Polestar prices go up. The DOE invests big on batteries. Electrify America charger use surged last year. Stellantis mops up car-sharing ventures from BMW and Mercedes. And Fisker teases a sports car. This and more, here at Green Car Reports.
The 2023 Polestar 2 lineup got a price hike, bringing the base single-motor version to $49,800, back above the base Model 3. Dual-motor versions will get a range boost, however, and Performance Pack versions add a power and torque boost that existing owners can add at extra cost with a software upgrade.
Fisker has teased an electric sports car with the code name Ronin—with a 550-mile range, and claims that it will be shown in August 2023 with production due the following year.
While BMW and Mercedes are done with car-sharing, at least in the forms they originally saw, Stellantis has a bigger vision. It announced that it’s buying Share Now, which includes what’s left of the two automakers’ ventures, to broaden its Free2Move service, which mostly offers Jeep Compass and Renegade models in the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Energy earlier this week announced more than $3 billion of funding for the domestic battery supply chain, plus $60 million for second-life uses and $45 million for battery development. It all aims to carry out steps that will boost domestic battery production, on the way to making half of new U.S. vehicles sold electric by 2030.
And Electrify America on Monday gave us an idea of how rapidly it and EV ownership are growing. It revealed that it provided more than five times the number of charging sessions in 2021 than it had in 2020—claiming that its 41.4 GWh of electricity powered 145 million miles of driving free of tailpipe emissions.
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