WHILE Tesla’s stainless steel bakkie took headlines — and over 200 000 orders — since its reveal last Thursday, two other under-the-radar developments promise to have much bigger impacts on the future of transport.
The first development came from Toyota, the world’s biggest vehicle builder.
While the green media in the U.S. have been criticising the Japanese corporation for making dated hybrids and sticking to hydrogen fuel cells while it waits for electric car demand to grow, Toyota Motor Corporation last week launched the first all-electric Lexus, the UX 300e, at the Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition in China.
The UX 300e has a single 150 kW motor mounted on the front axle, with a 54,4 kWh lithium-ion battery that Lexus said gives the big SUV a range of 400 km. Contrary to critics, the UX300e shows Toyota’s engineers are indeed ready to sell electric cars where tax subsidies spur buyer demand.
TRUCKING BEER IN THE USA
In St Louis, Missouri, American brewing company Anheuser-Busch teamed up with American start-up Nikola Motor Company and Chinese BYD Motors LLC to make the brewer’s first zero-emission delivery. One of Nikola’s hydrogen-electric trucks delivered the beer to a depot, whence a BYD electric truck took crates of beer to the a sports arena. The brewing company has ordered 800 hydrogen trucks from Nikola Motors, and has also started a pilot project to deliver beer using 21 BYD electric trucks in California, with the trucks to be charged via a 958,5 kW solar array, instead of polluting coal-burning electricity plants.
BYD’s buses and trucks now run in over 300 cities in 50 countries, where the Chinese company gets orders simply by showing fleet owners how electric vehicles cost less on the long run.