Top Gear Electric Awards celebrate the electrification importance in the automotive sector. Recently, on such occasion, the new Volkswagen ID. Buzz has been crowned electric car of the year, especially for the spacious interiors and the practical drive, praising it also for its iconic style, inspired by the original design of Volkswagen T1.
ID. Buzz is the first fully electric vehicle by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles implemented on the Modular Electric Drive Kit (MEB) platform. Cian O’Brien, Director of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, affirmed: «As brand, we are living an important electrification travel, and the so longed-for ID. Buzz marks the beginning of this exciting experience. Being able to launch a car that is cool in design, with sustainability at the core of its creation, is an excellent way to show our customers it is still possible to do all things we like and travel wherever we want, even having a positive impact on the environment».
Moreover, here are the words by Ollie Marriage, Manager of Top Gear car tests: «People who pretend having an active lifestyle drive a SUV, those who actually do it drive a Volkswagen van. All those we have met have liked the brand’s rediscovery of its icon and have found ID. Buzz airy, fresh and energetic. Is it not phantastic that Volkswagen has finally had the courage of reinventing the original? It is charmingly simple and yet utterly uplifting. And, for this reason, it is our electric car of the year».
The electric car of 2022-year? The new Volkswagen ID. Buzz
Flying will be as easy as drinking a glass of water
Recently, Peter Ternström, co-founder of Jetson company, with headquarters in Stockholm, has revealed that piloting one of his personal electric aircrafts is as easy as it seemed in cartoons and that learning needs just five minutes. The delivery of his Jetsone One will start from the end of 2023 and therefore what is announced is a great revolution in the airplane transport. The units already sold, at a cost that approaches 100,000 dollars, are already almost 500.
«It is super-intuitive. We have developed a fly-by-wire system that helps the pilot with functions like the automatic hovering, the stable flight and landing».
Let us take a step back: expert in the luxury car industry, Ternström has collaborated with the aerospace engineer Tomasz Patan to launch in 2017 the Jetson drone, equipped with a single-seat architecture “to make the flight available for all”. In fact, the regulations for that class of aircrafts do not impose flights close to airports or crowded areas and there is neither the need of a pilot licence. The drone weighs 86 kilos, it has an aluminium frame with eight electric motors that allow it to go on flying for about 20 minutes with maximum speed limited by the software of 100km/h. Pilots, who can weigh 95 kilos maximum, control the drone by means of joystick and accelerator.
Stellantis boosts the manufacturing of electric motors
Another step in the electrification course of Stellantis consists in the conversion, by 2026, of a factory headquartered in Hungary, in Szentgotthard, to a plant intended for the production of electric modules. The Group will then rely on a new site dedicated to EDM production, which joins the plants in Tremery-Metz, France, and Kokomo, Indiana, USA.
Moreover, in 2024 Mirafiori district, in Italy, will increase the manufacturing of state-of-the-art electrified double-clutch transmissions (eDCT) for Stellantis hybrid and hybrid plug-in vehicles.  «Starting the production of electric drive modules in Szentgotthard speeds up our transition towards electrification. It is an intervention that further approaches us to the target of providing customers with green, safe, and economically affordable mobility», affirms Arnaud Deboeuf, Chief Manufacturing Officer of Stellantis. «The employees of the factory can be proud as their work will be an integral part of our electrified future, a fundamental factor in the offer of electric vehicles by our iconic brands, sector leaders, and increasingly customer-oriented».
The EDM manufactured in Szentgotthard will be used in the vehicles assembled on a new STLA platform dedicated to BEV. The EDM manufacturing will take place in the structures already existing in the factory. The new production activities of electric drive modules by the plant will include the machining of key components, as well as the final assembly and the testing of EDM 3 in 1, the solution that combines in a single unit the electric motor, the reduction group, and the inverter.
In the next 10 years, Stellantis is planning to invest more than 50 billion Euros in electrification, to hit the targets of the strategic Dare Forward 2030 plan.
Formula E, the new electric motor by Lucid Motors
Novelties in the motorsport propulsion: the American Lucid Motors has just unveiled its innovative electric motor for motorsport, which already equips Formula E cars as a standard front power unit.
Peter Rawlinson, CEO and CTO, Lucid Group, declared: «With incredible power density of 14.7 hp/kg and immense energy recuperation, this drive unit will once again transform electric motorsports, following in the footsteps of our revolutionary battery pack in prior race seasons. This new motorsports drive unit builds directly upon the groundbreaking powertrain technology developed in-house by Lucid and proven on the road in every Lucid Air. I’m excited by the prospect that some of the technical advancements introduced may in turn make their way to future Lucid road cars».
The new propulsion system can then supply 476 HP of power and is composed by motor, inverter, differential and transmission, everything for an overall weight of 32 kg. The rotor reaches a maximum speed of 19,500 rpm and an advanced high-voltage continuous-wave winding and an exclusive microjet cooling system are present.
There is already some literature about that: the new traction unit, positioned in the front part of Gen3 single-seaters of Formula E, allows recovering energy from front wheels while braking, notably increasing performances and efficiency.
A full-electric hypercar incoming from China
Able to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in just 1.9 seconds due to its 1,225-horsepower motor and 12,000 Nm of maximum torque, GAC Aion Hyper SSR is a full-electric hypercar, the first arrived from China. Its price starts from 183,000 Euros.
GAC Aion Hyper SSR is equipped with an electrically driven spoiler that exceeds a certain speed and increases the grip when necessary. The carbon fibre diffuser in the rear part to generate pressure is another element that improves the performance in curves.
Guangzhou Auto Corporation –GAC– is the fifth Chinese automotive company and GAC Aion is the Group’s brand focused on electric vehicles.
Stla Medium: the new platform by Stellantis for electrification
Stellantis has recently presented Stla Medium, a global BEV-by-design platform with forefront features. It can offer prolonged autonomy (over 700 km) and integrated flexibility starting from the design, to allow the implementation of a broad variety of vehicles with various traction configurations in the key market segments, C and D, which have represented 35 million sales in 2022, almost the half of the 78.5 million vehicles sold on a global scale in the same year. Currently, Stellantis brands offer 26 models of vehicles in these segments, by using various platforms. The Stla Medium platform allows manufacturing up to 2 million vehicles yearly in various plants headquartered worldwide, this year starting from Europe.
STLA Medium, which uses a 400-V electric architecture, will offer top-level energy efficiency and recharge times in the category and the connectivity to a recharge system. Depending on the application, the consumption will be under 14 kWh for 100 km. The vehicles implemented on Stla Medium will be sold all over the world and they will be available with front or all-wheel drive, with the addition of a second electric propulsion module at the rear, with a power ranging from 160 to 285 kW (BEV).
Building industry, the new electric Cifa pump in the yard
Recently, Cifa has presented the full-electric pump by Energya, first in the concrete sector, which is based on electrification, automation and connectivity. In Energya concrete mixers the rotation functions of the drum are operated by the electric motor that receives energy from a lithium battery and, in case of need, it can receive it also from the motor of the diesel truck.
Moreover, Energya models can be also mounted on gas or electric trucks, for a 100% green vehicle. The K42E truck-mounted pump completes Cifa’s eco-sustainable range, aimed at zeroing Co2 emissions and the acoustic pollution in the whole chain, from the transport to the laying of the concrete, expanding the use possibilities of vehicles in areas and yards with restrictions. Energya K42E is a powerful truck-mounted pump able to operate in full electric, without uncompromised performances.
K42E is equipped with a forefront system that exploits the power of the 30 ampere-hour battery pack, to power two electric Rexroth motors: the first that operates the hydraulic pump to move the arm and to open stabilizers and the second instead dedicated to the drive of the pumping group (with 160 mc/h closed circuit at 80 bars) and of other services.
In case the work needed a higher performance of the available charge, the new Energya pump can be directly connected to an electric socket in the site: the system will exclude batteries, directly powering electric motors.
Electric motorcycles: the hybrid prototype by Kawasaki
Kawasaki, which has declared the intention of ceasing the production of fossil-fuel vehicles starting from 2035, has revealed a first prototype of hybrid motorcycle, which combines the petrol propulsion with an electric aid.
The first details seem to indicate as “starting base” the famous Ninja 400, with the addition of a small electric motors and a semi-automatic gearbox.
The interaction between thermal and electric implies that the transmission is studied to exploit at best the synergies between the two propulsor typologies that often operate in complementary manner: the electric gives its best at zero revolutions, whereas the petrol motor on the long term.
What about the overall dimensions on a motorcycle? The prototype is equipped with a 48-volt battery that does not seem to affect so much the two-wheeler’s performance.
Mavic presents the electric motor for bikes with record lightness
Nowadays, no e-road bike reaches the same lightness levels that it would have with the X-Tend motor, weighing just 1.2 Kg, designed by the French Mavic. The normalized power corresponds to 250 watts and the peak one reaches 390 watts, the driving torque is 37 Nm with peak of 50 Nm.
The total weight of Mavic X-Tend, including the bearings of the central movement and the power meter is equal to 3.2 Kg. Mavic has started working at this project since 2016, identifying in the weight one of the factors that have prevented electric bikes from knowing a popularity resembling e-Mtb.
The new brushless Mavic X-Tend motor with cycloidal reduction gear has been tested for over 120,000 Km. Currently, the motor is fully engineered and ready for the mass-production, for which it is anyway waiting for investors, in order to really enable the release on the market.
One thousand engagements in Motor Valley thanks to Faw supercar
After an investment worth one billion, the Chinese Faw, in joint venture with the Americans of Silk EV, will give birth to Hongq S9, the electric supercar designed by Walter de Silva.
Made in Emilia, precisely in Reggio Emilia, this luxury production will enable 1,000 new employments in the Motor Valley.
An outstanding industrial challenge that consistently focuses on the construction of the new manufacturing plant of the electric supercar on an area taking up 300,000 square metres, close to the motorway and the high-speed station.
Everything will be accomplished at the beginning of 2023, but already today the establishment in Emilia of Silk-Faw production pole represents a precious opportunity to attract new talents and new competences.