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An Oakland, California, school district is the first in the US to transition to a 100% electric school bus system with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.

Modern student transportation platform Zum has provided Oakland Unified School District with a fleet of 74 electric school buses and bidirectional chargers. Utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) supplied 2.7 megawatts (MW) of load to Zum’s Oakland EV-ready facility. The fleet will be managed through Zum’s AI-enabled technology platform.

“Oakland becoming the first in the nation to have a 100% electric school bus fleet is a huge win for the Oakland community and the nation as a whole,” said Kim Raney, executive director of transportation at Oakland Unified School District. “The families of Oakland are disproportionately disadvantaged and affected by high rates of asthma and exposure to air pollution from diesel fuels.”

Brighter with Herbert.

State-owned China Aerospace and Technology Corporation says the new technology meets international standards.

Tesla’s $25,000 EV is clouded with doubt, but Kia’s presumably inexpensive EV3 crossover is barreling ahead.

Just like Tesla, the JiYue 1 uses a camera-based, vision-only design for its autonomous driving. It is one of several competitors to FSD available in China.

BYD officially launched its new Sea Lion 7, a mid-size smart electric SUV poised to rival Tesla’s top-selling Model Y. Starting at 189,800 yuan ($26,250), the BYD Sea Lion 7 is the first EV based on its new e-Platform 3.0 Evo.

After unveiling the Sea Lion 07 at the Guangzhou Auto Show in November, BYD officially launched the new electric SUV last week.

BYD said it was its first “medium-sized urban smart electric SUV.” It’s also the first EV based on BYD’s new e-Platform 3.0 Evo. The new EV platform is an upgrade from the e-Platform 3.0 with improved charging and powertrain capability.

Toyota is aiming to start producing electric vehicle (EV) batteries next year at its upcoming factory in North Carolina, set to eventually build battery packs for the company’s hybrids, plugin hybrids and EVs.

After increasing its investment into the plant to $13.9 billion total last year, Toyota has continued to make progress on construction at the site since it broke ground in the latter part of 2022.

Toyota chairman predicts EVs will only reach 30 percent market share

In a milestone, supermaterials trailblazer Lyten has shipped lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries to Stellantis and other US and EU OEMs for testing.

Lyten’s shipment of A samples of its 6.5 Ah Li-S pouch cells is the first major step in the commercial evaluation of lithium-sulfur batteries by leading US and European automakers. Stellantis announced that it had invested in Lyten’s lithium-sulfur battery development in May 2023.

“This milestone is the result of years of dedicated work and innovation from the Lyten team, and we are just at the start of further expanding the capabilities of our lithium-sulfur battery cells,” said Lyten CEO and cofounder Dan Cook.

Tesla is planning to remove the steering wheel nag, which alerts drivers to apply torque on the steering wheel, with a new Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) update coming next week.

Yesterday, we reported on CEO Elon Musk giving an outline of the upcoming FSD software updates.

The CEO says that Tesla is preparing to launch fully retrained models in FSD v12.4 as soon as next week.