AUTONEWS

Renault 5 E-Tech launching in the UK as cheaper electric supermini

Renault has announced the UK launch of its new electric supermini: the Renault 5 E-Tech. The EV was unveiled earlier this year and officially goes on sale in this market in January, with two power trains and three trim levels available. The starting price for the entry-level model makes it one of the cheapest EVs in the country.

The Renault 5 E-Tech electric vehicle will shortly be available to order in the UK. The model debuted at the 2024 Geneva International Motor Show as a 100% electric supermini with a design inspired by the classic R5, launched in 1972.

There are two powertrains for the Renault 5 E-Tech, a 120hp motor with 0 to 62 mph (~100 kph) time of 9.0 seconds and a 40 kWh battery for up to 190 miles (~306 km) range. The more powerful 150hp motor has a faster 0 to 62 mph time of 7.9 seconds and a 52 kWh battery with a range estimate of 248 miles (~399 km). You can charge the EV at up to 11kW AC or up to 100kW DC for an 80% charge in half an hour. Plus, this is the first vehicle from Renault to offer Vehicle to Load (V2L).

There are also three trim levels: evolution, techno and iconic five. The entry-level evolution offers a 10.1-inch central OpenR Link display with built-in Google and wireless smartphone connectivity, as well as traffic sign recognition with speed alerts. The techno adds a wireless phone charger, a rear-view camera and adaptive cruise control. On top of this, the iconic five offers a heated steering wheel and front seats, active driver assist with lane centering, hands-free parking and blind spot warnings.

On the road (OTR) prices for the Renault 5 E-Tech start from £22,995, making it one of the cheapest EVs in the UK. However, the top of the range iconic five E-Tech 150 hp comfort range version will cost £28,995. Customers will be able to order the EV starting in January 2025, with the first deliveries due at some point in the spring. However, if you buy an R5 R Pass for £150, you can purchase the vehicle now and get prioritised delivery. The EV will be displayed in Renault’s UK showrooms from March.

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GM

GM opened a lab to prevent software bugs in new vehicles

General Motors Co. has developed a software-testing lab inside its Global Technical Center that it's replicating elsewhere, including in GM's Silicon Valley office, to prevent bugs from entering new vehicles and affecting customers.

The lab was born out of GM's software struggles, which included a stop sale on the Chevrolet Blazer EV for intermittent issues with in-vehicle screens and DC fast charging at certain public stations.

It's one of the new software testing "innovations" at GM "that's rapidly increased the efficiency and rigor of software testing, catching 10 times the number of defects in development, and doing it earlier in the process," Dave Richardson, GM's senior vice president of software and services engineering, told investors and analysts at the automaker's early October Investor Day event.

GM isn't alone in the battle to keep software glitches out of vehicles. Automakers from Tesla Inc. to GM's crosstown rival Stellantis NV and Volkswagen AG have all dealt with software woes, with some leading to recalls.

In fact, more than 41.6% of all vehicles recalled so far in 2024 involved software issues, up from 14.9% in 2023, according to Envorso, a Detroit-based software consulting firm that tracks software recalls. This year's software recalls were driven by two each from Tesla and Stellantis.

Automakers have historically handled software in ways that doesn't mesh with what's needed for today's vehicles, experts say.

"It's kind of the difference between (Apple co-founder) Steve Jobs and Henry Ford. Henry Ford thought about how you did an assembly line and how you put all the pieces together on the assembly line. Jobs would think about it from the experience and how the software integrates with the hardware and working that experience through before you do manufacturing," said Todd Warren, a senior adviser at Envorso who specializes in software strategy for the automotive industry.

Part of the issue is that legacy automakers assemble parts that they get from suppliers—and those parts include software.

"Quite literally, they put all those pieces together on a table and wire them together and then wonder why the software doesn't work," Warren said. "You can't do it that way. ... The further you get from when the software developer types in the code to when you find the bug, the more expensive and slow it is to fix that bug."

That's why automakers like GM are rethinking their software strategies by shifting the software testing "left," as Richardson talked about during Investor Day, because "if you're finding those bugs when you're driving the car, it's way too late. It's hard to track down, it's slow to fix."

Following its series of software woes with the Blazer and other new EV products, GM's software team is focused on that "shift to the left" and has moved software testing and validation "as early in the development process as possible before all software components are integrated into the final product," Richardson explained at the Investor Day event.

To facilitate the shift, GM integrated tech-industry standard tooling and processes for developers to write better code, tracked oversight of quality, introduced testing automation, began testing systems in the cloud and "built a global network of software quality labs, where we have hardware benches accessible by developers anywhere in the world running suites of automated tests," said Richardson, who joined GM in September 2023 and was promoted to his current position in June.

GM is replicating the Warren lab at its technical center in Canada and at its recently opened Mountain View Technical Center in California.

Some of the changes have led to difficult decisions. In August, GM said it had laid off more than 1,000 salaried employees in its software and services organization globally—including more than 600 employees working at the Global Technical Center in Warren—in an effort to streamline the division's operations under new leadership.

Richardson told investors the workforce reduction "was absolutely critical to GM's future in software, and we will continue to make bold choices to move faster, to pivot when needed, and prioritize investing in what will have the greatest impact. We have simplified our team structures, to remove unnecessary layers, avoid duplication and enable speed."

Inside the lab...In GM's software quality lab, which opened one year ago, there are "benches" or cockpits for every vehicle the company produces. Software is tested on one module, then graduates to a bench before it's put into a full-vehicle integrated bench.

What's behind the challenges?...Software in vehicles isn't new, but the industry has faced challenges in developing software with modern methods.

In the past, the approach was to use "deeply embedded software," so vehicle functions like anti-lock brakes or sequential turn signals had individual electronic control units, or ECUs, with software for each, explained Sam Abuelsamid, principal e-mobility analyst at market research firm Guidehouse Inc.

"All of those things had been traditionally developed independently of each other. They don't talk to each other," he said. "The software is tied, typically, directly to that hardware, that ECU, that it's running on.

"What we're seeing now is a transition to a different kind of electronic architecture, away from having these distributed ECUs around the car, so where you've got 100 or more computers installed somewhere in the car, to getting down to a small handful of computers, usually with one or two large centralized computers," Abuelsamid said. "... and then maybe some zone controllers, and then having a common software platform, and all of the software from all those individual ECUs is being brought into that central compute."

Embedded software wasn't designed to be updated. With the transition to software-defined vehicles, there's an expectation that the software will be updated to provide new features and functions over time.

"You have to look at how you develop the software in a whole different way," Abuelsamid said. "You need different kinds of processes. You need a different kind of organization to develop and test and maintain that software and update it over the life of the car."

Now automakers have to transition from having small teams work on specific functions to a larger organization responsible for the software platform, which can be challenging, especially when adding new tech hires who aren't used to some of the limitations in the auto industry, Abuelsamid said.

"One of the challenges is bringing in software developers from these other industries to the auto industry. In those other industries, developers have more freedom to make changes ... on a more frequent basis, without having to worry so much about the consequences if something broke," Abuelsamid said. "But when that happens in a car, the consequences of that kind of failure are much more severe."

The changes GM is making appear to be steps in the right direction for Abuelsamid, but "whether it actually is successful remains to be seen."

Like GM, other automakers have made changes to address the software woes they've experienced. Volkswagen, for example, is partnering with EV startup Rivian Automotive Inc. In June, the companies announced a joint venture, which they launched Tuesday, to create next-generation software-defined vehicle platforms to be used in both automakers' future EVs.

"Increasingly, automakers that were counting on doing this on their own are now recognizing, 'OK, this is a lot harder than we thought,'" Abuelsamid said. "And they're working with partners that have more expertise in that kind of software development."

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AUTONEWS

Saltwater flooding is a serious fire threat for EVs and other devices with lithium-ion batteries

Flooding from hurricanes Helene and Milton inflicted billions of dollars in damage across the Southeast in September and October 2024, pushing buildings off their foundations and undercutting roads and bridges. It also caused dozens of electric vehicles and other battery-powered objects, such as scooters and golf carts, to catch fire.

According to one tally, 11 electric cars and 48 lithium-ion batteries caught fire after exposure to salty floodwater from Helene. In some cases, these fires spread to homes.When a lithium-ion battery pack bursts into flames, it releases toxic fumes, burns violently and is extremely hard to put out. Frequently, firefighters' only option is to let it burn out by itself.Particularly when these batteries are soaked in saltwater, they can become "ticking time bombs," in the words of Florida State Fire Marshall Jimmy Patronis. That's because the fire doesn't always occur immediately when the battery is flooded. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 36 EVs flooded by Hurricane Ian in Florida in 2022 caught fire, including several that were being towed after the storm on flatbed trailers.Many consumers are unaware of this risk, and lithium-ion batteries are widely used in EVs and hybrid cars, e-bikes and scooters, electric lawnmowers and cordless power tools.

The threat of saltwater...The trigger for lithium-ion battery fires is a process called thermal runaway—a cascading sequence of heat-releasing reactions inside the battery cell. Under normal operating conditions, the probability of a lithium-ion cell going into thermal runaway is less than 1 in 10 million. But it increases sharply if the cell is subjected to electrical, thermal or mechanical stress, such as short-circuiting, overheating or puncture.

Saltwater is a particular problem for batteries because salt dissolved in water is conductive, which means that electric current readily flows through it. Pure water is not very conductive, but the electrical conductivity of seawater can be more than a thousand times higher than that of fresh water.

All EV battery pack enclosures use gaskets to seal off their internal space from the elements outside. Typically, they have waterproof ratings of IP66 or IP67. While these ratings are high, they do not guarantee that a battery will be watertight when it is immersed for a long period of time—say, over 30 minutes.

Battery packs also have various ports to equalize pressure inside the battery and move electrical power in and out. These can be potential pathways for water to leak into the pack enclosure. Inadequate seal ratings and manufacturing defects can also enable water to find its way into the battery pack if it is immersed.

How water leads to fire...All batteries have two terminals: One is marked positive (+), and the other is marked negative (-). When the terminals are connected to a device that uses electricity to do work, such as a light bulb, chemical reactions occur inside the battery that cause electrons to flow from the negative to the positive terminal. This creates an electric current and releases the energy stored in the battery.

Electrons flow between a battery's terminals because the chemical reactions inside the battery create different electrical potentials between the two terminals. This difference is also known as voltage. When saltwater comes into contact with metal battery terminals with different electrical potentials, the battery can short-circuit, inducing rapid corrosion and electric arcing, and generating excessive current and heat. The more conductive the liquid is that penetrates the battery pack, the higher the shorting current and rate of corrosion.

Rapid corrosion reactions within the battery pack produce hydrogen and oxygen, corroding away materials from metallic terminals on the positive side of the battery and depositing them onto the negative side. Even after the water drains away, these deposited materials can form solid shorting bridges that remain inside the battery pack, causing a delayed thermal runaway. A fire can start days after the battery is flooded.

Even a battery pack that is fully discharged isn't necessarily safe during flooding. A lithium-ion cell, even at 0% state of charge, still has about a three-volt potential difference between its positive and negative terminals, so some current can flow between them. For a battery string with many cells in a series—a typical configuration in electric cars—residual voltage can still be high enough to drive these reactions.

Many scientists, including me and my colleagues, are working to understand the exact sequence of events that can occur in a battery pack after it is exposed to saltwater and lead to thermal runaway. We also are looking for ways to help reduce fire risks from flooded battery packs.

These could include finding better ways to seal the battery packs; using alternative, more corrosion-resistant materials for the battery terminals; and applying waterproof coatings to exposed terminals inside the battery pack.

What EV owners should know...Electric cars are still very safe to drive and own in most circumstances. However, during extreme situations like hurricanes and flooding, it is very important to keep EV battery packs from becoming submerged in water, particularly saltwater. The same is true for other products that contain lithium-ion batteries.

For EVs, this means evacuating cars out of the affected zone or parking them on high ground before flooding occurs. Smaller objects, like e-bikes and power tools, can be moved to upper floors of buildings or stored on high shelves.

If you own an EV that has been submerged in water for hours to days, particularly in saltwater, public safety experts recommend treating it as a fire hazard and placing it on open ground away from other valuable property. Do not attempt to charge or operate it. Contact the manufacturer for an inspection to assess battery damage.

Often, a flooded electric vehicle will need to be towed away for further inspection. However, since thermal runaway can occur well after submersion, the car should not be moved until it has been professionally assessed.

Provided by The Conversation 

HARLEY DAVIDSON

Harley-Davidson will launch high performance electric scooter

Harley-Davidson also has an electric vehicle division, Livewire. The latest news of the American company is a new line of high performance scooters created in partnership with giant Taiwanese Kymco.

Submarca confirmed the project at Milan Motorcycle Shows 2024, an annual motorcycle fair in Milan, Italy.

After the announcement, Livewire launched conceptual images and rendering showing at least two electric scooters;

One features aggressive off-road tires and luggage, while the second is a simpler road variant;

Expected to hit the market in 2026, the scooters will use the S2 Arrow platform, introduced with the Livewire S2 del Mar electric motorcycle;

The promise is reference in performance and capacity to reach;

The S2 Arrow System currently provides 84 HP (63 kW) of peak power and a maximum torque of 263 nm. The top speed is 163 km/h;

For comparison, Forza 750, Honda's high performance scooter, produces “only” 58 hp (43 kW) and 69 nm of torque;

Autonomy of about 138 km is expected and 20% to 80% recharge in less than 80 minutes (using fast level 2 loads).

It is noteworthy that Kymco was one of the first investors of the brand Livewire and the duo signed a longtime collaboration. Livewire CEO Karim Donnez said the company is excited "to start this journey with such a globally recognized leader."

Livewire plans to serve a different type of younger and more urban user with the news. Currently, there are no details on model names or prices. As mentioned before, the company plans to launch electric scooters only in the first half of 2026.

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AUTONEWS

Is a future with self-driving vehicles closer than we think? Researchers aim to find out

Transportation of the future may be closer than we think; however, a collaborative project between DriveOhio, the Department of Transportation and Ohio University is finding just how close we may actually be to autonomous vehicles and the impacts they could have on improving well-being and access.

The collaborative research project wrapped up a significant four-year study on the viability of autonomous vehicles in rural settings, focusing specifically on the challenges and opportunities faced by communities in southeastern Ohio.

The Rural Automated Driving Systems (ADS) project, which commenced in 2020 and concluded in June 2024, aimed to collect data on the performance of self-driving cars in less populated areas, where infrastructure can differ greatly from urban environments.

Led by Dr. Jay Wilhem, director of the Avionics Engineering Center and associate professor in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, the project involved a team of undergraduate and graduate students from the university's mechanical engineering and computer science departments, as well as Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Dr. Issam Khoury and Dr. Julie Brown, an associate professor in the College of Health Sciences and Professions.

Together, they drove an autonomous vehicle along rural state roads, meticulously gathering data to evaluate how well the technology adapted to the unique challenges of the region, as well as performed community outreach to survey people's perceptions of the technology and the potential benefits.

"Autonomous vehicles have predominantly been tested in urban areas with consistent infrastructure. Our goal was to assess their effectiveness in rural contexts, where access to essential services like food and health care can be limited," explained Wilhelm. "This research highlights both the technological advancements needed and the potential benefits these vehicles could bring to underserved communities."

When choosing to focus the efforts in rural areas, especially southeastern Ohio, several considerations were taken into place as to why this would be beneficial for those who live in these types of areas. According to Wilhelm, southeastern Ohio suffers from being a food and health care desert where often times people have to travel to surrounding counties to get necessary needs taken care of or rely on family members or friends to drive them around.

"We found that a lot of people in this region don't have access to reliable transportation. It's normally family members coming to get them. In big cities, there are public transportation options and everything is more centrally located whereas in rural areas, these options aren't available," Khoury, who led the outreach efforts, added.

In addition to looking at the barriers that impact people in southeastern, Ohio, the team also emphasized how this technology could impact older generations. Khoury and Brown traveled across Ohio to rural regions with higher older populations to gain insights about their perceptions.

"Initially, many community members were skeptical about self-driving cars. However, after engaging in discussions about safety and the technology's capabilities, most shifted their views positively," Khoury noted.

According to Wilhem, the way the autonomous vehicles worked was similar to having cruise control on. The safety "driver" would hit a button and the autonomy would take over, however, if at any point the autonomous portion of the vehicle stopped working, the safety driver would easily be able to take over.

The team faced various challenges, including GPS signal loss in remote areas and the detection of traffic signals. Despite these obstacles, they successfully identified critical areas for improvement, such as enhancing the vehicle's ability to recognize stoplights and navigate complex environments like uptown Athens, where pedestrian traffic is high.

The findings from this comprehensive study suggest that while the technology is advancing, significant work is still needed in both regulatory frameworks and technological infrastructure to support autonomous vehicles in rural areas.

The research revealed a strong demand for improved cellular and GPS coverage, particularly in regions where services are spotty, which could hinder the effectiveness of autonomous driving systems.

Undergraduate and graduate students also had the opportunity to gain experience working on the project with many of them being the ones to operate the computer in the back of the vehicle, collecting data.

"Working with large amounts of data in Python and other data visualization platforms gave me a lot of valuable experience that will definitely be applicable to work later on in my career," Tony Tonkovich, a recent OHIO graduate who is now pursuing a Masters of Engineering, said.

"The opportunity to work on a project with an autonomous vehicle is also a large step towards some of my career goals. Having this early experience working with autonomous systems is extremely valuable and will open future opportunities for very cool careers."

For the project, most of Tonkovich's work consisted of analyzing the various data (such as GPS and LiDAR) that was collected while their group was driving the autonomous vehicle around three planned routes in the greater Athens area. One of the specific things he focused on was studying the times that a driver had to takeover from autonomy to manually operate the vehicle.

"I was looking for trends and challenges that were specific to rural Appalachia in order to promote additional research to hopefully encourage future development of autonomous driving for rural communities," Tonkovich explained.

Tonkovich adds that through working on this project, he went from knowing practically nothing about autonomous vehicles to the different systems that go into them and encourages students interested in researching these types of systems to reach out to Wilhelm for other opportunities.

As the demand for innovative transportation solutions grows, the findings from this study may play a pivotal role in shaping the future of mobility in rural Ohio and beyond.

"Some areas, especially in urban settings, are already doing this, however, the overall technology needs improvement before there can be demand and this can become a reality for those living in rural areas.

"I think five to 10 years down the line we could see more autonomous vehicles starting out with corporate companies like Uber that could offer experiences for their customers before the demand expands to people being able to purchase one themselves," Wilhelm said. "But once we get there, the opportunities for a more accessible mode of transportation could be endless."

Provided by Ohio University

 

AUTONEWS

Tesla Robotaxi may launch early as Elon Musk bags nationwide autonomous vehicle deregulation

Elon Musk's bet on the incoming Trump administration is starting to pay off handsomely, with autonomous vehicle permits heading Tesla's way.

Tesla's stock is up on the news that Elon Musk's autonomous vehicle deregulation push may be coming to fruition when the new White House administration takes over next quarter.

The Trump transition team is reportedly working to create a federal policy framework for autonomous vehicles that will let them on public roads much faster and in much greater quantities than current state regulations allow. The push may be led by former Uber exec Emil Michael, who is in the running for a Transportation Secretary. The resulting NHTSA rules will allegedly be enshrined in a federal legislation, with a bipartisan bill that will essentially ask Congress to ease regulations and spearhead the adoption of fully autonomous vehicles.

This should not only speed up the introduction of unsupervised FSD that will bring the Cybercab ride-share service to existing Tesla cars like the Model Y or Model 3 next year, but also the Robotaxi launch, which Musk initially pegged for 2026.

During Tesla's Q3 quarterly call, Elon Musk briefly explained why did he bet the house on the Trump campaign, and got a leading role in the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) agency.

There should be a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. I mean, that's how the FMVSS has worked. Federal Motor Vehicle. The FMBSS is federal. It really needs to be a national approval is important. There's department of government efficiency. I'll try to help make that happen. And you said for everyone, not just Tesla, obviously. But just, like some things in the U.S. are state by state regulated, for example, insurance. And it's incredibly painful to do it state by state for 50 states. And, I think there should be a natural approval process for autonomy.

The Robotaxi is a fully autonomous two-seater electric vehicle with no pedals or steering wheel. It offers about 200 miles of range on a charge, but can't just be topped up on a Tesla wall connector at home, or even at a Supercharger, as it is Tesla's first EV with induction charging abilities.

Tesla eschewed the development of a more orthodox $25,000 electric car, tentatively called the Model 2, in order to bet the mass EV market house on cheap autonomous vehicles like the Robotaxi, and if Musk's deregulation push becomes federal legislation, this bet might pay off.

Tesla Model Y owners will now pay up to $2.40 EV charging tax on each Supercharger session in Wisconsin

Apart from having one of the highest road taxes for electric vehicles, Wisconsin is now introducing an additional levy for their owners.

The state of Wisconsin has introduced an electric vehicle charging tax of three cents per kWh delivered over any Level 3 charger that goes up to 250 kW, or over Level 1 and Level 2 chargers installed after March 22.

This means that, for every Tesla Model Y owner in Wisconsin, a full charging session at those stations will now cost about $2.40 extra.

"The registration and excise tax applies regardless of whether the charging station is available for public use and whether there is a charge to the consumer for the electricity from the EV charging station," stipulates the 2023 Wisconsin Act 121. This likely means that even those legacy Model S or X owners who have free Supercharging for life, will now have to pay a fee.

This is on top of the already comparatively hefty $175 "combined electric surcharge fee" that is essentially an annual road tax that Wisconsin now levies on EV owners.

Staring January 1, 2025, all EV charging station owners or operators will have to register online with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue before they start "delivery or placement of electricity from an EV charging station that is subject to the excise tax."

Residential charging stations like the Tesla Gen 2 Wall Connector are not subject to the new Wisconsin EV charging tax, unless they are installed in public places like hotels. As reasoning for the extra EV charging tax, Department of Revenue Secretary Designee David Casey cites road maintenance:

The excise tax represents a crucial source of revenue for maintaining Wisconsin's roadways and infrastructure. It will help ensure continued funding for road repairs and construction as Wisconsin drivers increasingly make the switch to electric vehicles, while creating a more equitable system in which all drivers contribute to road maintenance costs.

After a long honeymoon with electric vehicle owners, an increasing number of states have started introducing exclusive annual road taxes. The EV taxes are usually higher than those for legacy ICE vehicles, and the states' revenue departments explain this with the fact that electric cars are heavier on average and bring more wear and tear on local roads.

Wisconsin's new levy on each EV charging session, however, sounds like double taxation for that same road maintenance reason.

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FERRARI

F40: the super sports car could be produced again

Ferrari, through the Icona model range, is seriously thinking about recovering the famous F40, a super sports car of which only 1,311 units were manufactured between 1987 and 1992, all built on a tubular chassis with a fiber body and powered by a supercharged V8 engine with 2 .9 liters and 484 hp, “pulling” just 1250 kg.

If the automaker moves towards producing a modern version of the F40, as announced by an unofficial company source to the British Top Gear, potential customers will certainly be lining up to be among the first to receive the sports car that was originally produced to celebrate Ferrari's 40th anniversary. This is provided that the design of the new F40 reproduces the aggressiveness and race car appearance (as well as the type of construction) of the original F40, in which both the front and rear opened completely to facilitate access to the mechanics and suspensions, further reducing the weight of the set.

For manufacturers of exclusive vehicles such as Bugatti, Lamborghini and Ferrari, it is fashionable to design unique models (or almost so), that recall models from other times or that commemorate the manufacturer's milestones and victories in emblematic competitions. In addition to being well received by potential customers, eager for an even more exclusive model, these special series are also very interesting from a financial point of view, since exclusivity is expensive and Ferrari can ask for almost whatever it wants for a modern version of the historic F40.

If Lamborghini has returned to manufacturing special and exclusive series of historic models such as the Miura and Countach, Ferrari's Icona model line has brought us the Monza SP1 and SP2, as well as the Daytona SP3. But, until now, the manufacturer of the Cavallino Rampante has not recovered any of its most emblematic models from the past, a “gap” that is definitely time to be filled. And the F40 would be a great way to start off on the right foot.

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