Enlarge / This is the BQ79731-Q1, a new battery pack monitor from Texas Instruments. TI has also developed a battery cell monitor that works with it to much more accurately manage LFP batteries in EVs. (credit: Texas Instruments)

One of the more exciting developments to come to electric vehicles over the past few years has been the development of lithium-iron phosphate cells as an alternative to more traditional lithium-ion chemistries that use minerals like nickel, manganese, and cobalt. Now, a new battery management system, or BMS, could mean much more accurate range predictions for EVs with these batteries.

Why LFP?

LiFePO4, or LFP, batteries were mostly the province of Chinese EV makers until last year thanks to a series of exclusive patent licenses signed with the US and Canadian researchers who first developed the technology. But those patents are expiring, and non-Chinese automakers are beginning to adopt LFP batteries.

LFP cells dislike very cold weather more than an equivalent NMC or nickel-cobalt aluminum cell, and they also store less energy. But that last bit might in fact be an advantage to this chemistry—there's no danger that an LFP pack will combust or explode in a crash, so there's much less need to surround the pack with a heavy protective shell.

Enlarge / It's called the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle, and it was designed by Oshkosh Defense. (credit: USPS )

On Tuesday, the long-running saga of the United States Postal Service's delivery fleet took another turn when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced that the service is increasing the number of electric vehicles it plans to purchase. The new plan calls for a minimum of 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) by 2028, 45,000 of which will be battery EVs. The USPS will also buy an additional 21,000 commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) EVs—perhaps EVs like the Ford e-Transit or the BrightDrop Zevo 600 —for deliveries by 2028. And from 2026, all vehicles bought by the USPS will be BEVs.

"Every neighborhood, every household in America deserves to have electric USPS trucks delivering clean air with their mail, and today’s announcement takes us almost all the way there. The Postal Service’s shift to only purchasing electric mail trucks within five years is the marker of a sea change in the federal fleet as the country looks to an electric future. Ultimately, this shift will buffer us from volatile gas prices, spur the growth of clean energy jobs, and have us all breathing easier," said Adrian Martinez, senior attorney on Earthjustice’s Right to Zero campaign.

The Postal Service's plans to replace its fleet of aging, inefficient, and increasingly dangerous Grumman LLVs crystalized in February 2021, when it announced that it had selected Oshkosh Defense's NGDV as its next mail delivery van . At the time, the USPS said it planned to buy between 50,000-165,000 NGDVs but that only 10 percent of the order would be BEVs.

Enlarge / Jaguar's latest factory racing car is the I Type 6, its latest Formula E challenger. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Jaguar provided a flight from DC to London and back and a night in a hotel so we could see its new Formula E car and speak to its engineers. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LONDON—On Wednesday, Jaguar Racing became the latest Formula E team to unveil its race car for the coming season. The sport has radical new technical rules for its third-generation race car, which is smaller, lighter, more powerful, and more efficient . This will be the British automaker's sixth season competing in the series, and its participation is for more than just marketing; Jaguar Land Rover's electrified road cars have benefited in tangible ways as a result, according to the team's technical manager Phil Charles.

"If you rewind back to 2017, that's the first time that [we used] our in-house inverter for the racing team," Charles told Ars. "We put a silicon carbide switching device, the Wolfspeed one actually... that gave us the ability to switch super fast. That was the push on our side—we want to switch faster and see if that can give us efficiency, which it did. So we've gotten over and over and over during these inverter development cycles, switching faster and faster and faster," he said.

At the time, few manufacturers looked at silicon carbide power electronics for road-going EVs. "Now everyone wants silicon carbide, and the reason they want it is the same reasons we do," Charles said. "So the tech that we pushed then has really caught up now—the race to road is really clear. If I kind of map our switching speed increase, we've done five evolutions with different topologies of the in-house inverter. Now the road cars are coming along and the benefit there is range, ultimately; it means smaller batteries."