Bolt EV production, grid-connected Leaf batteries, Genesis EV in Alabama, infrastructure bill: Today’s Car News
The infrastructure bill brings some significant spending on charging infrastructure. GM is building Bolt EV and EUV models again, amid battery replacements. Nissan Leaf battery packs help stabilize the grid in California. Tesla has fixed another braking problem over the air. And Hyundai Motor’s first U.S.-made EV might be a Genesis. This and more, here at Green Car Reports.
President Biden is due to sign a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives Friday night. While the final language of the bill hadn’t yet been revealed over the weekend, we know that it designates $65 billion for upgrades to the nation’s electric grid and $7.5 billion for the nationwide deployment of EV charging stations.
For the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV, production is back on, if only for a short time, as GM gets some new cars out while installing replacement battery packs to owners who have been hobbled by GM’s limitations as part of its Bolt EV battery recall. Because of supply chain issues, this could require some patience all around.
A project in California claims to be making money by using retired Nissan Leaf battery packs for energy storage—specifically, as grid-connected power brokers to help with peak demand times. Without the packs torn apart into modules, it’s a simplified model that likely costs a lot less.
A report from South Korea suggests that a Genesis GV70 EV is on deck for U.S. production in Alabama in the near future—as the first electric model from Hyundai, Kia, or Genesis to be made in the U.S. Genesis Motor North America, which already has the Electrified G80 and GV60 potentially arriving in the next year, hasn’t confirmed the report.
And over at The Car Connection: Tesla fixes a wide range of issues through over-the-air updates, sometimes including items that would be labor-intensive recalls for other automakers. One such example is a recent fix of an issue with false automatic emergency braking events.
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