Enlarge / The US auto workers' union announced the start of a strike at three factories just after midnight on Friday, September 15, as a deadline expired to reach a deal with employers on a new contract. (credit: Photo by MATTHEW HATCHER/AFP via Getty Images)

Almost 13,000 workers are on strike at three US car factories today after a midnight deadline came and went without an agreement between the United Auto Workers and Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. It's the first time in the UAW's history that it has initiated strike action at all of the Big Three domestic car companies simultaneously, as negotiations on a new contract failed.

UAW's strike action has been narrowly targeted . Although the union represents about 146,000 members, most of them are staying at their jobs. But 5,800 Stellantis workers at the company's Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, are now on strike, as are 3,600 GM workers at a plant in Wentzville, Missouri, plus 3,300 at Ford's factory in Wayne, Michigan.

The union and automakers had been trying to reach a compromise before the 4-year-old contract between them expired on Thursday night. Among other things, the union has been looking to end the tiered pay structure in the industry where new hires into a job earn less. It is also seeking the restoration of cost-of-living increases and an end to automakers subverting union jobs with temporary workers.

Enlarge / Milk float in Earlsfield in London, England, United Kingdom. In Britain, a milk float is a vehicle specifically designed for the delivery of fresh milk. (credit: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)

Electric delivery vehicles are big business. These "last-mile" solutions from companies like UPS and Amazon are a way around restrictions on freight vehicle emissions in cities and provide green credentials at the point where customers interact with a service.

In Europe, electric van sales went up 74 percent over the first five months of 2023, with EV powertrains becoming the second-favorite propulsion behind diesel, leapfrogging gasoline. Delivery EVs are massively accelerating as companies head toward 2025 commitments for fleet transformation and Ford and Stellantis bring more vehicles to market. Nissan has even been using Nikola battery electric heavy-duty car transports to deliver Ariyas to customers in California.

But they’re not especially new. In fact, a very significant proportion of electric road vehicles for most of the 20th century were working in suburbs, small towns, and villages in the UK as milk floats.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

The mass sponge EV charger plug migration continues to gather steam. Since we last wrote about the topic, first Polestar and then Mercedes-Benz also announced that they're dropping the Combined Charging Standard 1 (CCS1) connector in favor of Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) . Sometime next year, non-Tesla electric vehicles from those makes, as well as Ford , General Motors , Volvo , and Rivian , will be able to start making use of Tesla's Supercharger network. In 2025, those automakers—and probably a few more—will start building cars with NACS ports built in.

It's not just the car makers. Charger manufacturers and charging networks have also been announcing new NACS products, and it feels like enough critical mass is building that CCS1 might be headed for extinction. Or at least it may be relegated to curio status alongside CHAdeMO. Things are looking even better now that SAE International is taking over the management of NACS, so it will no longer be under the control of a rival OEM run by a billionaire known for impulsive and often arbitrary decisions. At this point, many are merely waiting to see if Hyundai Motor Group or Volkswagen Group will be the next big convert.

The justification for dropping an entrenched standard and switching to NACS, from Ford and others, was as much about obtaining access for their EV owners to Tesla's Supercharger network, and why not? Even the most hardened partisan from the EV brand flame wars has to concede that not only are there far more Superchargers out there, but they offer a vastly superior charging experience to any of the public charging networks.

Enlarge (credit: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/recharging-station-royalty-free-image/516332653 )

Electric-vehicle market share has soared in the last decade, but there has been no measurable change in the share of consumers who want to buy an EV just because it’s an EV.

This finding, from a recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that the growth in demand for EVs is largely due to the appeal of the models’ technology and features, not a deeper attachment to the idea of owning an EV than in the past.

The results were surprising to Kenneth Gillingham, a Yale University economist and co-author of the study. “I went into it actually expecting to see some pretty notable changes in consumer preferences,” he said.

Enlarge (credit: John Timmer)

For many years, talking about fat-tire bikes meant you were referring to mountain bikes. But a more recent generation of bikes has dared to ask, "You call that fat?" These bikes, equipped with comically wide tires, promised to retain traction on just about any surface imaginable and to soften bumps without requiring a suspension.

Earlier this year, I had the chance to try out my first ultra-fat tire electric bike . Unfortunately, it was also my first mountain bike frame and the first folding frame I had tested. There were so many new things about the experience that it was tough to evaluate which aspects of the ride (good and bad) were due to the product and which were due to my unfamiliarity with the bike's features.

In an attempt to get a better perspective on things, I will be spending this spring riding a dedicated ultra-fat-tire e-bike, a dedicated folding e-bike, and a dedicated mountain e-bike. First up: the $1,500 Velotric Nomad 1 , which falls in the ultra-fat tire category.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images )

Today, the US Department of Energy published a notice of proposed rulemaking that would change the way the government calculates the energy efficiency of electric vehicles. If adopted, the changes will substantially downgrade the fuel-efficiency ratings given to EVs and be used to determine corporate average fuel economy (better known as CAFE). That might have serious implications for automakers, but don't worry—the consumer-facing MPGe and kWh/100 miles numbers you see on Monroney window stickers and at the US Environmental Protection Agency's fueleconomy.gov site won't change.

They call it CAFE, but you can’t drink it

Congress enacted CAFE in 1975 in the wake of the country's first serious energy crisis. It gives an average fuel efficiency number that each automaker must achieve to not be sanctioned by the government, and the standards and penalties are enforced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But the fuel efficiency numbers that NHTSA calculates are much higher than the actual efficiency you or I might experience, or the numbers posted by the EPA for consumers to make buying decisions.

Enlarge / US Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) is a millionaire thanks to coal, gas, and oil interests. He was responsible for rewriting the US electric vehicle incentives. (credit: Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

US Senator Joe Manchin was instrumental in rewriting the nation's electric vehicle incentives , but now the West Virginia Democrat says he wants to sue the federal government "if I'm allowed to" in order to stop too many EVs from reaching US customers with battery packs that contain materials and components refined, processed, or manufactured abroad. The politician made the remarks during a panel on Wednesday, according to S&P Global .

Originally, the IRS tax credits offered to car buyers to incentivize them to purchase a plug-in electric vehicle were linked to the size of the car's battery. But as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the rules were changed. Now, the $7,500 tax credit is only applicable to "clean vehicles"—either battery EVs or hydrogen fuel cell EVs, not plug-in hybrids.

Where do your minerals come from?

There are several more requirements , including final assembly in North America, but for most new EVs, the stumbling block is a requirement that battery components be domestically sourced.

Enlarge / Ford is tripling the production rate of the F-150 Lightning EV this year. (credit: Ford)

There's no doubt that Ford is embracing electrification. It was first to market with an electric pickup truck for the US market, and a darn good one at that. It has a solid midsize electric crossover that's becoming more and more common on the road, even if it does still upset the occasional Mustangophile. And there's an electric Transit van for the trades. But its electric vehicle division will lose $3 billion this year as it continues to build new factories and buy raw materials.

The news came in a peek into Ford's financials released this morning. As we reported last year , Ford has split its passenger vehicle operations into two divisions. Electric vehicles fall under Ford Model e, with internal combustion engine-powered Fords (including hybrids and plug-in hybrids) falling under Ford Blue. The move was in large part to placate investors and analysts, no doubt starry-eyed during a time when any EV-related stock was booming.

"We've essentially 'refounded' Ford, with business segments that provide new degrees of strategic clarity, insight, and accountability to the Ford+ plan for growth and value," said Ford CFO John Lawler. "It's not only about changing how we report financial results; we're transforming how we think, make decisions and run the company, and allocate capital for highest returns."

Enlarge / Lithium ore sits waiting for processing. (credit: Bloomberg Creative Photos )

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has some car troubles. One of President Joe Biden’s major initiatives, the law was intended to foster activities that are both good for the economy and green. As such, it contains stipulations about the manufacturing of EVs—particularly that their batteries come from local sources or free-trade partners. But there are some issues with the availability of critical minerals that meet the "local" criteria and some vagueness on important terminology, according to a recent paper .

Higher standards

The IRA was signed into law in August of last year. It includes a provision that gives tax credits to producers that use critical minerals that come from the US or some of its close trade partners. In particular, to get the credits, an electric vehicle—which needs to be fully electric—would need to have a battery in which 80 percent of the market value of its critical minerals is sourced from within the US. Alternatively, this benchmark could be reached using minerals sourced from free-trade partners, or the minerals could hail from elsewhere but be processed in the US.

This is an increase over the requirements ( 40 percent ) for receiving previous incentives. In theory, purchasing one of the vehicles eligible for a tax credit would be more affordable for many consumers.