May 2021: This month’s article aims to further explore and strengthen my readers understanding and confidence of these two correlated industries by diving deeper into, as I always say “the tsunami of information and data” available to the consumer to make a more informed choice.
Cover Story: Two countries, poles apart geographically continue to show remarkable progress when it comes to lithium-ion battery storage installations. Australia and Germany registered 31,000 and 100,000 lithium-ion battery based energy storage installations in 2020, respectively. Whilst the figure from Australia was led and driven predominantly by residential sector, the 100K figure for Germany was all residential solar plus storage. For a country which has approximately 300,000 residential battery installations, adding a third of it in the midst of a global pandemic speaks volumes about this particular industry. Put this in context of their respective national grids and the bigger picture becomes clearer.
Global News Desk: Tesla Motors continued to lead the pack and delivered 184,800 electric vehicles for the first quarter of 2021. Market assessments, predictions and analysis were yet again swirled away by the company. An interesting number from the data released was 180,338. That’s the total production for Q1 2021.From the view point of potential investors, governments, industrialists it’s a reasonable reference point to assess and gauge the entire portfolio as the switch to EVs rallies along.
Another big name from the courier/delivery and logistics industry has stepped in and announced their policy statement along with a roadmap to switch its fleet to electric vehicles. DHL, a household name has confirmed after a successful pilot project that New York and California’s fleet will be all electric come the end of 2021. Part of the wider $8.2bn fund set aside for a 10 year duration, DHL’s entry paved the path for a strategic partnership between two US based companies Proterra and Lightning eMotors. Lightning eMotors will be DHL’s EV supplier. Taking innovation to a rather interesting terrain, they actually hold expertise in converting Ford transit commercial vehicles to an all-electric automobile. To date, their EVs are the only class III rated commercial vans in the US.
Concluding this month’s editorial, Sky News has started a new program known as “The Daily Climate Show”. A dedicated primetime program, one of its kind aired Monday-Friday and one I’d highly recommend to put on your watchlist. The cherry on the cake is the real time data dashboard. And since the pandemic continues to keep our movements restricted, I can assure you this program will definitely bridge the gap, for you the consumers.
