescription hearing augmentation devices and electric vehicle technology. “Disruption is, at least in these three industries, alive and well and posing a considerable threat to formerly successful, incumbent market-leaders,” writes Fischer.

Ezra Haber Glenn, a lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning, writes for Experience Magazine about how companies and technologists are looking to make electric vehicle charging stations destinations themselves. “Still in the conceptual stages, the program envisions replacing gas stations with a variety of ‘new-age community centers,’” writes Glenn.

Financial Times reporter William D. Cohan profiles Robert Joseph Scaringe SM ’07, PhD ’09 and his personal and professional career in developing Rivian, an electric vehicle technology company dedicated to building vehicles that change the way we consume fossil fuels. “Scaringe has been pining to run his own car company since he was a 17-year-old growing up on the Atlantic coast of Florida, just south of Cape Canaveral. ‘If you were to go in my bedroom as a kid, you’d find [car] hoods under the bed and windshields in the closet,’ he says.”

Qichao Hu ’07 - founder and CEO of SES, a battery research company and supplier to the electric vehicle industry - speaks with Wired reporter Omar L. Gallaga about electric vehicle batteries. “Huge battery innovations happen about every 30 years, according to HU, and the good news is we’re about due for the next evolution,” writes Gallaga

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with USA Today reporter Kate S. Petersen about claims that replacing all U.S. gas stations with equal capacity electric vehicle charging stations would require significant resources. “When we’re talking about EV charging, you don’t have to put charging stations everywhere you have gas stations today,” says Trancik. “This would not make sense as a plan for rolling out electric vehicle charging infrastructure.”

24M Technologies, an MIT startup, and Volkswagen Group are joining forces to "manufacture next-generation lithium-ion EV batteries using the 24M SemiSolid platform,” reports Mark Kane for Inside EVs.

Bloomberg reporter Kyle Stock spotlights the origin and future of Rivian, an MIT startup that has developed an electric pickup truck.

MIT researchers have found that while battery and fuel production for electric vehicles creates higher emissions than traditional cars, those emissions are offset by the greater energy efficiency of EVs. “Currently, the electric vehicle in the U.S., on average, would emit about 200 grams of CO2 per mile,” says senior research scientist Sergey Paltsev. “We are projecting that with cleaning up the grid, we can reduce emissions from electric vehicles by 75%, from about 200 (grams) today to about 50 grams of CO2 per mile in 2050.”

Prof. Chris Knittel speaks with Stacey Vanek Smith on The Indicator from Planet Money podcast about the high price of oil and what that means for electric vehicles. “If everybody believed EVs were taking over next year, we would see oil prices tank now,” says Knittel. “The fact that they’re not tanking suggests that the markets think there’ll be sustained demand for oil for quite some time.”  

Regent, a company founded by two MIT graduates, has created a seaglider, an “all-electric vehicle [that] is a cross between a boat and an airplane,” reports CBS Boston. “It can travel up to 180 mph, never flying higher than a wingspan above the water.” 

MIT startup SolidEnergy Systems has signed a deal with GM to develop next-generation electric vehicle batteries that are expected to cut the cost of the technology by 60%, reports Michael Wayland for CNBC. “The new batteries feature lithium metal instead of lithium-ion like today’s EVs use,” writes Wayland. “The switch changes the chemistry of the battery to enable higher energy density and longer range from a similar-sized battery or comparable range with a smaller battery.”

MIT researchers have developed an online interactive tool aimed at helping consumers quantify the costs of buying an electric or gas-powered vehicle. The tool demonstrates how electric vehicles may initially be more expensive, but are often cheaper in the long-run, reports Veronica Penny for The New York Times. Prof. Jessika Trancik notes that she hopes the tool will “help people learn about how those upfront costs are spread over the lifetime of the car.”

WCVB-TV’s Mike Wankum visits MIT to learn about the Solar Electric Vehicle Team. “We are trying to prove that we can move away from cars that rely on gasoline or diesel,” explains undergraduate Salem Ali, “and move towards more electric vehicles, and potentially even vehicles that you don’t have to plug in.”