Electric Jets, Giant Electric Ships, Clean Energy Boom — Cleantech News – CleanTechnica

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Cleantech progress continues on. You might even say it’s … progressing. From giant electric boats to electric jets, one industry after another is at some stage of electrification. There’s also good news regarding renewable energy growth, autonomous vehicles, and the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

1. Lilium has logged the order of at least 4 more of its electric jets, or up to 16 more. This order comes from eVolare, a subsidiary of Volare Aviation, over in the UK. The electric VTOL aircraft will be used in and around London, with the companies also working together to plan and develop vertiports.

2. The largest electric container ship in the world is now in operation. Naturally, it’s not operating on the Mississippi River, but is rather operating over in China — which seems to get all EV firsts now.

3. Chinese automakers are starting to really disrupt auto markets around the world, and Paul Fosse dives into this topic in a thorough and interesting way, as he likes to do. I highly recommend checking out the article.

4. In a real shocker, we learn from an auto dealer survey that auto dealer salespeople aren’t the most enthusiastic in the world about selling electric vehicles. In other news: dog bites man. Really, though, it’s an interesting read.

5. The Inflation Reduction Act just turned two years old. Carolyn Fortuna reflects back on some of the significant clean energy progress that has come out of it. “In pursuit of net zero, the US passed the IRA and will direct nearly $400 billion in federal funding toward clean energy, with the goal of substantially lowering the nation’s carbon emissions by 2030. The process will reinvigorate US global economic competitiveness, innovation, and industrial productivity,” she writes. “Across the US economy, the IRA is already creating opportunities to build projects, hire workers, and manufacture equipment needed to strengthen domestic supply chains, lower household energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and pay good wages for those efforts.” It’s really one of the biggest economics, manufacturing, and US jobs packages ever passed by Congress, not to mention probably the largest climate-protecting legislation in the country’s history.

6. The new UK government isn’t hearing any of this nonsense about EV sales growth dying. The fresh new Labour government has already reinstated plans to ban new ICE vehicle sales by 2030, which was the plan previously until the Tories running the show tried to push it off until 2035 nearly a year ago.

7. Fun stat from the US DOE: “A driver can easily get more miles from an hour of level 2 charging while their light-duty EV is parked and plugged into a charger than the average person drives in a day.” That’s all it takes. Simple, yet most people don’t realize it yet. Spread the news.

8. And an even more exciting stat from the US DOE: EV battery costs have come down 90% from 2008 to 2023. This is probably the most important fundamental stat to use to explain to people why electric cars have gotten so much more competitive and are such better options than they were 5 to 10 years ago.

9. Xpeng is making quite a bit of progress. It is launching EV sales in Australia. It just rolled out XNGP, its self-driving system, nationwide. It has seen 5 straight months of EV sales growth (month over month as well as year over year). It’s also about to launch its next hot new EV, the M03. That M03, by the way, is definitely the car I’d be most tempted to buy if it was on the US market.

10. A new report shows that Europe has started getting more of its electricity from wind energy and solar energy than from fossil fuels. Wind and solar overtook fossil fuel power generation in the first half of 2024. Renewables are truly starting to kick fossil fuels off the court.

11. One of our writers had a fun and convenient time using Waymo in San Francisco last week, and wrote a great story about that experience. An update on that experience that I learned today: they tried using an Uber afterwards using Waymo a couple of times, but then decided they enjoyed the Waymo much more and switched from using Uber to using Waymo. Incidentally, it was just after this review that Waymo announced it was expanding into more areas of the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

12. I wrote about Tesla sitting in the #2 position in California among all auto brands. While that’s a great achievement, I’ve gotten concerned that Tesla’s sales could drop off in California. So, I discussed ways Tesla might prevent that from happening. Click to learn more.

13. Never buy a used EV? That’s what some people say, but Jennifer explains why and how it can be done in a good, intelligent way and can lead to you getting a great car at a low price.

14. We have more EV sales reports for you. This is one of my favorite subjects week after week. This week in EV sales news: It turns out China just reached the milestone of more than 50% of its sales being plug-ins. You’ve also got Germany reaching 19.1% plugin vehicle market share, France reaching 20.8% plugin vehicle market share, the UK reaching 27.4%, Norway reaching 94%, and the world as a whole reaching 22% plugin vehicle market share. History is being made right before our eyes. Enjoy it!

That’s it for now, folks. Check in next time for more cleantech news.

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