IEEE Spectrum
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Ariel Rider , an e-bike maker in Redmond, Wash., opened preorders this month for the MUDD 72V , a 105-kilometer-per-hour (65-mile-per-hour) 8,000-watt machine it calls a “power bike.” It looks like a fat-tire e-bike . It rides like a lightweight electric motorcycle . Legally, it’s neither. That gap isn’t a loophole Ariel Rider found. It’s a hole regulators haven’t filled yet. Two regulatory…
This article is brought to you by COMSOL . In pursuit of improved range, greater reliability, and faster charging, electric vehicles are driving the demand for high-voltage electronics. Other applications driving this demand include wind farms, data centers, and server farms, to name a few. As the interest for high-voltage electronics increases, the risks associated with their sudden failure must…
The EV market in Mexico has exploded in the last three years, with the vast majority of cars sold there being manufactured in China— 90 percent in 2025 . However, Mexico is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of cars and car parts, and policymakers want to capture a piece of the action. That’s why the Mexican government launched Olinia, a federally backed effort to develop a homegrown EV…
Driving the 2027 Kia Seltos Hybrid through a Korean mountain landscape whose lushness evokes Hawaii, a light touch with my right foot helps me eke out a decidedly green 51 miles per gallon (4.6 liters per 100 kilometers). Back in the States, that kind of mileage will beat anything in the Seltos’s subcompact SUV class. Kia ’s timing seems uncanny. When the Seltos arrives in the U.S. in the fourth…
The promise of the smart wheelchair—a powered mobility device capable of navigating spaces on its own—has never been realized for most of the people who might benefit from it most. This year, researchers and companies say they’re starting to close the gap. Two commercial products arriving on U.S. shores this year reveal how differently that claim can be made. In March, the Shanghai-based mobility…
A semitrailer that helps propel itself entered commercial road testing in late May, when a power-train kit developed by Nivalis Energy Europe , headquartered in Luxembourg with engineering operations in Germany, was fitted to a trailer supplied by the Amsterdam-based TIP Group . The self-powered trailer was handed over to the German transport operator Sommer for use in its working fleet. The…
For decades, automakers enjoyed a luxury that had nothing to do with the softest leather or the smoothest engines. Their luxury was time, with some popular cars and trucks enduring for a decade or longer before they received a full redesign. The clock is ticking faster now, thanks to China. BYD and other automakers there are speeding electric vehicles (EVs) and other models from drawing board to…
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have developed an EV charging algorithm that, in simulation, extended the useful life of a lithium-ion battery cell by nearly 23 percent compared with the method used in virtually every electric vehicle on the road today. The catch: The work has been validated only on a single simulated cell, never on a real battery, and never…
With an improbable 850 kilowatts (1,140 horsepower), and a digitized launch from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in a cerebellum-squeezing 2.5 seconds, the 2027 Porsche Cayenne Coupe Electric defies any traditional notion of an SUV. It’s the most powerful Porsche production car in history, thanks in part to DNA from Porsche’s championship Formula E racers. Automakers are notorious for using poetic…
A golf cart seems like an unlikely place to find a new model for industrial electrification, but a technical shift playing out on golf courses is pointing toward something larger. Swappable lithium battery packs are now replacing lead-acid units in legacy electric golf carts without any modification to the vehicles themselves: no controller swap, no wiring changes, no new charger required. That…
