Car-sharing hasn't reduced private car ownership, in part because many cities are too large to make it practical and affordable. Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., are trying a public/private model and partnering with a nonprofit, offering electric vehicles for short-term rentals aimed at low-income residents -- with a key feature being that users don't have to return the cars to any specific location.
Manhattan Beach, Calif., will be the home of electric vehicle manufacturer Fisker's global headquarters, which the company calls Inception and which will "enable us to take a vehicle from a sketch to launch," Chairman Henrik Fisker said. The carmaker also is opening an engineering and research center in San Francisco.
Converting to an electric truck fleet is more complicated than using conventional trucks and requires an infrastructure with multiple partners, industry experts said at a recent educational session. The conversion is often rewarded with government incentives, but it requires installing charging stations and coordinating with utility companies.
IHS Markit estimates that up to 80% of new cars sold globally will be electric vehicles by 2050, but that doesn't mean gasoline vehicles will disappear. By 2050, there will still be 1.9 billion vehicles running on internal combustion engines. "It will still be a long road before [EVs] dislodge gasoline as the predominant fuel in transportation," said IHS Markit's Daniel Yergin, adding, "Electric vehicles also bring their own set of challenges."
Lime and the World Wildlife Fund have launched the Ride Green initiative to educate the public about the benefits of cleaner transportation. Lime has pledged to meet the standards set by the Paris climate accord and will transition to 100% renewable energy for its offices and warehouses, in addition to shifting to electric vehicles globally by 2023.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is monitoring Tesla's Full Self-Driving software upgrade, which has been sent to what Tesla refers to as certain "expert, careful drivers" as a beta release. The NHTSA said it "will not hesitate to take action to protect (the) public against unreasonable risks to safety."
